Legs and Borders

Today was the last push to split the difference to Kennedy Meadows for tomorrow, I managed to reduce it to 9 miles which is great but it was a long and arduous day. I didn't meet many hikers, around midday I stumbled across an unexpected trail magic by 'Kim's Dad' (that's how the man wanted to be called) he was camping all week in the middle of nowhere offering hikers breakfasts and dinners, but since I arrived in the middle of the day he could only give me a drink which was more than enough as I had lots of extra food on me. He had a whole kitchen set up in the open air, apparently he hosted 25 hikers for dinner last evening. What an amazing guy. The trail kept on going up for the first part of the day until it went next to Chimney Peak, it was downhill from there. I'm also happy to report that no snakes has been encountered today. Plan for tomorrow is simple, get to Kennedy Meadows around 9am, shower, recharge batteries, pick up bear canister, new shoes and bu...

"Killer trail with killer views up ahead on the trail. A trail crafted by skilled dwarves in days of yore. Cut into the side of the mountain with nothing but pickaxes, pry bars, rock drills and dynamite!" LongJohnSilver "How many hikers can you fit into a car.. Wait, is this a Polish joke?" Pancakes Town day, resupply day - slowly but surely it becomes more desirable. Just to aimlessly walk the alleys in supermarket, strike a conversation with a stranger or share a story with another hiker. It feels special, even for a loner like myself. I camped only 8 miles away from Walkers Pass where I could catch a ride to either Lake Isabella or Ridgecrest in the morning. Calling trail angel was out of question as my T-Mobile credit ran out two days ago and local bus was running only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (and no one knew why). So I had to rely on my questionable hitchhike catching skills. I arrived at the Walkers Pass at 8:30am, half an hour of sticking thumb up ...

"If bobcats can live in Iowa, they can live anywhere. Iowa is like a ecological desert". Shower Shakedown. Today can be described by one word: SNAKES! The begging of the day was pretty standard, Big Owl decided to wrap up her camp early as she was low on water and next stream was 10 miles away uphill, so she made a lot of noise in the darkness around 4am waking me up in the process. I didn't mind it as I done the very same thing to other people before. I actually managed to fall asleep when she left and started to pack up around 5:30am. Next section was not only uphill but also with a lot of old, burned trees that fell on the trail, I had to manoeuvre around them to get through. Few hours later and after getting past the 600 miles marker I was at the water source, Big Owl was there with few other hikers. I topped up my bottles, had a cinnamon pop tart, a 'fun size snickers' and went on to the next water point (the joys of walking through the desert). At this sourc...

"I will be silent for a bit, when I'm going uphill I can't talk" David. "I started hiking on March 1st, but I'm living in Big Bear so I already took 44 zero days" David. Today I walked through the infamous section of the trail along the Los Angeles aqueduct. It was a long stretch of flat, baren land with very few features, but it's precisely that what made it interesting. It was a definition of a desert section and before starting the trail that was what I thought first 700 miles will look like. Nugget had to go to the post office to bounce her laptop and excess food to the next convenient point along the trail and since she didn't plan to hike until evening I decided to head out by myself. Weather was supposed to get hot tomorrow and since today was relatively cold day on this stretch it was a perfect time to go through it during the day (a lot of people hike it over night). I put my earphones on and I was listening to the music most of the day,...

"I don't have any whiskey.. but I do have some vodka" Mosquito Jesus. "Hiking PCT is a mini lifetime and quitting after two weeks seems like abandoning it in it's infancy" Classic. We started walking early today, climbed out of our Blair Witch Project campsite (I quite liked it though) and headed towards Hiker Town. Nugget had an idea to perhaps go back to LA that day to watch the concert of the band she liked, so we pushed some serious tempo. After couple of miles we hit the earliest trail magic on PCT so far, Mosquito Jesus was there with his goodies including doughnuts, crossaints, soft drinks, fruits, beers, pickled gherkins and..a bottle of vodka. We got ourselves a can of beer (drinking before 9am.. profit?), ate few doughnuts and because it was still freezing cold we quickly went back on trail. Weather was really bad, cold, cloudy and windy, frost has set on top of the trees overnight and as it got warmer wind was dropping bits of it along our path, i...