Legs and Borders

"Washington is up and down like this from the beginning, I'm sick and tired of it" Chimney [Sobo hiker] The end is nigh and you can sense the anticipation in everybody going north at the moment. Lots of Sobo hikers congratulates us as we pass them, I was initially not happy about it, but they are right it is a reasonable assumption that whoever made it that far will end up at the Canadian border. Fire season has started, the section on the California/Oregon border is on fire, 60 PCT hikers had to be evacuated from the area. Parts of Sierra Nevada (not on the trail itself) is also on fire. Fomo's friend George who hosted us in Snoqualmie Pass has hiked PCT three times, he has never done it without skipping a section because of the fire closure, we did (well technically not just yet) we managed to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail without dropping anything and that ladies and gentleman is insane! It has been a very special year on the west coast, lots of snow and rain...

"I can't thru hike the PCT because I have too many kids" Will. Today was a bit of a rollercoaster, it all started according to plan I hiked seven miles to Timberline Lodge right in time for breakfast buffet. Then I sat down with Quicksilver, Sonic and Watts and we had rightfully praised metric tonne of food consisting of fresh fruit, smoked salmon, ham hock, scrambled eggs, waffles with whipped cream and maple syrup, sausages, bagels, crossaints.. (the list goes on, don't know why I decided to list all of the above, but it was all delicious). We sat there for two hours or the entire length of buffet having many plates of it. It was honestly heaven on earth. The building itself was stunning as well, built in 1936 all wooden and full of history - it is definitely one of the main manmade highlights of the trail for me. Soon after more familiar faces started to arrive, Fomo and Lucky, Ravi and Sunrise which I haven't seen since Lake Tahoe finally caught up! Tik Tok an...

Today I went down to Shelter Cove Resort to resupply and get a shower (2$ for 3 minutes! haha). I woke up to a quite spectacular sunrise, the sun was bouncing of surrounding snow with a reddish hue, giving the landscape a warm and calm atmosphere. The descent to the valley was quite difficult for the first couple of miles as the footprints in the snow has largely melted in the sun yesterday, so I spent a lot of time watching GPS app and scratching my head but eventually the trail returned to it's good old dusty self and I could pick up the tempo again. Few miles before the resort I have encountered black bear number six, this one following most of it's predecessors commenced escaping procedure at my first glance, but at least I managed to see his whole posture before it dissapeared into the woods. It also coincided with the mosquito levels dropping down to acceptable levels (I saw the last bear just before the 'mosquito hell' at Fish Lake Resort) it looks like bears are...