Legs and Borders

Resupply day. I was thinking about staying in town for the night but norovirus warning made me change the plans. I've set the alarm at 5 AM as I still had quite a way to go before getting to Pearisburg. My headlamp decided to die after 10 minutes even though I recharged it two days ago. Since the sunrise was still an hour away I had to use the phone to see what I was doing. Trail after first sizeable climb was pretty straight forward, I've passed a couple of slack-packers along the way (I never know if they are day hikers or they are thru hiking like me). At 2 PM the clouds rolled in and weather turned momentarily from a serene, sunny afternoon to a heavy clouds and rain better stay at home one. Luckily it only rained for an hour but I still was completely soaked by the end of it. I've arrived at Pearisburg at 3 PM and went to Food Lion to resupply, they had good selection and decent prices, I've paid 50$ for four days of ...

"Was that a threat or a promise?" Crazy Larry Good day with a slightly adjusted schedule. Initial plan was to hike down few miles to Damascus and stay for the night at the Broken Fiddle Hostel. I've arrived in town at around 8 AM and went straight to the Damascus Diner for breakfast. It was good, I'm not sure why I always get "biscuits and gravy" when they are not mentioned on the menu but they are pretty good so I won't complain, "grits" were also included. After breakfast I went straight to Food City, a local supermarket to resupply for the next four days. Weather was supposed to be excellent all day. At this point I began to wonder if hiking out instead of staying at the hostel wouldn't be a better idea. I've asked the guy at the outfitters where I was buying a new gas canister if there's a place in town where I could take a shower and do the laundry, and I've been told that indeed there is...

"If you'll piss on that lemon tree, it will make it grow faster." Roger Tongariro National Park has ended and the connecting trail to the Wanganui National Park today was a bunch of roadwalking. It started with finding the way out of the forrest onto a busy asphalt road leading to National Park Village, the last place I could get my resupply before entering the park and spending there approximately five days. I arrived at the village at 8am, and spent around 80$ on breakfast and food for the upcoming days. I also met Frogga from Australia, I saw him before when he was flip flopping north, trying to make up miles in the bad weather. He used to hike in USA, we spend almost an hour reminiscing adventures we had there. Around 9:30am I decided to move on. Trail was going through the forrest on a gravel road then after couple of hours it opened up from one side to a picturesque countryside with a lot of green hills and meadows. Then after few miles it wa...

"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...

"One of the biggest problems while hitchhiking is having to talk to people making them feel like they didn't make a mistake picking you up. Even entertain them almost all of which is a great strain if you going all the way and don't plan to sleep in the hotels" Jack Kerouac. Great day with not so good ending. It was  rather easy in terms of hiking, not that much elevation gain and mostly going downhill to the town of Belden where I could have and potentially should have called it a day. The difference was that I met people I decided to hike out with. First if them was Mooch, an American girl living in Lake Tahoe, who actually hiked with Tom (I walked my first two weeks of PCT with him) I learned from her that his trail name is Cheeks, indeed because of his glorious butt cheeks! She also hiked with Tank Top, met Mama Troll and Courier etc. so we had a lot to talk about. Second person I met in Belden was Cuppa, a British guy from Manchester - very interesting person, he...

"I had this pain in my feet, it begun feeling like a wrinkle in my sock, and then it started to burn. It ended up as a wrinkle in my day" Cowboy. "So I looked at this guys legs and said: wow your blisters have some feet!" Smiley. Yet another day without any major issues, half of it was spend walking down the mountain into Middle Fork of Feather River, I bet most of the hikers had a blast doing that as the area was nicely shaded with typical to forrest soft trail, no stones, snow or water, a great little stretch. The second part of the day was a repayment of the debt we took in the morning aka gaining the lost altitude back, in the next ten miles we climbed 3.5k feet - it was still shaded woodland area though so very doable. I'm seeing more and more people who has quit PCT last year around Lake Tahoe area, after finishing high Sierra Nevada section and are restarting the hike this year. I met the girl called Taffy few days ago and today two guys called Cowboy and...

"If we incline to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate then works of art are perhaps a little to blame. For in them we find the same process of simplification at work as in the imagination. Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us" Alain de Botton. First day for about 400 miles without a snow! The torment is over, praise the Lord we can walk on dry and firm trail once again. Looks like I am moving in a bubble with Mama Troll and Mud Skipper, not only they joined me yesterday in the campsite but also today we stayed for few hours in Sierra City to redupply. There was a lot of cruising for everyone today, all the way to the town has been easy, well maintained trail and it was mostly downhill. Mama and Mud got resupply packages send here and since they shipped too much (it's always the case) they shared few things with me, like olive oil and tortillas - I was actually avoiding using olive oil so far, ...