Day 4: Mile 37.1 - 41.5

A short day into Mount Laguna, then taking a nero (i.e., a near zero) in town. In theory, this is a good chance to stop, think, get some thoughts down. In reality, it's a busy day filled with a thousand and one little chores to do. I made a list: it came out to over 2 dozen items. Finely granulated, of course, but still, over 2 dozen things to keep in the brain. (Which I can't do: hence the list.)

But, still, let's try to think on some of the bigger, less mundane things.

Before I started, Eugene asked me, half tongue-in-cheek, how I planned to keep to only a small number of miles at the beginning. He was looking at my Saturday hikes, which always tried to hit at least 20 miles. And the short answer is: I didn't--witness yesterday, where I did 17 miles on the trail (plus an extra 1.4 miles off trail to Cibbets Campground to get water). But the long answer is that, rationally, you plan to hit Mount Laguna, at 40 miles, in 4 days, and you make a reservation at the motel there. And then you mail yourself a resupply box there. So now there's no point in getting there early: you'll just be waiting. 

Indeed, when I booked, the motel owner said, hey, the room opens at 3pm, so take your time getting here: if you're here early, you'll just be sitting on the porch anyway. The hike in was pretty short, just over 4 miles, and fairly flat and easy, through some beautiful pine forests where you get that smell of bright sunshine on wood. Just a nice walk, especially close to Mount Laguna proper. So I did get in early, around 11am, and I did, indeed, sit on the porch.

The porch is really the place to be, though: it's where all the hikers congregate, and the owner likes to come out, smoke, and tell stories. For my part, I had met two guys yesterday--Rick and Will--who were in the "middle age" bracket like myself: not 20-somethings fresh out of school, not 60-somethings fresh into retirement. Rick had done the PCT before, often in huge chunks--he laughs he's done 4000 miles on the 2650-mile trail, although he's dead serious--so since yesterday, whenever I bumped into them, I would get info on the trail. Rick knows it like the back of his hand at this point and, grumpiness aside, seems willing to talk about it. Will said he should set up a booth and charge. I agree, and think and 50 cents a parcel he'd still make a killing!

Having someone like Rick around, though, is reassuring: for all the information on Guthooks and the water reports and Halfmile, all that's fundamentally knowledge. But what Rick has is experience and--at least from this engineer's point of view--experience trumps knowledge. So I want to hear not only his plan for the next section, but more importantly how he thinks about things, bringing in the knowledge to inform decisions and plans. I want to hear little lessons from the Sierras, little bits from as far ahead as Oregon, because they not only are useful in their own right, but they belay an attitude toward approaching the trail. Rick and Will are both eminently practical--none of this kumbaya, "magic of the trail" nonsense--and that's the part that I'm weakest in, the planning and logistics.

Because so far, I will say that hiking has been fine--I can *do* the hiking--it's the camping and the logistics that are hard. My feet feel fine, no pains, not even that ricketty feeling that sometimes comes after long hikes. That's a blessing. Rather the problems aren't about the walking: I haven't slept well since I started (although lots of folks haven't), my legs are starting to get real itchy from being too dry and chaffed (I may just spring for a big bottle of lotion tomorrow), and I can't manage my food (got way too much, and hiker hunger hasn't kicked in yet). These can be remedied, and I spoke with Ian to help with that, but if I could just hike all day, I'd be fine and good and happy. It's all the *other* stuff that gets to me! And it's good to hear someone straightfowardedly parse out through all the knowledge bases and put together a plan in a cool, rational way that doesn't call for extraordinary efforts for miracles or black boxes where, well, something will happen here. Nope, to the point, here's the plan, here's how we get it done. I need more of that, if nothing else, to assuage the anxiety that invariably comes when I start thinking too far ahead...

Finally, looking back I will say that the weather has been (to my mind) incredibly good. (Knock on wood.) Sure, it was pretty cold the first night, but during the day it's been sunny, but always with a breeze coming through. At times positively windy, but a welcome wind, and never hard enough to warrant the windbreaker. Overall, for what I've hiked in southern California, this is near ideal spring-summer weather. We'll see how well it holds up as we descend into the deserts tomorrow: so far, everything I've hiked is landscape I've seen, whether in the Santa Anas, or the San Gabriels, or even Crystal Cove and Laguna Coast. Everywhere I've been I could say, ah, I've done this before, I know how this works. But the desert--the true, low-lying, hiker-withering, burn-your-face-parch-your-throat desert--this will be new to me. We'll see how it goes!

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Some notes:

-- I thought I would have plenty of time here in Mount Laguna, especially since I got in so early, but no, too many chores. Needed to do the laundry in a bucket, then figure out a way to dry it (eventually strung up a clothesline with my emergency rope under the eaves outside), then realize I didn't have enough sunlight to dry everything so start rotating it under the (weak) sunlamp in the bathroom, and the (small) plugin fan in the main room. No sockets in the bathroom, so I couldn't combine the two--rats! And that was just one thing on the list!

-- Charging: that's fun too. I only have one wall wart, so it's a lot of device rotation. Not hard, but keeping it in mind while doing other things just chews up bandwidth.

-- And then: updating costs, checking accounts, buying chapstick (forgot it), setting up a Guthooks account (so I can write comments as well as read them), figuring out Blogger details, research Bluetooth keyboards (this one is dying), brainstorming ideas to help with sleeping, buying shampoo and conditioner (the room doesn't come with it), planning the next leg--all lots of little niggling things, but they do add up.

-- Regarding the last, I got to talking with the hiker in the room next to me--Quinn--who's much more committed than me (he's planning to set out around 6:30am tomorrow--I'm hoping I won't even be awake by then), and we both agreed that, yeah, looking too far ahead is bad. He said it's easy to lose an afternoon looking through Guthooks, better just to plan for the next resupply spot. Whereas I just said looking far ahead just plain freaks me out. Yeah, you can tell who's the more planned and considered, and who's the more emotional and flying by the seat of his pants out here!