Day 51: Mile 583.3 - 602.0

Today was a tough day.

I had slept well enough: the no-fly setup for the wind had worked well, and I had only vague memories of the tent side buffeting my face a couple times. But upon waking I started immediately planning, since I had to deal with water.

Since I've already gotten sick once, for this section I'm being exceptionally careful about water and double treating it with both the Sawyer and Potable Aqua tablets. The former I know well, the latter I'd never used before. For Potable Aqua, you add 2 tablets to 1 L of water, but don't screw the cap on completely (I think to let it outgas some), then after 5 minutes upend the bottle (to get some liquid into the cap threads) then seal it up and shake it up. Let sit for 30 minutes, and you're ready to drink! (Let sit for 1 hour to kill even more bad stuff; let sit for 4 hours to kill all the bad stuffs.) But I wasn't used to this long lead-time and figuring out the Potable procedure took a bit. Water carries from here on out were long: the next source was Robin Bird Spring, but that had had a norovirus outbreak so I wanted to skip it. That put the next water in 25 miles. And the water after that was a further 25 miles. But for this next leg, that meant purifying 6 L of water--and then carrying it--and I should also cook breakfast here while I have access to water. This all made for a late start.

Furthermore, while I was getting water, a couple other hikers showed up: KT and Olaf. Given the choice between accomplishing my "mileage goals" for the day (such as they are), and talking, well, I think history shows I take the conversation. So I spoke with them for a while, and they were planning to sit around and sleep the day away then night-hike the next section, so they weren't in any hurry, and before I knew it my start time changed from 8:30am to 10:45am!

But I finally did say goodbye to KT and Olaf, and finally did start. And pretty quickly the trail wandered into a construction zone. The construction folks were very nice: they put up big clear signs whenever the PCT crossed one of their roads. At one point, I saw a construction worker by the side of the trail, away from the roads. Good morning, I said, and he replied in kind, then told me that they were doing some active work up ahead and I should wait lest boulders possibly fall on my head. Well, that seemed a reasonable thing to wait out, so I did, and he offered me a bottle of cold water, which I accepted and drank in two draws so quickly he immediately offered me another. (Didn't take that one, though, too embarrassed!) Turns out they're building 21 more windmills up here, they're finishing up the foundations this week and plan to start putting up the towers. The worker was very nice, and we chatted. He remarked that he had also worked on the solar farms, and had once spoken to an engineer who pointed to the vast acreage of solar panels and said, you know that this one windmill basically generates as much as all those panels. The windmills here were because--have you been here at night?; yes, actually, camped around here last night--at night it gets really windy, so the windmills should work well. They're being spaced out pretty far, though, not sure why that is, though. Anyway, we chatted for about 10 minutes before a water truck needed to pass: at that point I was cleared to go and continued on my way.

From here, the trail started transitioning between environs. At the wind farm it had been very desert-y, lots of dirt and boulder with little scrub bushes everywhere--for lunch, I had hidden on a slope under a slightly taller scrub bush, slowly moving higher up the slope as the sun encroached. But after that, the desert scrub gave way to grazeland, hills of dried grass gone yellow then gold then gray, speckled with old oaks whose leaves had gone green then dusty then gray, their trunks dry and brittle but resilent. They formed spread out groves that peppered the hillsides. And then it changed yet again, into pine woods with lots of young, thin trunks and a sparse canopy. Then very San Mateo Canyon: tall brush crowding the trail, accompanied by green ground plants, leaves like ivyies and the sun now filtering down through branch and leaf, and I thought there must be water here, these plants are lush-leaved and full. (Likely the water is all under the surface.) And finally into woods, straight woods, sometimes with green grass, as the sun set to the west, its beams filtering amongst the trunks, striking these random boulder formations that sat, awkward and foreboding, up along the slopes. Especially the last 6 miles or so of the day were very beautiful, almost astonishingly so, and in the back of my mind I thought, if Dylan and Uno had night-hiked this--if *I* had--oh, what would we have missed!

So the views were spectacular and varied throughout the day, but there was one downside: I was hurting. Maybe it was carrying 5 days of food and 6 L of water leaving camp. Maybe it was the heat--not the hottest I've ever felt, but still hot enough all day that it just saps energy, even in the shade. My bag felt so heavy and soon my iliac crests were hurting and, I feared, bruising. I just couldn't get them comfortable, they would always be pinching or chafing or grinding so I gave up and instead wore my backpack the wrong way, with the hip belt hugging the ilium rather than resting on top of them, and even pulled up my pants to get extra "padding". But this is bad: it just means that the weight gets distributed up, so instead of resting on my hips (strong) it now transmits to my shoulders (weak). And now my shoulders, especially the muscles that curve up into the neck (i.e., the "Cardassian" muscles) were hurting and sore, because you're *not* supposed to wear your backpack that way for a (good) reason! And I tried pulling my shoulder straps forward with my hands to relieve pressure, and I tried grabbing my top backpack hook with my hand and pulling forward to do the same another way, and they didn't really help long-term (as they're not expected to), so I just ending up hiking in pain for the last half of the day. That's something that perhaps is not mentioned as much: I remember one YouTube channel--Brita Borderless I think it was--that talked about the pain. She was thru-hiking the PCT, and devoted a video to the fact that she was continuously in pain. She kept going, of course, but that's how it is: something is always hurting. For me, I've discovered new parts of my feet and legs through pain, and as far as I can tell there's nothing for it other than to make sure it doesn't persist (indicating injury), the just bear it, try to pay attention to other things like the scenery, and continue. But on some days, like today, the pain is worse than usual and it comes to dominate the day. It's not a happy place to be, but it will happen. It was enough that, to compensate, I downed two ibuprofen before bed, hoping that at least my iliums (ilia?) would be better in the morning.

Oh, the campsite! So even though I didn't plan to get any water there, I did plan to camp at Robin Bird Spring. I got there at last light and looked for a spot. And there was a great one, inside the ruined foundations of an old house, ensconced in a remaining corner, but just outside that it looked like someone's trash bag had been torn open and spilled everywhere. We're now in bear territory, so I didn't want to risk the smells. So I found another spot, higher up, along another ruined foundation, only here there were 1) cowpies right next door (but that's ok: I could see the cows had sheltered in the shade of some trees so I figured they wouldn't be back until midday tomorrow anyway), and 2) there was a dead tree not overhead, but close by. sigh, another dead tree. Well, I fear bears more than dead trees right now so I took this latter spot and set up a full tent--fly and everything--patted the dead tree and asked it to please not fall on me tonight, and after taking dinner at least 100 feet from my tent (again, to avoid nighttime bear visitations), went to bed.

And that was the hike! A beautiful day to be sure, but also one where the body broke down and I couldn't for the life of me get the backpack comfortable, eventually resorting to ill-advised methods for relief that ultimately just hurt other things. Ah well, that's what Vitamin I is for!

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Some notes:

-- Golden Oaks Spring > Construction Zone > Robin Bird Spring

-- Introducing the Potable Aqua, with its time-release purification, threw me into a conundrum first thing in the morning, for how to schedule this most efficiently? Likely start with the water, but I should probably change before then, then get 2 L of water and Sawyer and Potable, then tear down the tent, then get 2 L more of water and Sawyer and Potable, then breakfast with water using the first batch, and things just started getting complicated. Plus the water source--a thin trickle from a pipe--was steady but pretty low. Needless to say, at the end of the day efficiency wasn't had, and I was slow getting out of camp.

-- Today I met KT, who's a friendly, talkative guy. I noticed his Hardrock Endurance Run gaiters, and asked him, did you do Hardrock? No, he said, a friend of his did and gifted him the gaiters. That's a tough race, I said, you do 100 miles in, what, 24 hours? Yeah, he said, although if I was going 100 miles, it'd take me 6 days! True! KT was doing a lot of night-hiking: he had arrived at his campsite about half a mile from this water source at 3am and put up his tent, only to find it was a wind tunnel. Yeah, I said, that bluff spot, right? Yeah, I walked over to check that, but while I was standing there a strong gust came through so I moved on. Yeah, he said, I did the same, and felt the gust too, but setup anyway. That's the problem with hiking until 3am: at that point, you're ok with anything. KT had ended up sleeping for a fitful couple hours then gotten up, packed everything up in the wind (tricky!), then hiked over to the water. This spot was much nicer--much less wind--and he had liked my spot up the road as well (he had wandered by early in the morning to check out the broken down truck just above my campsite--had exchanged some quick greetings with him then before coming down to the water source for more extensive conversation).

-- Today I met Olaf, who recently graduated with an aerospace engineering degree and pretty much loves rockets. He had been part of the rocketry club at university, specializing in propulsion, and loved it. He had plenty of stories about rocketry he could tell--at one point, he explained the difference between aluminum and steel casing failures (aluminum breaks at 3000 psi, but breaks by making a pinhole leak; steel breaks at 5000 psi, but it shatters, basically becoming a shrapnel bomb--the latter had resulted in a fatality at another university's rocket club)--but he actually started with stories about grizzlies. He has met them, almost face-to-face--less than 10 yards away--both in Denali in Alaska, both basically at Visitor Centers. In one, the bus had stopped at a Center and the rangers had seen a mama grizzly and her cubs up on the ridge, but had estimated it would take them a couple hours to get down so everyone's fine, don't worry about it. Only about 15 minutes later when everybody came to get back on the bus, there they (the grizzlies) were, and there they (the rangers) were, holding shotguns. And one ranger, in a very quiet and very calm voice, directed people back onto the bus. The other time, Olaf had been a kid, again at a Visitor Center in Denali, and again a grizzly, likely an adolescent, had approached. And they had done the right thing: look big, don't panic, slowly back away, until they had turned a corner and then made for it back to the parking lot. And as they came up, three rangers with shotguns passed them going down, and then they heard shots. Evidently the rangers had shot the grizzly with rubber bullets: they didn't want to kill the grizzly, just get it to associate the Visitor Center with Bad Things so it wouldn't keep coming back!

-- At the end of the wind farm, there was some trail magic: a bucket of drinks--water, La Croix, and ginger ale, the last which I didn't notice until I'd already opened a La Croix. This wind farm is nice: first the construction worker offers me a cold bottle of water, then on the other end I get a can of La Croix! And this while I'm on a 25-mile water carry! Hmm, they should be out here more often!

-- Towards the second half of the day, in the woods, the downed trees made a reappearance. Not quite as bad as San Jacinto--these trees were generally thinner--but still plenty of them. And I started by going over them because: less steps; but after a while I was hurting enough that the up and down and consequent resettling of my pack was too irritating, so I started just going around them. There were some longish sections with downed trees blocking the trail, and I *think* (I didn't confirm, but it felt this way) that these regions are where the trail crosses private property (as denoted by easement markers) so I'm not sure how easy it is for volunteers to get in here and clean them up. Anyway, it makes for interesting puzzles, or it would of, if I hadn't just given up and gone around all the time!

-- Finally a cute story: for a bit at the end, the PCT follows a dirt road past the 600 mile mark. A little before that, I looked up and saw two little skunks--adolescents at best--walking in a line, down the edge of the road. And I stopped and waited, and watched them divert off the road and into the grasses, then do this weird little circle and U-turn, almost as if the one in the front didn't quite know where they were going, and the one in the back was just following blindly, and they were kinda worried about me and kinda making their way back into the woods, but not yet convinced I was a worthwhile threat. But their little hops as they went, and their tails--that distinctive white stripe--bobbing up and down, it was almost adorable--except that I remembered what shunks can do, and so gave them a healthy bearth until they ultimately disappeared into the woods.