Day 103: Mile 1529.2 - 1552.8

For once I'd like to sleep in. There's a way to do that, of course: go to bed early. But I spend the evenings writing this thing, so that's not happening either. But, yeah, another early start today--on the trail before 7am--for another bigger day--23.6 miles was the target.

(At least I slept well last night: for the first night in quite some time, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night to have a coughing fit. This is improvement! I may finally be getting over this cold--knock on wood!) 

Today, the hike was pretty level: no big climbs, no big descents. A very cruise-y day, as we say, as far as the trail went. And the morning was overcast: at one point, I looked up directly at the sun and there was so much cloud in between that I thought I was looking at the moon. The level terrain, plus the constant scenery--a lot of walking along slopes, the hilltop to one side a steep slope to the other, often walking through higher elevation, sparser woods which eventually give way to even sparser hill sides of loose stone, punctuated by the occasional creek--made for a pretty boring morning for me. There are lots of solutions to this. Many people listen to music or, even more popularly, podcasts or audiobooks. I've tried listening to music all of twice before: first, coming into Willow Springs, I listened to Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes album, although that was mostly so I could learn the lyrics so I could sing the songs myself. Second, on one of the climbs in the Sierras, to make sure the Half Sharkalligator Half Man was as I remembered it (and to confirm that, yes, QBert's scratching on Blue Flowers was as good as I remembered it) (it was). But both times, listening to music on trail felt weird. Especially the second time, as I listened the trail went away and it was just me, and my breathing, alone, in the music.* And that's good in a way--I got in the "zone" more readily--but it also meant that the trail was gone, and I didn't like that. So I don't listen to music. But then how do I counteract boredom?

Evidently by trying to construct a mathematical framework to describe the effect of diffusion gradients on the cell currents of a DAC array, with an eye towards answering the question of which activation pattern of the cells in the array best "balances" the gradients and minimizes the INL. Because that's what happens when you decide that Gutfish is right and now is the time to start thinking about your future and what you want to do with your career after the trail, and instead of thinking about that hard problem, you get distracted and think about this fun one instead. And I got to the point where formalism--a real pad of paper, some reference lookup, maybe a working Latex document--were needed, and stopped there because no I don't remember the equations for an MSE fit, yes I can derive them, no I'm not going to. And you know the worst part of doing all this on the trail? You realize that surely someone has done this before, and doubtless they've done it in a much more elegant way than this brute force approach you're envisioning, and of course they've published it. Only you can't read it because there's no IEEE Xplore in the middle of the woods. And then you just get discouraged. But oh well, it was a fun little puzzle to occupy the mind this morning.

(I did also try to design some simulations for the same problem, but that's even worse on trail: setting up simulations is all about implementation details that only reveal themselves as you're coding--you can do but the barest sketch of it in the head! So stick with the equations and the theory--it works out better on trail.)

And at midday, the overcast skies finally went full gray and it started to rain. Not hard, mostly a light rain, the kind that makes the ground wet but dig with your trekking pole less than an inch and you'll get dry dust. (Although evidently I got lucky: Double Snacks got poured on at one point, and Rocky and Survivor got hit so hard they put up their tents for a couple of hours to wait it out.) As a day-hiker, I'm a big fan of rain: I love hiking through, watching the world become one of mist and fog and mystery. But I also know that, come the end of the day, I'll be warm and dry in the car. As a thru-hiker, I don't get those guarantees--if anything, I get to face the anxiety of where am I going to camp tonight?, will it be dry?, when will I get to dry out my stuff: tomorrow, or will I have to wait for the next day?--and consequently I'm much less a fan of rain. My solution to rain?: hike your way out of it. (Sometimes this works, a la Mike's Place; sometimes it doesn't, a la Silver Pass.) So I sped up my pace, skipped lunch and went. It's wonderful, in a way, how rain concentrates the mind, how with hat on and rain-jacket hood up it's almost like blinders, and the world reduces to the 10-feet of trail in front of you. And you see nothing and you just go and go and go, until finally the skipping lunch gets to you and you're about to bonk, but luckily there's a break in the rain so you sit on a fallen tree trunk and eat your peanut-butter-and-nutella tortilla, and just as you finish and pack up the rain starts again and you're back at it. It's terrible for seeing anything, but great for speed: I think I hit 2.8 mph today, a speed my legs haven't evinced since the desert!

At one point I did look down into the vale below and see the low clouds, fogs, steadily streaming through there, white caps against the blue hill-lines, and for once I was happy to be up here, on the Pacific *Crest* Trail.

But I did manage to stay (mostly) ahead of the storm. And while I had no sense of direction (that's what happens when you can't see the sun: you can't tell where north is anymore), late in the day I eventually came to a saddle and crossed over and on this side, suddenly, I was in sunshine for a hot minute. And that marked a change in mood for the day: suddenly, the sun was peeking out, and the winds were collaborating so as to keep the rain clouds--the grays--confined to the valley behind me. While in this valley, the hills spread out before me just now being touched by golden hour sunlight, and suddenly the world was as it was yesterday: dry, and getting hot.

From there, it was only a few miles until our target campsite at 23.6 miles. And these last few miles went slowly--end of the day, after all--and my feet started hurting, so I was happy when I arrived. Though surprised: Double Snacks and I had broken camp at the same time, but I had stopped for some photos and she had zoomed on ahead of me and disappeared around a bend. And I had spent the entire day chasing her, only to arrive at the campsite and be the first one here. What? When did I pass her? But evidently I did. Anyway, she came up a bit later so we ended up in the same place, and spent the first 15 minutes or so just recounting our day. (She had gotten a lot more rain, seemingly.)

And that was the hike! A day when I got bored, figured out a solution for that boredom, then got dumped on by another solution to that boredom, raced to get out of the rain, then finally crossed over the saddle into the sunshine at the very end of the day. This campsite seems pretty calm tonight: hopefully the prevailing winds will succeed at keeping those old grays at bay and we won't get rained on tonight! And maybe, just maybe, I'll get to bed earlier and get to "sleep in".

I doubt it.

* And yes, that's a poor attempt at a Heinlein reference. That short story is *so* good, though!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Porcupine Lake Junction > Deadfall Lake Junction > Deadfall Creek > Seasonal Stream > Parks Creek Trailhead > Bull Lake Junction > Spring > Cooper Meadow Junction > Campsite

-- Today I met F-Cat, who I leapfrogged with all day. Finally, as he passed me for the third (or fourth) and final time, he asked, hey, what's your name? Charlie, I said. I'm F-Cat, he said, gave me a passing fistbump, and then was gone, up the trail. But that was indicative of pretty much everybody I met on trail today. I didn't meet many--lots fewer folks than I expected--but the ones I did meet, all passed me. sigh, but I *am* the slow one out here!

-- Today I met Yeti, in his yellow puffy, who as he passed told me, I gotta go, I'm doing 40 miles today. Best of luck, I called out behind him. Although evidently he was telling everybody he passed: Double Snacks had the same story, as did Survivor. My guess is that he was telling everyone just to keep himself accountable, so he couldn't cop out. I mean, that's why I would tell everyone! (Only I wouldn't, because I'd be so afraid of failure my fear of embarrassment would trump my motivation from accountability.)

-- As I came to the Parks Creek Trailhead, right before the rains started in earnest, I guy came up to me holding opening a clear plastic bag. Would you like an apple, he asked. Are you serious, I replied, a broad smile starting across my face. Of course, he said, what else would I be doing holding a bag of apples--bags actually--for hikers. And he was indeed offering an apple to any hiker who passed, and I did indeed take one. And don't worry about the core, he said, just toss it when you're finished; it's so dry this year that the animals have nothing to eat, so that way I can feed both the hikers and the animals too; if the rodents don't eat it, the ants will. He talked quite a bit for the less than 5 minutes I was there. He had considered doing trail magic at Gumboots trailhead, but then decided, nah, here the hikers would enjoy it more. And people would ask, why apples and not something like watermelon, and he noted that watermelon was a diuretic so you didn't get as much water from it as you think (I just eat it because it's good, I said). And don't worry, you're almost out of California only, what, 120 miles more to go? (He mean 152 miles but he ain't know it.) And over there, by the way, those are the Trinity Alps over there. Tall guy, lanky, in a dark green fleece with a motto embroidered over the chest pocket that I couldn't see well enough to read, and a quippy conversational style with the hint of snark underneath. I did take the apple, and I did eat it, and it was good, and when I was done, I did toss the core amongst some trees. For the animals. Ah trail magic: amazing!

-- Today I met Rocky and Survivor, who made camp at the same site as Double Snacks and me. And it turns out Double Snacks knows Rocky well: both share a strong sweet tooth, and don't understand how someone can leave town without carrying out candy (a bag for every day, as Rocky put it). But Double Snacks was so elated to see old friends: I don't think she's seen Rocky since Tehachapi, and Rocky had gotten pretty far ahead, only for the Dixie Fire--the great equalizer--to realign everyone at the same starting line all over again.

-- At dinner, Double Snacks and I did talk about the possibility of coming back to do the Dunsmuir to, say, Burney section after finishing the Northern Terminus. I had been thinking about that, evidently she had been too. It would make sense: we would be in the best shape for it--able to do 20 mile days--and if we were to come a year or two from now, that ability wouldn't be there. And even Survivor mentioned that there were folks who were considering coming back after Canada, so there might be rides and accommodations (i.e, someone renting a U-Haul and a bunch of hikers sleeping in it) (it's been done before, multiple times, in multiple towns, evidently) available. There are time constraints though: when does the colder weather start around there, and Double Snacks is taking a leave of absence so does have a job to return to in time. And this is all assuming it's not on fire again: we would be coming back in late September or early October, and that's prime fire season. So it's a possibility floating out there, but one that can't be seriously considered until we get closer to Canada.

-- There's what looks to be the remnants of a truck trail leading up to this campsite. I don't know if it's been driven in a while, but go across the trail and it's clear that there's been a road here. And there was a truck trail beneath the trail on the way here; albeit that one was definitely overgrown (little pines are sprouting in the middle of it). But it may just be possible to drive out to this spot, which would be a real treat and, if your car could do it, definitely worth it.

-- We thought we had gotten away from the yellowjackets--we're more than 20 miles away, after all!--but there were some here too. Not as bad as the last time, though, just a couple buzzing around, and none ever getting so close as to threaten being swallowed by me! (As I swear they did last night--you can't be buzzing around my spoon full of food as I'm raising it to my mouth!)