Day 121: Mile 1848.4 - 1872.1

I slept well last night, for the first time in a while. Maybe it was being spread out: the water cache was beside a dirt road in the woods, but the woods were the woods on flat ground: less dense, more spread out, and with plenty of campsites available everywhere. So everyone--and everyone here was Double Snacks, Daddy-O, Spielberg, and myself--spread out pretty well, so that I felt like I was camping on my own. Could work on the blog at night without bothering anyone, didn't have to worry about making too much noise when I turned in my sleep--all subconscious effects, but maybe they added up to a devil-may-care slumber!

A consequence of sleeping well is that I got started late--7:30am. In fact, I was the last one out of camp. I hiked alone in the morning, until I caught up with Daddy-O, and got to talking to him some. Turns out Daddy-O--who's semi-retired--was an electrical engineer. He started out doing more hardware, but shifted over to the software side. When I asked why, he said he just enjoyed programming, although the programming that was the most fun was bare-metal coding: he remembers building his own computer, then coding for it in assembler, and saving the code to cassette tape via a box that would convert 0s and 1s to different frequency tones (and that he got out of a magazine). He still remembers old assembler coding tricks on an 8080, like how if you wanted to clear an accumulator you didn't write 0 into it--that took two 2 bytes--instead you XOR'd it with itself, which only took 1 byte of code. Daddy-O had done some IC design back in the 10-um feature size days, and considered Bob Wildar his hero: to be someone so valuable that you could sit all day in Mexico getting drunk and partying, and still get called up to Silicon Valley to do work. Daddy-O had worked for big companies like HP in the past, and also for a series of startups, so I asked him which he liked better--he liked the startups better, reinforced whenever a startup he worked for would get acquired by a big company and suddenly everything had to be done in a big-company way--and if there was a way to do a startup without signing your life away. And the answer to the latter was no: you signed your life away for at least the first couple years, although he had the benefit of being a founder, so after that he could get special dispensation and work from home, for example.

Daddy-O was an interesting guy to talk to; I mean, anyone who 1) knows, and 2) appreciates Bob Wildar and Bob Widlar stories is almost by definition interesting to talk to, but for example, he mentioned that he wanted to do an alternate at Windigo Pass. This alternate is about 10 miles shorter than the PCT proper, but the reason he wanted to was because he wanted to get to the intersection of the PCT with the Trans-America Route (or somesuch), which is a driving route that motorcyclists will do. In fact, in a previous year he had *been* one of those motorcyclists, and had spent some time talking to PCT hikers there, and now he wanted to do it again, only from the other side. Like I said, a pretty interesting guy!

As I spoke with Daddy-O, we caught up with Double Snacks, who had stopped at the intersection of the PCT and the Mount Thielsen Trail on a ridge. The reason? There was signal there! So we stopped to check messages, the weather, and any updated fire closure information. Regarding the latter, Double Snacks did pull up the air quality index maps for Oregon, and it looks like we'll be traveling through red and orange zones throughout the rest of the state. The resolution of the maps is pretty coarse, so hopefully we'll be able to avoid the purple zones, but yeah: it seems the trend of clearer mornings, followed by smoky-in-the-distance days, ending with smoky-in-the-right-over-there evenings, is going to continue for quite some time!

After the ridge, we came to Thielsen Creek where we got water, and where we were treated to the one gorgeous sight of the day: Thielsen creek bubbling down a narrow streambed, with Mount Thielsen in the background. Mount Thielsen is impressive: it's peak is a jagged row of jutting stone, polished and sharp and tall, all above a wide skirt of boulder tumble. The top looks impressive and--much like all of the Oregon peaks it seems--intimidating. Supposedly, the top is so distinctive that it attracts a disproportionate number of lightning strikes, enough so that the rocks at the top are minerally different from all the hits! And from Thielsen Creek--which is lively and cold and green--the peak looks so close, it looks like it's right over there! And it creates a striking, stunning sight!

Which is good, because the rest of the day was just more woods, woods, and woods. But that's ok. I remember when I first started taking photographs on trail during my Saturday hikes, I found that most of my shots were pretty bad. But usually there would be one that was good, or at least showed promise. And it became that, on my hikes, I would take a lot of shots, but always looks for that one beautiful shot, and once I had it I could relax. But one beautiful shot--out of a day's worth of shooting, so maybe 300 or more shots--just one good shot would be enough that I'd consider the photography of the day a success. Well, it seems I need to apply the same principle to the PCT as well (at least through Oregon): as long as there's one beautiful thing to see on the day, then I must needs be content with that!

I enjoyed Thielsen Creek so much that I took lunch there, whereas Double Snacks and Daddy-O continued on. And because there was water there: the next water source was at least 10 miles (but that was a 0.8-mile hike off-trail to the water source so I was going to skip that) but more likely 16 miles ahead. And that's been a theme of Oregon so far: it's very dry. But this time, there's an additional motif: from Crater Lake, the water carry would have been 26 miles or so, with dry camping somewhere in the middle somewhere. But thanks to these water caches, the distance to water is 11 then 10 then 16. These water caches, then, are provided by a guy--Devilfish--who Daddy-O got to talk to in the morning when he came to refresh the cache. Turns out Devilfish had hiked the PCT before, and noted some places where it would have been good to have water. So he keeps water caches in those places. This includes three caches in this stretch between Crater Lake and Shelter Cove, and even a couple caches in the desert, down by Tehachapi! That's quite a bit of driving! Daddy-O had met him before, at one of the other caches, and asked him why he did it. To which Devilfish replied, what are you, a psychologist?, and moved on without answering the question. And Devilfish doesn't take any remuneration either: Daddy-O had asked if he had a donation box or a Venmo or something where hikers could help offset some of the costs, but Devilfish refused. Guy does it out of the goodness of his (gruff) heart, and let me tell you: we appreciate it!

From there, as I said, the rest of the day was just trees. I caught up with Double Snacks around the Oregon/Washington High Point, and we hiked together for a bit. And she mentioned how, in the desert, she had eventually reached a point where she thought, ok, I've had enough and it's time to move on. And I thought: I never had that feeling in the desert. Perhaps an entry will prove me wrong, but at least in retrospect, the desert is about getting through it even though it's hot and boring and tough. It isn't really about seeing anything--unless you're really advanced and can tell the subtle differences between this versus that chaparral--it's about getting through it. As the Fremen say, God made Arrakis to train the faithful. The hardship--whether physical or mental--in the desert, that's the point.

And maybe I need to apply that same principle even to the soft greens and endless trees of the forest.

In the evening, the smoke came back in and it came back in hard: seems smokier today than yesterday. And the smoke brought the heat: the last couple hours felt almost muggy, the air was so heavy and hot. So the trail felt tough: I don't know if it was the conditions, probably not the terrain (a bit hilly, but mostly riding and falling gently in that Oregon way), or just my accumulated fatigue, but when I finally made it to camp I was pretty beat. I had stopped to dig a cathole and filter some water and Double Snacks had passed me then, but we reunited at the campground, arriving at about the same time, and made camp. This campsite was favored because it had water, although that water was about a 22 minute round trip down a steep trail, past a standing pool, to a small trickle in a gully called Six Horses Spring. Going down was fine enough, coming back up was a bit of work, but the water was cold, and dinner afterward made in woods thick enough, and now dark enough, to start becoming spooky again, so that was good.

And that was the hike!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite (Water Cache) > Thielsen Creek > Oregon PCT High Point > Six Horse Spring

-- Fun fact: Daddy-O actually lived next to Stanley Mazor back in the day--one of the inventors of the microprocessor--and got a ton of stories from him. He always like those days, those back-in-the-days, when electronics were so much fun, as he put it. And I can see that: go back and listen to some of those old stories, of guys going to photography shop to choose lenses for the first photolithography runs, of Jean Hoerni blowing out the backs of ovens trying to find the right recipe for diffusing dopants, and yeah, those were fun times! The world just seemed so much more open then. (And the honest truth is that it's still open now, just not in those areas, and just in areas that I at least can't see--I need the benefit of hindsight, after which it's too late!)   

-- At the PCT-Thielsen Peak Trail ridge, we got passed by an older couple going up to the top. Our kids had gone up last week and they're in their 40s; I'm getting near 70 so we're going up there just to piss them off, joked the wife. I got to talking with them some, and they were impressed that we were PCT hikers: it's something they'd always wanted to do--getting a bit too late now--but they always held us in high regard. I dunno: looking at the trail leading up to Thielsen Peak--heading up a narrow ridge, up what looked like a knife-edge to a raw-sharpened peak--I think they were the more impressive than me! I mean, you're going up *that*? That thing looks outright scary! They hedged a bit and said we'll get as far as we can--evidently the last little bit is up a jutting thing of pure stone and they weren't carrying any climbing equipment--but still, to set foot on the trail and honestly try to make it to the top of that thing, that's a certain type of bravery, and more than I have!

-- Incidentally Dylan if you're reading this (he's not reading this), might I recommend giving Thielsen Peak a shot one day? It looks like a fun ridge climb, a bit of find-your-own-adventure up there--the trail doesn't sound like it's entirely clear--and at the end there's even some possible rock climbing to get to the tip-top. Sounds right up your alley, even if it's only a day-hike!

-- At the spot where I stopped in the afternoon to dig a cathole and filter water, I put my bag down against a log to do my business. And when I picked it up, I found the bottom part covered with ants. Nothing aggressive, just crawling all over my hip belt, more curious than offended. And so I did a couple of cursory swipes and swung my bag on, and as I got started hiking I found them crawling up and down my pants legs. And I swiped them off again, nothing aggressive, just I don't think they would have appreciated the ride to 5 miles that way!

-- Today's peanut M&M color is green.