Hello lovely folks,
- I’ve been nourishing myself at the Acton K-O-Yay
- heading to agua dulce for a resupply
- missing some produce
Friends, food, feet, and fhilosophy
The PCT is genuinely a very silly trail. Most hiking trails that aren’t the PCT seem to make some level of sense in getting you from point a to point b using naturally occurring topographic features to allow for intuitive passage and navigation of the landscape. The PCT, however, chooses arbitrary contour lines and follows them. So rather than taking some switchbacks up to a ridge, the PCT will loop around a random peak at an arbitrary contour. You end up traveling 15 miles around a terraced part of a peak only to loop back down into the valley you just left.
Why does the PCT do this? Trail rumor has it that various villages were assigned with making random artistic trails to connect 2 points together. Others say it was to connect mining outposts by Pony Express. A free beer to anyone that researches this and tells me why the PCT is designed so sillily.
I’ve been hiking with Potable (pot-able, not pote-able) [another Jeff] for the past few hundred miles. He’s intending to triple crown. He hiked the Appalachian trail (AT) last year, and is going to hike the continental divide trail (CDT) in a couple years. He’s a fun individual that takes a lot of photos. If you want to check out his AT photos, he’s potableworm on flicker.
Coming out of wrightwood we connected with Popcorn [Casey] a person I first met outside of mile 100. She’s been crushing miles with us the past few days and is a fellow hiker that uses a cook stove.
Pulling into camp yesterday, the temperature dropped something fierce and then the wind picked up. Popcorn and I were psyched for hot food, but it turns out the worst time to cook is when it’s windy and cold. So while Potable was chilling, nice and warm in his tent whole cold-soaking mashed potatoes, tort-till-yas and tuna, Popcorn and I were struggling to light stoves while our fingers lost dexterity. We definitely could have just eaten some bars and gone to bed, but we had to be prideful about our hot meals and stoves.
Feet feel fine! Now off to the desert!
-Jeff (with friends at the KOA)
