PCT Day 5 – Multi-faceted

Last night I dreamed that my phone had magical powers. It could shoo away threatening animals. It could create food and water out of thin air. I was flummoxed that I did not already know these things. I felt like the worlds dumbest man. The certainty of these features carried over into my first waking moments. Everything about my hike would now change.

Today’s plan

Every hike is planned around water stops. Without water, nothing good can happen. I camped by Little Cub Spring. I must go 10 miles before I can get more water at Cold Spring. After that the next stop is 6 miles further at Andesite Spring. So today’s hike has two legs, each one ascending to 7200 feet before coming back down to the low 6000s. I am hoping for cool cloudy weather, but I am taking nothing for granted. On each leg I will carry extra water.

Fetching water

Every water source is different. Sometimes it runs across the trail. Sometimes it pours from a pipe in the ground. It could be a human container or a lake. Or it could be a spring. Here is the side trail down to Little Cub Spring. At the bottom of the trail, 0.3 miles away, is a small spring bubbling out of the ground. You need a cup to catch the water as it flows over the rocks. There is no pool. Random animals appear, run up to the flow, drink quickly with one eye on me and then run off. The larger mammals lurk in the shadows. I am the crocodile in the watering hole. I collect quickly to not interrupt the animals schedules.

Diversions

Near the top of the climb out of camp, I find that I have 5G cell service. I call Patti. She has just rescued a chicken from our dogs and she is still quite agitated about it. She uses some new profanity which makes me laugh a lot. We talk for quite some time, ruining my schedule. But it was worth it. I should have plenty of time to hike 16 miles. I feel good this morning.

A blowdown is a tree that has fallen across the trail. There are only a few blowdowns in this section, because they all burned up in last year’s fire. Most logs are easy to go over or around. But this one was tricky. Ever do the crab walk? All fours, belly up? Yep. I had to crab walk this one.

The views are really nice today. Here I am looking back at those strange rock formations from yesterday.

And the Pom Poms that I saw last year are back. You need a dry high location for them to prosper.

Ridge walking

A ridge is the long high stretch of land between mountain peaks. If you string a clothesline between two poles, the poles are the peaks and the line is the ridge. The lowest part of the ridge is called the saddle. Most ridges are too rocky to walk on but some are smooth and you can walk on them and see the valley on both sides. That is what the PCT does today, and it is some of my favorite kind of hiking.

From this ridge you can see the Lake Almanor next to the city of Chester where I was yesterday

Annoyances

Getting into hiking shape involves your whole body. My toe started acting up. I pulled off my shoe and found that caked aches inside my sock were giving me a blister. I wrapped it with Lueko tape which acts like a second skin.

On my very first hiking day the sweat was running down my back and between my butt cheeks. There is nothing wrong with this until you get this angry feeling there too. That means chafe is setting in. Irritation from chafe is bad news. I knew a hiker last year who had to end his hike because the chafe was so bad and he couldn’t fix it. I fixed my chafe by pulling my pants down, washing the area real good, putting some Glide between my cheeks and then applying some Vagisil for the irritation. All this right on the trail in plain sight of God and all creation. The trail is not the place for modesty.

Nice hiking

The trail was so different. Here are three very different views.

Sierra Nevada!

And then, at the end of the day, this sign. I have geologically entered the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. Immediately I noticed all the new rocks. I will be featuring those as the days go on. For now, here is a view of my campsite nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

• August 1
• Starting marker: 1315
• Ending marker: 1297
• Total miles today: 18
• Total PCT miles: 61