Pacific Crest TrailComet walks from Mexico to Canada

Zero. Awesome zero. My first since Kennedy Meadows around 1600 miles ago.

Flash and I stayed with my cousins again in Olympia today. I’m not sure how many calories we consumed, but I can tell you it was fantastic. The decision to zero was made easier by the steady rainfall for the past day and a half.

We played card games with the kids and in the evening entertained ourselves watching clips of the TV show Arrested Development on the computer. Awesome show. Flash also got some new boots earlier today.

Now it’s time to sleep. Back to the trail in the morning to put in the miles. It has been a wonderful and well deserved break, but it’s time to move on. Thanks again to the Dragon family!

Photo is of a huge buck in the backyard earlier today.

Today would have been full of amazing views if it were not for hiking through clouds, and rain, and a little hail. Still, Flash and I managed 22 or so miles by 4:00pm. That includes 8 or so slow miles of climbing up to the knifes edge in Goat Rock Wilderness.

The timing was important as we were meeting my cousin Jean at White Pass. The plan was to hitch into Packwood with her and resupply and spend some time catching up. The MUCH better offer to stay at her house was made and accepted.

It was awesome catching up and hanging out with family. Of course food, showers, and laundry are nice as well. The rain continued steady for the rest of the day and into the night. Being inside and in a bed felt too luxurious to be true.

It’s about 99 miles to the next resupply and hopefully if the rain decides to continue it won’t get too cold. Under 400 miles to the border. Here goes nothing.

Another day on the PCT comes to a close. It was a cold one as.the cloud coverage never really broke up very much. The one time it did I managed to dry out my gear a little bit. It’s another evening in the high 30s where I can see my breath.

Nice day of hiking until later in the afternoon when it got tough. That was a combination of the cold weather, a huge climb, being however many miles into the day, and nearing the conclusion of 120ish miles in 4 days since Oregon. Flash and I gutted out the last miles and found a nice camp spot with decent wind block just past a waterfall.

Good water sources all day including the amazing Lava Spring. Nice views too when we got out of tree coverage. Would have been much better of the clouds weren’t blocking the distant mountains.

Met Smiles today and saw Damien again. He was injured and healing up at the Heitmans in Old Station when I was there. Once he was ready to hike again he skipped up to the OR/WA border to continue north and avoid too late a finish in terms of weather.

White Pass tomorrow and into Packwood from the highway for resupply and probably the night. We’ll probably get some cheap campsites at the RV park, but who knows. Maybe I’ll stay indoors instead at a cheap motel. I haven’t stayed indoors since Ashland/Medford in southern Oregon. Perhaps it’s time?

Amazing views of Mt. Adams today, up close and personal. Also, thanks again for all the comments. Keep in mind the pictures on the blog are just ones taken with my phone. I have a standalone camera with many more and better quality pictures. I’ll share some of those when the hike is complete and I have time to sort through them.

Nice hiking today with one big climb 20 miles in. Ended up with around 32 on the day. Awesome magic near the road to Trout Lake. A huge bin with all sorts of candy and fruit as well as first aid supplies all provided by the Mount Adams Zen Buddhist Temple. Less than a mile later a couple of past year hikers left sodas in the creek for this years thrus (to keep them cold). Very nice.

Found suitable camping just after 8:00pm with a view of…yup, Mt. Adams. Cold enough out that I could see my breath before we were done hiking. By the time I set up and ate it dipped into the 30s. Glad I got my insulating jacket back. Hope to keep warm enough tonight to get some sleep. Just over 50 miles from White Pass. Hoping for another 30 tomorrow and maybe a couple extra to make for a shorter day to the pass Monday.

Didn’t see any other thrus today but a handful of weekenders and a couple doing Ashland to Canada. Once again, according to the registers there are very few NOBO (northbound) thrus in front of us. Especially that haven’t flipped or skipped ahead to beat the weather. There should be about 4 people no more than a couple miles in front of us. Maybe we’ll run into them tomorrow.

After climbing over 3000 feet first thing in the morning the day was full of the usual ups and downs. Flash and I hammered out around 29 miles and found adequate camping off trail a bit. It’s going to be a cold night as it’s already dropped to around 40 degrees and there is snow from last winter still hanging around in a few spots.

I haven’t had time or service to reply to some ofthe questions in the comments, so unfortunately that may have to wait a while longer. Perhaps in a few weeks when I’m done? One question that has cone up a couple times is the target finish date etc. I started on May 22 and set a goal of finishing in 4 months. If things continue to go as planned I should end up cutting a week off that time. That would mean finishing around September 15. Time will tell.

One of the pleasant suprises of the day was coming across a candy cache. It was basically a 5 gallon bucket with a lid that was full of candy. Everything from snickers bars to twix and starburst could be found in the magic bucket. Nice trail magic and there was a register inside of it as well. Based on the entries and those of past registers, there are a couple people a day or so in front of us, but not the huge pack we were led to believe.

Some great views during parts of the day today as well as great forest walking on soft groomed trail. Looking to push 30s the next couple days and get to White Pass sometime Monday.

Time to bundle up.

What a day. Didn’t sleep too well through the night but had good energy all day for hiking.

Flash and I noticed that even with long sustained climbs early in the day we were making good time. Such good time that we thought we could make it to our resupply at Stablers before they closed at 7pm.

After pushing all day and taking short breaks just to cram in some food we made it to the store by 6pm including the extra mile road walk. That was nearly 32 miles, and that was fast.

Stablers was awesome. Just a small store not near anything, but the owner and his wife were really nice. They had a PCT register (what hikers use to sign in to say they were there and leave messages for others) and a hiker box (kind of a take a penny leave a penny among hikers with all sorts of food and gear).

We picked up our boxes, some sports drink, and a pint of ice cream each. The owner even offered us the lawn to camp on if we didn’t want to go back to the trail tonight. We decided to hike on since it was still early enough.

On the road walk back to the trail a truck pulled over and a really nice local guy gave us a ride. He builds log cabins in the area and gives lots of hikers rides back to the trail. I have to mention that his name was Kurt Russel, but he was not the actor.

So now I’m camped on a nice flat spot just short of Panther Creek, the rain threatened but never came down today, I have resupply until White Pass where we’ll head into Packwood, and I ate 1400 calories of bean and cheese burritos. Good stuff.

Also, there is a 50k on the PCT coming up in about a week that starts less than a mile from here. To bad it’s not tomorrow. I would seriously consider running it. Without my pack of course!

Oh, fun fact of the day: I have now hiked more miles of PCT than there are miles on the entire Appalachian Trail. Less than 500 miles to Canada.

Alternate title for this post: High Calorie, Low Mileage

Made it into Cascade Locks this morning. Took care of resupply for three places in WA that needed mail drops. Got new shoes and socks as well as my insulating jacket via mail from my awesome wife.

First stop in town was Charburger. Delicious veggie omlet, toast, hash browns, and a stack of apple pancakes. I heard the cook tell our server there was no way one person was going to eat it all. Wrong. Locals at the restaurant even stopped by the table to tell me that they couldn’t finish the pancakes even when they split them much less the omlet. And so it goes.

Got a free shower (third and final of Oregon) at the RV park, then across town to do laundry at another RV park/motel. After that, was another visit to Charburger to demolish a dinner and the AYCE salad bar.

Somehow Flash and I managed to get a few miles into Washington state after that. Doing so meant crossing the Bridge of the Gods. There is no pedestrian lane on the bridge and it is metal grate so you can see through it as you cross the Columbia River. Really cool, and a little weird.

I’m now cowboy camped among lots of poison oak and animal droppings. Lovely. Options were limited without night hiking and we were both ready to put down for the night. Somewhere around 500 miles to the border.

Nice day of hiking. Didn’t see any other thru-hikers though with the exception of the newly trail named Flash. We started the day with a huge climb. The bright side about that is warming up real fast in the morning.

During a break near a nice spring we did a quick rundown and figured out our resupply strategy for Washington. There will be three mail drops and the rest will be from stores. The longest stretch is just under 120 miles, so nothing too bad.

We also opted to take the highly recommended Eagle Creek alternate route to Cascade Locks. It’s the same mileage as the official PCT and has stunning waterfalls and old growth forest. Really nice stretch of about 14 miles. We’re about 3 miles from town now so will arrive early tomorrow.

Resupply, mail drops, shower, laundry, restaurant food. In no particular order. That’s the plan. In order to leave Cascade Locks you cross the “Bridge of the Gods”. Once you cross you are in WA. Oregon was fun, but time to say goodbye.

I’m tired and don’t want to miss my sleep window, so this will be brief.

Got to Timberline Lodge today in time to do serious damage to the lunch buffet. It was great quality food. I ate a lot of it. Next up was picking up the resupply package from the store. Took care of that then headed out for more miles. Total lodge time was around 3 hours.

Kids snowboarding and skiing down a slope on Mt. Hood literally did not believe Ben and I walked there from Mexico. They were no more than 20 feet from the PCT and had no idea where the trail went.

I trail named Ben “Flash”. It has to do with his Jetboil Flash stove and Granite Gear Flash pack. Also we find it hilarious to call ourselves Comet and Flash. Makes us sound much faster than we are.

Got in another 11 or so miles for about 25 on the day. Met Weathercarrot, Wolf Taffy (also hiked the AT in 2007), and Motor. Should get pretty close to Cascade Locks tomorrow. Then new shoes, socks, and a few other random things from a maildrop. Also it’s the OR/WA border when leaving town. Good stuff.

From the beginning. It was a crazy cold and windy night but I managed to stay cozy. The temperature dropped to around 35 degrees, so I was pleased that I was able to stay warm.

The morning was very cold and it was hard to break down camp and get moving. There was dense fog and swirling wind for the first few hours. Most of this was during a climb to just over 7000 feet. That was good to generate heat, but bad since we entered worse conditions. At the peak of the climb it was hard to see anything and we had a small snow slope to traverse without seeing where it led.

Enough drama. We got down to lower elevation and the weather improved slightly. The next issue was…a fire closure. The helicopters and airplanes I saw yesterday were fighting a fire caused by a lightning strike. The impact on me, a 38 mile long trail closure.

Detour time. Road walk. Sigh. Three hours into the roadwalk fantastic magic came our way. A truck with a husband and wife coming from the opposite direction picked up Ben and I and took us all the way back to the open section of trail. As if that weren’t enough, they then gave is cold drinks and nearly a pound of smoked Alaskan salmon. Wow. Awesome.

We hiked on to a good spring which puts us about 14 miles from Timberline Lodge. Ahead of schedule. Instead of being short on food due to the detour I was able to gorge and fill my belly.

Joey, Greg, and Danny rolled into camp just as Ben and I finished dinner. We’re all headed to the Lodge tomorrow for te lunch buffet. Food is good.

Today is my 3 month anniversary of being on the trail. Just about 2100 miles down and under 600 to go.