Photos from the trail, and an anecdote about hiker mindset infiltrating daily life

NOTE: If you are trying to read my stuff as an end-to-end trail journal, click here to go to the first post from May 5 (instead of rooting around in the sidebar to find it). Note that May 6's entry inexplicably was published before May 5's, so if you want to read in order, go backwards first for one day.

Over Christmas break, I put up selected pictures from the hike in a facebook album. That album is public now, so anyone should be able to view them by clicking on the following links:

PCT Part 1: Mexico Through the Sierra

PCT Part 2: Northern California, Oregon and Washington

Here are a few pictures from those albums, just to whet the appetite:

Anecdote about hiker mindset ruining everything IRL: I'm currently in the market for a new smartphone and this morning I was comparing iPhone models online. Unfortunately, I happened to see this:

And now I can't un-see it. The iPhone 5c has a .7oz weight penalty vs. the (much more expensive) iPhone 5s (!!!) Knowing that this might be the device I will take on my next hike, I couldn't ignore that fact. Even more than the other discrepancies between the two models, this will probably stick with me as I make a decision. To paraphrase thru-hiker/philosopher Mags when it comes to saving pack weight: pounds are cheap, ounces are expensive.

In most other respects, I disengaged very cleanly from the PCT. I had a stable set of circumstances to return home to at the end, so I did that, and got on with things. Lots of hikers aren't in a position to do that: they start the hike at a juncture in life where they are adrift, and they feel even more adrift at the end. Then it's winter and there are therapeutic blog and facebook posts, a sense of disorientation and/or depression, and a very receptive audience in the community of hikers. I'm receptive and understanding of those feelings, too--I just don't have a reason to be feeling them at this point.

I very consciously don't let the hike bleed into my normal life--I shaved my facial hair immediately, I don't wear hiker clothes (even though that's totally normal in Eugene), don't even really walk around that much normally. I do write about hiking still, but in the form of practical-advice-giving on WhiteBlaze, hiking subreddits or for Yogi's 2015 guide. I think that's my own personal therapy, my chance to do a little woolgathering about the trail. And then every now and then something like the iPhone situation above comes along and my now deeply-ingrained hiker instinct forces itself onto a largely non-hiking-related decision.

So every now and then the hiker within me, who is usually ignored or even a little suppressed, breaks out and shows himself. That's fine. I've spent 11 months of my life on long-distance trails. Better to be surprised by reminders of those experiences from time to time than dwell on them to the extent that I can't cope with normal life, or on the other hand forget about them entirely.

Glossary

This originally appeared as a blog post. If a term that I've employed in a blog post isn't listed below, try looking it up in one of the following:

WhiteBlaze's Guide to Trail Slang
Halfway Anywhere's PCT glossary

THE BASICS

zero day — a day in which zero miles are hiked. Often spent in towns, but the on-trail zero can occur from time to time (for instance, Manks and I waited out a storm for a full day in the Fire Wardens Cabin Shelter north of Hanover, NH on the AT in 2011).

nearo day — not quite zero miles, but not a full day's hiking either. Fiddling around in town accounts for most nearos.
   (note: nearo and zero can also be used as intransitive verbs: "Cynthia nearoed into Idyllwild and spent most of the afternoon gorging on ice cream.")

trail magic — any act of generosity, often the provision of food or drink, to hikers by members of the community. Can be planned or unplanned. Examples include someone leaving a cooler of Gatorades/sodas at a road crossing, or grilling hot dogs and handing out fresh fruit by the side of the trail for hikers to enjoy. Very common in the beginning stages of a NOBO PCT or AT hike.

cowboy camping — sleeping out under the stars, no shelter of any kind. Not very common on the AT because there's seemingly always the threat of rain; very common in spring and summer out West. I've read some people say they had to pitch their tarp/tent a total of 5 times over an entire PCT thru-hike.

NOBO/SOBO/flip-flop — northbound, southbound, or different-sections-in-different-directions thru-hikers. People flip for any number of reasons, but running out of time before winter is the biggest one.

hiker trash — a nebulous term. Refers to the fact that hikers generally start to look, and sometimes act, like shit after a few weeks on the trail. Used as a term of pride or scorn, depending on speaker and context.

hiker hunger, or simply the hunger — refers to the incredible rate of metabolism acquired after a few weeks of hiking. Feats like eating $26 of Taco Bell food, having to order multiple entrees at sit-down restaurants, or consuming upwards of 10,000 calories on a zero day become possible. Tends to outlast the trail and result in significant weight gain upon returning to civilization.

SUBCATEGORY 1: TYPES OF BLAZING

The Appalachian Trail is marked for its entire length by white blazes painted on trees. People have since combined other colors with "-blazing" to mean many different things. Such as:

pink-blazing — adjusting one's hiking schedule to be in the company of a lady

banana-blazing — the opposite of pink-blazing. Significantly rarer due to the imbalanced gender ratios among thru-hikers, but still possible.

blue-blazing — taking any side trail that reconnects to the white-blazed trail eventually. On the AT, these are often marked with blue-blazes

retro-blazing — hiking a portion of old trail which has since been re-routed

yellow-blazing — skipping sections of trail via car. Yellow-blazers are severely annoying to me.

aqua-blazing — on an AT thru-hike, canoeing through Shenandoah National Park instead of hiking. Way cooler than yellow-blazing because it sounds effin' sweet.

brown-blazing — 1) leaving the trail to find a place to poop. 2) hiking with giardia or other pooping-related issues

MISCELLANEOUS

hitch bitch — the female, hopefully long-legged and long-haired, that you stay nearby whenever a potential hitchhike is coming up. Cars are much more likely to stop for her than for you (assuming you are the average grimy, bearded male). Also called a "ride bride" by people of taste.

Type 2 fun — not fun to do at the time, but fun to talk about later. Contrasted with Type 1 fun (fun at the time, fun to talk about later) and Type 3 fun (not fun at the time, not fun to talk about later).

Vitamin I — a lot easier to say or spell for some people than "ibuprofen"

town sprint — the phenomenon whereby hikers are able to cover the distance between where they wake up and the turnoff for town at an incredible rate

the Dirty G — Giardia. The enema enemy of hikers everywhere.

Body Glide — anti-chafing lubricant. In my top five of essential pieces of gear. Would not have been able to walk some days on the AT without this stuff.

slackpacking — having someone else (a hostel owner, visiting relations) take all of one's overnight gear and shuttle one to/from the termini of a certain section. Can be an intransitive or transitive verb: "Floyd slackpacked the Greylock-Dalton section." "Rob Bird slackpacked Floyd and his friends over the Greylock-Dalton section."

LASH — Long-Ass Section Hike. What I did on the AT in 2011, hiking 1800 miles in one summer but not finishing the trail. Many people on the PCT do something similar, starting in Mojave or Kennedy Meadows and seeing how far north they can get.

trail tail — carnal relations between or among hikers

Connecticut cute — refers to the state by which a northbound AT hiker might eventually find a given member of the opposite sex attractive. Connecticut, for reference, is ten states and usually 3.5 - 4 months into the trail. "Georgia cute" would be more of a compliment.

PUDs — Pointless Up & Downs. The AT has hundreds of these, the well-built and more gently-graded Western trails not so much.

gram weenie — someone overly concerned with cutting ounces from their pack weight. They may want to talk about gear a lot more than you do.

goofer — a weekend warrior. Someone carrying more weight for a 6-mile day hike than you are for a 2,000-mile thru. Someone decked out in shiny new clothes that an REI salesperson convinced them were necessary. Someone hiking 1.5 mph convinced they're going 3. Someone doing their dishes in the water source. Etc., etc.

SUBCATEGORY 2: FOOD CHALLENGES

Half-gallon Challenge — at the store at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania, which is on the AT at roughly the half-way point, eat a half-gallon of ice cream purchased from the freezer. I've heard something like 75% of attempts are successful. I was one of them, but it was a long, disgusting slog (1 hour, 11 minutes). Here's a picture of me doing it in 2011.

Pancake Challenge — consume five pancakes at one pound each in under two hours at the cafe in Seiad Valley, CA on the PCT. I think only 6 thru-hikers have ever completed this challenge. Whatever it is, it's a minuscule percentage of the number who have attempted.

Case Challenge — From the VA 606 road crossing, which is 24 miles before Pearisburg, VA on the AT, obtain a case of beer. Over the next 24 hours, hike the 24 miles into Pearisburg consuming all 24 of your beers in the process. This one is particularly sadistic and of the 10 people I knew who tried it in 2011, only one finished.

McDonald's Challenge — 50 McNuggets and a gallon of McD's Sweet Tea in under an hour. Only the McNuggets part is known to have been completed.

Post-PCT bits and bobs

It's now been 11 days since I finished, and in the meantime I've gone back home to Oregon and resumed normal domestic life with my girlfriend--running to the store to pick up milk, vacuuming the living-room carpet, drinking beer with the geology grad students, etc., etc. But the trail experience isn't quite over yet. For instance:

- I've managed to upload some, but not all, photos that were not available to put on the blog because they were taken with other cameras. The best one came from the day I was stung by the scorpion (Day 9: Monday, May 13) and I actually got a picture of that little bugger crawling on my sleeping back before I flicked it into oblivion. I added that image to the blog post retroactively. Once I get all pictures from all cameras/phones into one place on my computer, I will make a big photo album somewhere and share it on this blog.

- Also from that same day's entry came my first encounter with Rocket Llama, who as of this writing is missing, presumed somewhere before White Pass in Washington. She was supposed to check in with her dad on Monday (but whether this means she was supposed to reach White Pass then, I'm not sure), and it is now Friday. Search and rescue operations have been active for the past few days, and reports started to come in this afternoon that footprints were spotted in the snow leading to a stand of trees somewhere "south of the Goat Rocks." She was hiking alone into the hellacious storm that hit the Northwest last weekend (leading to the wettest September on record in some places), and might not have been outfitted with much winter gear, not that it would help a lot in such historically bad conditions. Two other hikers, whom I also met briefly in the desert, were rescued by a helicopter three days ago and another one was rescued today in another area farther north.

As is typical these days, you're missing out on the most up-to-date information (and sometimes misinformation, like "Rocket Llama was spotted by a hotel clerk in Packwood on Thursday") if you're not on facebook. There have been virtually live updates for the last two days about the activities and findings of the SAR effort, and now the PCT 2013 facebook group is being used to mobilize a ground search team made up of PCT hikers in the area with winter backcountry and mountain rescue experience. Over on WhiteBlaze.net, where people usually love to speculate upon and criticize all search-and-rescue situations involving long-distance hikers, the farthest this story has gotten is someone who wrote a blurb, in Comic Sans, accidentally on the Pinhoti Trail forum instead of the PCT forum. WhiteBlaze ftw again.

I wrote a comment to the following effect on the facebook page: with no disrespect to Rocket Llama, PCT hikers have an undeserved feeling of invincibility by the time they get to Washington, when in truth all we've done is hike in near-perfect weather on an impossible-to-lose trail for a few months. Nothing from hiking the PCT in the summer of 2013 would prepare anyone to head out into winter conditions in the Northwest high country; they would have to have experience with those sorts of conditions from some previous adventure before they could responsibly go forward.

- Many people in different parts of northern Washington wisely did not head out into the bad weather last week, and others did but turned around before they got themselves in a pickle. My old pal Spit Walker sent me an e-mail saying he hiked 50 miles southbound to get out of the Glacier Peak Wilderness; he said it was "the best decision of my life" and "I was about an hour away from big trouble." Very few hikers are going to end up finishing at the monument after October 1, and some that do will have road-walked around the mountains (as Andy and Cream Tea, whom I knew back in the desert, are currently doing, according to their posts in the facebook group). Muk-Muk and Myla from Carleton are hiking/snowshoeing either together or very close to each other on the PCT proper, along with maybe 10 other hikers, between Stehekin and the finish at the moment.

- Finally, I updated the FAQ page to include some new questions and better answers to the old ones, now that I've actually finished the hike (all the previous answers were written in March and were based off my AT hike and things I'd read about the PCT).

- Scrub