Monday, October 3, 2011

Only One of Two Goals Complete--HELP US!

When we started this trail, we decided to help an organization that has worked to preserve the mountains we love and treasure here on the East Coast: the mountains where we first found had our breath taken away by the beauty of the natural world around us. Our goal was to raise a dollar for every mile we hiked on the trail. With us completing the trail, that totals to $2,650. So far, we have raised approximately $800. Thank you to all who have helped us in our effort to raise funds for the Highlands Conservancy. Seeing how determined we were to acheive our goal of completing the trail, you can understand our determination to meet this second goal as well. Please help us if you can!

To donate, just visit the donation link at the top of our blog. To learn more about our trip or donate, you are welcome to attend our public open house in Maryland, likely before the end of this year. We will post more details as they are ironed out.


THANK YOU AGAIN for joining us on this journey!

2650 miles of reflection

It seems surreal that 5 months ago, we started off on this grand adventure not knowing what awaited us up the trail. We had very little idea what to expect and just took the first step having faith that somehow our feet would keep moving us forward, northward the entire way to Canada. We knew the odds were against us--only 50% of those who start the trail complete the entire trail in one year--but I guess our tenaciousness worked in our favor and we overcame the odds. EVERY step was worth it, whether it was on a day when we felt great and light on our feet, when we could feel ice cold water squishing constantly between our toes, or when we were trudging through endless snow pack. It was all worth it.

Our experience was not just centered on the natural beauty of the landscape that continuously surrounded us.
We've learned a lot about ourselves on this trip and about humanity as well.(Okay so, just to get it out of the way: No, we didn't discover the meaning of life or have any huge zen moment.What we were able to do was really take in the moment, contemplate, and fully appreciate human and natural experiences.) The human aspect was unexpected but very much a huge part of what I will remember the most. Primarily, we were humbled...

Humility: Our hearts were touched by the seemingly endless small blessings and kindnesses offered toward us on our journey. Without cars easily available to us, we had no choice but to basically make ourselves vulnerable and beg for rides to town for our food resupplies (aka stick out our thumbs and hope for the best). All I could think of was what I had thought towards people trying to hitchhike where we live and how I would just drive past, avoiding eye contact. Being on the other end, it really hurt when people purposely avoided eye contact like we weren't there, like we didn't exist. We were truly humbled every time someone took the chance and stopped for us, complete strangers.
In addition, there were countless times we came to a paved or dirt road and we would find that someone had left food goodies specifically for those crazy thru-hikers. Sometimes there was actually someone there, waiting for us with sodas, coffee drinks, assorted goodies, maybe even a burger. We had plenty of food in our packs to sustain us (though we welcomed the extra calories), but what made these goodies so good was the person behind them. This person stopped, took a day (or week or month, yes MONTH) out of there normal life, and came out (sometimes very long distances from the city) to give us, total weary strangers, encouragement.  It made a huge difference in our day and our trip overall. Sometimes it was like these angels-in-disguise even knew where the hard sections were... We were energized and reminded of our own inner determination to complete the trail.

Remote Encouragement: We also were thrilled every time we got a message or comment on this blog. We looked forward to checking in every time we had internet availability. From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU!!!

Did we hike 2650 miles? YES we did!!

Wow! We are done! Last time we checked in, we were in a little town Skykomish, WA taking shelter from the cold rain that hurried us down the trail for days. With less than 10% of the trail left, what could possibly stand between us and the border? With just days left of the trail, our friend Liz said, "We've got this in the bag!" Well, I've gotta say, the trail gave us a run for our money!

Skykomish to Stehekin: 104 miles
This this section, we had B-E-A-UTIFUL weather and landscapes. We even still had wildflowers to look at due to the late snow melt in the region. The terrain just kicked our butts. In just one day, we gained a total of over 8,000 feet of elevation and lost a total of 8,000 feet of elevation. It was just as hard as it sounds.

One of our first views of Glacier Peak, the last large volcanic mountain we would traversing around on our journey.

Our friend Liz navigating one of the massive blow-downs on the trail...in good spirits as she does it!

Taking a break at the top of one of the many passes, assessing the 2,000 foot descent AND immediate 2,000 foot ASCENT out of the canyon below. We could actually look across and see the dozens and dozens of switchbacks going up the steep slope of the canyon before us.

Breathtaking views helped moral as we began our descent into one of many deep canyons surrounding Glacier Peak.

Crossing a grass-covered pass heading down into yet another deep canyon. Can we see Canada yet?



Yes, that's Liz navigating yet another MASSIVE blowdown. She likely had over 1,000 years worth of tree growth above her!


Finally making it to Stehekin! This town was only accessible via trail, boat or float plane. We had 90 degree weather and sunny skies as we rested after the grueling last 4+ days.
 Stehekin to Manning Park: 89 miles
Terrain eased as we worked through the last 90 miles of the trail as weather worsened...
Garrett taking advantage of the relatively clear skies to take in the surrounding mountains. Any geologists out there recognize the U-shaped valley below as one carved at ice sheets of long ago?
 After we took this video, we found ourselves in a snow storm that dumped 5-6 inches of snow in so many hours. The snow turned to rain and the trail turned to slush. We trudged on and were incredibly happy for the shelter of a tent and dry sleeping bags that night!

Liz watching as weather descends upon us yet again. It started out as rain and quickly turned to snow, yet again for the second day in a row.

After days of rain, snow, and cold, we were welcomed to a new day, the last day on the trail with beautiful crisp weather. We could once again see the mountains around us and absorb that that was CANADA. YES. CANADA! Right in front of us!

FINALLY! After 2650 miles, we are at the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. We started at the southern terminus on April 28 with short hair and clean clothes. Five months later, we found ourselves wearing the same clothes that still managed to smell horrible despite routine washing and in dire need of a hair cut at the northern terminus of the trail. Our smiles remain!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Adventures- Bend, Oregon to Skykomish, Washington

Fires in Oregon. As we hiked north toward the Three Fingered Jack, we looked back to the south where we had hiked just  days before at Mt. Washington and saw a decent fire starting up. The trail is to the right of the mountain, just a couple miles from the fire. This fire ended up closing the trail in this section as it continued burning. 

Indian paintbrush north of Mount Jefferson. Definitely one of my favorite flowers on the trail!

Standing in front of Timberline Lodge at the base of Mt. Hood. Good friends told us this was a must see,  the trail goes right behind it, and it has a rockin' all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet! We were very motivated by the idea of a breakfast buffet, so motivating that we hiked 41 miles the previous day and 9 more miles in the morning in order to get to breakfast!



Tunnel Falls along Eagle Creek on our last day on the Oregon Trail. The trail literally was blasted into the rock face behind the falls.


Glacial stream flowing from the base of Mount Adams.


Cooking dinner with our long time travel companion, Liz, in the North Cascades just south of Waptus Lake. We had a week of gorgeous weather when we first entered Washington with some days in the 80s. This was the first night of 'Washington' weather--patchy rain throughout the day and a cold night (42 degrees while we were cooking dinner). 


Very wrinkled feet after a day hiking into town in the cold rain. Boy are we glad to have  a roof over our heads tonight and a place to dry out our gear.




From where we are here in Skykomish, we just about 180 miles from the end of this adventure. It has truly been mentally and physically challenging. I've got a smile on my face in this picture, but soaking feet in wet shoes is pretty painful. We've been told that the next and last sections are some of the most challenging and beautiful on the trail. While we will continue to live in the moment this next week as we finish, we are looking forward to coming back to our home in Maryland. It is hard to believe that this chapter of our life journey is nearly over.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

2000 Miles of Trail (& Dirt!)

 In celebration of our 2000 mile marker, we made use of the caked-on dust on our calves and 'cleaned' the numbers out. That is what you get for not showering for a week and not doing laundry for nearly two weeks. When Liz's friend picked us up to take us the hour drive into Bend, OR for a food resupply, she promptly rolled the windows down and said, 'You guys stink! Where is the closest lake I can drop you guys into?'. We laughed at her bluntness and knew it was all too true. It also made us realize how utterly polite all of the kind people were who picked us up from the trail to bring us into a town to resupply. Honestly...we've definitely smelled much worse. We have previously gone more than two weeks without showering or doing laundry (!). When we were hitch-hiking into Burney, CA, a couple picked us up in this nice clean SUV. As we were driving down the road, I realized that we were not the only passengers the couple had picked up when we got in: there were also several flies buzzing round us. Not a word was spoken that we were the real life version of PigPen (!). 

The Oregon Trail

The Oregon trail has proven to be quite different from California. The mountains here are all volcanic and singular protrusions from the otherwise relatively flat surrounding areas, so it has translated into some pretty mellow and flat hiking (hooray!!). With the easier terrain, our average mileage has been consistently 25 to 30 miles a day. The trail has been mostly in pine forests (or former pine forests) which has made some days feel a bit monotonous. However there have been a couple days when we hiked through just amazingly beautiful country including Crater Lake and the Three Sisters Wilderness. So far our favorite Oregon section has been the Three Sisters Wilderness.

Meadows surrounding the South Sister.




Lunch in view of the Middle Sister as clouds are building up and threatening rain.
Lupine and lava flows near the North Sister.



Our hike through Crater Lake National Park was really cool (it is a must see) but we decided we'd enjoy it just as much from a car. I say this because the trail we took followed the rim for miles around the lake on one side and the rim road on the other side. As a consequence we would hike from view point to parking lot, back to view point and back to parking lot.

Hiking around Crater Lake.
 The Insects!! We have been traveling mostly through dry, flat pine forests speckled with hundreds of lakes and ponds. While flowing water was hard to come by, water from most of the lakes has been clear and beautiful. The plethora of lakes and ponds however has been both a blessing and curse. While we've had lakes to swim in, we rarely have been motivated to get in due to the hordes of mosquitoes assaulting any exposed skin. Let's just say we wore head nets for days on end, pants on hot days, and applied more Deet than we'd like to admit. Despite our best efforts, we have lost count of how many bites we have.
Morning at Diamond View Lake. This was one of the many lakes we hiked and camped near but avoided swimming in due to the mosquitoes.

Garrett going for a lunchtime swim when the mosquitoes weren't too bad. 
The Burn. We've hiked through several burned areas on our trip so far and we have already hiked through several in Oregon. So far we've been in three evening thunderstorms and the latest one sparked several fires in the surrounding area. Based on our conversations with locals, this is just the time of year for fires due to the thunderstorms.
Burned area near Mt. Washington.

Monday, August 15, 2011

California in Photo Review

Camping by the Joshua tree in SoCal

Desert hiking at its best

First sunset in the Sierra!

Camping at 11,000 feet on some of the only bare ground around.

On top of Forester Pass, the highest point on the PCT (13,200 feet).

Hiking down from Muir Pass on the John Muir Trail section of the PCT. I called it an arctic wonderland!

One of the many stream crossings...though this one was special because we were actually crossing in the middle of a giant waterfall on a steep mountainside. Garrett was there helping one of our traveling companions accross.

SHASTA!!


Sending my love from Oregon!!


Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Running for the Border (The Oregon border, that is!)

Just a short time ago we checked in at 1400 miles--we've now reached the 1600 miles marker in northern California and have about 150 left before we finally arrive in Ashland, Oregon. Since we were not able to post pictures last time from the pizza place in Burney, the we wanted to catch you up with one of the big milestones of the last couple weeks--reaching the PCT midpoint of the trail--1325 miles. We were expecting a signpost and maybe a bench to celebrate the occasion, but alas all that was there to greet us was a cement marker and a geocache box. Ah well! That is what you get when you are hiking a trail through the wilderness (smile!).

Ashland here we come!!!

Monday, August 1, 2011

Volcanoes and Lava Flows in Northern California

1400 miles in and we are still in the same state! Well, technically we are, but we've decided the northern California is quite different from the rest of the state (It sits better with us that way too. Come on, how could it possibly take over 3 months to walk through just one state?).

In the last week we've traveled through some of the strangest towns and terrain. We'll start with the towns:

Towns
1. Belden consisted of 18 residents and any weekend residents at the 'resort' (aka RV park). We heard that every weekend the 'town' hosted raves along the Feather River, including the latest rave of bikers. Luckily we came on a weekday and stayed just a couple hours...

2. Chester was a small town with local fast food place that had 30 flavors of milkshakes and was the place to be. It was routine to see people run into the Post Office or store and just leave the car running. That was crazy for a weathered Baltimorian to see!

3. Our current town of residence, Burney, can be summarized by the fact the the only public computer is at the local pizza place where the Rotary and Citizens Patrol meet on a weekly basis.

Terrain
In the last week we've seen quite a few interesting sites as we've hastened our journey northward. We hiked through Lassen Volcanic National Park and northward. Lassen is very volcanically active. We've pasted a steam vent, a lake that was boiling, took a dip in a hot spring pool, and walked through a tunnel formed by an old lava flow that really looked like a subway tunnel, and hiked over more lava rocks than we would have liked. This morning we just completed a 30 mile odyssey on what is called the Hat Creek Rim. It is formed by an old lava flow that sits several hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. We hiked it mostly at night because this high plataeu has very few trees and no water. We heard strange things at night including toads that sounded like growling bears, and ran into one ton beasts that scared the living daylights out of me. I should have been familiar with them because there were cows! Even though we tripped a lot over the lava rocks, we still managed to hike 35 miles in less than 24 hours.

We are looking forward to finishing up northern California and head into Oregon before mid-August. Then we will finally REALLY be in a different state!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

As the miles go up, the donations do to.

I just wanted to let everyone know that as Maya and I have been working hard to make the miles toward our goal of Canada you have helped show your support through the donations to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

Through your help we have raised over 700 dollars.  We thank you for our support.  At this time we have hiked just over a thousand miles.  So help us stay motivated as we hike and give some support to the WVHC. 

Thanks, Maya & Garrett

PS. We love when people leave comments!!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Dine' (Navajo) Poem

"With beauty before me,
may I walk
with beauty behind me,
may I walk
with beauty above me,
may I walk
with beauty all around me,
may I walk.
Wandering on a trail of beauty lively, I walk."

One of the many people we have met along the trail gave this poem to us after spending an evening camping with us and chatting about the trail. Even though the trail has at time provided us with many challenges, I think this really sums up why we persist and continue on our journey northward.

Friday, July 15, 2011

1,000 Miles!!!

Ok..so we've actually hiked another 95 miles since this photo was taken...(Smile!)

We are on a time crunch here at the public library in South Lake Tahoe so I will summarize the last  400 miles with this:

Hiked on snow, more snow, and yet more snow and then when we thought we were getting out of snow with the melt finally arriving, we hiked through creeks, lakes, creeks and more creeks, sometimes wading in up to our chests in the creeks and if we were so lucky to have a bridge, we sometimes had to wade up to our knees on either side...Never fear, we are ok and know the worst of it is behind us. Oregon here we come!!!

A Letter to Mark

July 3, 2011
       I said goodbye to you today on top of Donahue Pass. While you were back in Maryland, I knew you were following our journey closely and living it vicariously through us. You can imagine how surprised I was to hear the news...You always seemed most content when we talked about the mountains. You were so excited about our plans to do the PCT that you did what you did best, and researched the trail and gave me all sorts of info about it before I left. I actually think you knew more about the trail than I did!
      I cried a lot in the few days between Mammoth and Yosemite as I took you with me on our hike. It took me a while to figure out the best way to really say goodbye from out here. Finally I realized that since you would have loved to be here, it would be appropriate to build something in your rememberence. So when we got to the top of Donahue Pass, I built a small cairn in your memory. Its not much but you just can't beat the view down into Lyell Canyon in Yosemite National Park. And be sure that while I said goodbye, I still keep your memory with me.

You are missed dearly.
Your friend,
Maya

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Traveling with Good Friends, Old and New

The Sierra have proven to be quite challenging this year, more so than most years mostly because of the immense amount of snow we've been hiking through. This last section was the most difficult yet with several mountain passes (low points between mountain ridges) that were above 11,000 feet in elevation coupled with and countless ice-cold creek crossings at the lower elevations. We are ever vigilant about safety and have been traveling with two tough women. The four of us have been traveling through the Sierra together and have looked out for each other in navigating through the tough spots on the trail.
During this last section, Garrett got a break from the constant estrogen from one of our close friends here who has been helping us out logistically since before we started in Campo. Dave joined us for 4 and a half days of fun and kept up with us as if he had been hiking the entire trail with us. His comic relief and level head during stream crossings and ascents of mountain passes helped keep spirits high as we continued our journey northward through the snow.

Sled Riding without the Sled

After many hours of trudging up through the snow to get over snow-covered mountain passes, we are usually rewarded by fast descents (for at least a short part of the way back down in to the next valley). We call it glissading. In this video, Garrett and one of our traveling companions, Liz, have a glissade race.

Monday, June 20, 2011

It's True: The Sierras have LOTS of Snow

  
While the snowmelt has starting, there is still consistent snow pack above 10,000 feet as we travel north through Kings Canyon National Park. We feel so blessed to have the opportunity to see the Sierras like this. Mornings have come early in the Sierras because of the snow-we are getting up between 4 and 5 am to start hiking while the snow pack is still hard.  By 11 am, the snow is turning to slush and we want to be wearing shorts and a t-shirt because it is so warm! I always dreamed of playing in the snow in the summertime, so I guess my dream came true! 
While I'm not a morning person, we do stop hiking by mid-afternoon usually and just take in the world around us. Aside from the massive amount of marmots, we've watched deer graze in the one of the few snow-free meadows and watched a coyote hunting in another snow-covered meadow. We sat in awe as he pounced right through the softened snow to try to catch his dinner. All we could see was his tail wagging in the air as he searched for his dinner deep in the snow. It feels like we are getting a special glimpse into this world in transition. While the hiking is harder, we are being rewarded by the view of all the natural wonders around us.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Big Milestone!! Southern California is Officially Completed!!

That's right, we are in Kennedy Meadows, California at the moment and by getting here we have completed 702 miles of the PCT and officially are in the Southern Sierras.

It's amazing. The miles have just flown by and we're excited for the next part of the adventure. The Sierras!!!
With near record breaking snow pack this year, it is bound to be an adventure.

Please continue to send us your love and support. We'll need it!

Meow Meow & Funyan 

This One Goes to You, Paul!!

The trail traverses through about 40 miles of wind farms around Tehachapi, CA where some of the first wind turbines were built in the US. It was awesome hiking through such a massive concentration of renewable energy, aside from the fact is was SUPER windy. We hiked and camped right by the turbines as they purred through the night. The only down side was that it was somewhat challenging to find a windless place to camp!

Trail Folk & Trail Names

A ride to town by an awesome trail angel, Bucksnort.
One of the many questions we got when we first started the trail was: "Are you hiking with a group?" Our answer before the trip was: "No, but other people will be starting the trail around the time that we start so we won't be totally alone."

We've found a good balance of being alone, while not being lonely. For the most part we hike by ourselves in the morning and afternoon, then typically have lunch or camp with other hikers. We enjoy camping by ourselves but absolutely value and enjoy the company of others. For example, there have been some days when we were just completely dejected after a tough section of hiking, then our spirits rose as other hikers joined us for camp and shared in the same level of frustration at the day's endeavors. Through our shared experience, we all smile and laugh at our recent poor moods and are brought back to a good place, back to a wonder of the trail.

Hiking with other people brings out funny culture unique to the trail. One part of the culture is that most everyone has something called a trail name. You basically stop using your name and begin going by a name someone else on the trail dubbed for you. Examples of trail names of people we've been hiking with are: Skinny D, Drop Dead, Rattler, Mudflap, Grenade, Speedbump, Pine, Thumper, Stumbling Goat, and Cookie Monster. Each trail name typically is associated with some event or story. Garrett & I both have been given our trail names. Mine is Meow Meow and his is Funyan.

Meow Meow: I got my trail name from a time when I was frustrated after a day of hiking on a serious hard ORV road (which was part of a trail detour) and asked a fellow hiker how far we'd hiked on the 14 mile road detour. It was a really windy and cold day which added to the feeling we'd been walking through a wasteland of ORV tracks (sponsered by Yamaha, I might add), so when she said we had only hiked 5 miles into it, I said conjured up a reference to Henrietta Pussycat from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and said,"meow meow, sad, meow meow."

Funyan: Garrett got his trail name in two phases. It started during a 'group therapy' session we were having around a camp fire one night. Everyone was going around talking about their various ailments, mostly blisters and things of that nature. When it got to Garrett, he said, "Yeah, well my bunions hurt." Everyone stopped and kind of stared, with the question, "What the heck is a bunion?" in their eyes. In no time, Garrett took off his shoe and shared with the group his lovely protruding bunions. So he went by bunyan (an accidental misspelling of the term on my part) until someone misheard him say his name and thought he said Funyan. Thus the completion of the second phase in getting to be Funyan. (By the way who wants to be constantly reminded they have bunions anyway?)

Calorie Counting

So we've been counting a lot of calories lately and watching what foods we're eating in order to maintain the appropriate diet and weight while on the trail. So far we've been pretty successful; Garrett has maybe lost 10 pounds and I've lost between 5 and 10 pounds!


Here are some of the foods that give us the most bang for the buck, because we really don't want to lose any more than we already have. It is not your typical diet...because we really do want to have the most calories for the weight we are carrying!

Oatmeal cream pies: ~ 300 calories each
Double stuffed Oreos: 70 calories each
King size Snickers: 280 calories
1/4 lb cheese: ~250 calories
2 tablespoons peanut butter: ~200 calories

For the next 8 days, this is what we'll have to eat between the two of us: 16 oatmeal cream pies, malto-meal & oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts, 16 protein builder bars, peanut butter & nutella with flour tortillas, 2 pounds of trail mix, a box of oreos, 1 pound of protein powder, mozzarella cheese sticks, beef jerky, olive oil, parmesan cheese, vegetable soup mix, couscous (20 oz for two meals), instant rice with soup mix (2 meals), mac & cheese with tuna & chili sauce mix (1 meal), sun dried tomatoes with 1 lb stuffed pasta (1 meal), instant mashed potatoes with instant stuffing and gravy mix (1 meal), fiesta rice with bacon bits (1 meal), mocha, tea and other drink mixes...we hope it will be enough!!

Thursday, May 26, 2011

A Reflection: April 28 to the Present

As of tomorrow we will have been hiking for one full month- April 28-May 28. It truly is hard to believe we have been on the Pacific Crest Trail for a whole month! To honor the occasion, I thought I'd reflect on how the last month as gone and what we are preparing for coming up.

Quick Summary: 
Miles Hiked: 454
Days in Town to Resupply Food: 5
Days Hiking: 24
Rattlesnake Sightings: 3, including one that Garrett had a very close encounter with...
Other Snake Sightings: Too many to count
Most Common Animal: Small lizards
Most Despised Plant: Chaparral, particularly a really thorny one we've nicknamed the "devil bush" 
Best Day: The day we hiked to the top of Mt. San Jacinto
Worst Day: The day we hiked through the area decimated by the 2009 Station Fire in the Angeles Crest.
Toughest Physical Ailments: Blisters

As I write this, we are resting up after a pretty tough week on the trail. We hiked over Mt. Baden Powell, a 9500 ft peak in the Angeles Crest that was covered in steep snow pack, and then proceeded to hike through more than 50 miles of burned area along the trail. The vast majority of it had not been maintained since the fire so it was either in really bad shape, overgrown with weeds. Burned trees had fallen into the trail which gave us a feeling that we were actually in a jungle gym or obstacle course instead a national scenic trail. It was draining physically as well as mentally. Hands down, this week was definitely the most trying time mentally for us.

When we first started in April, our biggest challenges were the physical ailments. We both started at less than 100 percent. Garrett had literally not eaten for 3 days due to the flu and I came down with a nasty cold just days before we started. We then spent the next 2+ weeks dealing with multiple blisters and finessing gear and food. We now feel pretty good physically and have figured out what food/gear works for us (We actually didn't change our gear too much--just changed shoes and I did end up buying gaiters to keep the sand out of my shoes...). Overall, we've been resourceful and overcome any adversity and feel confident about that is coming up. 

Now that we feel pretty good about managing the desert (which was actually quite wet & cold this year), it is ending in just over 200 miles and a new challenge is around the corner. The Sierras await, where there is still significant snow pack at 10,000 feet. Logistics become much more difficult as easily accessible towns get much more sparse. We are already making adjustments and preparations to be ready for this next phase of the trip. For the next section, we will be adding bear canisters to store our food in, Microspikes for our shoes to get more traction in the snow, the mesh body of our tent to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and ice axes to assist in traversing steep snow slopes. To say the least, it is a little intimidating, but I feel confident about our preparedness and am excited about what the wild Sierras hold for us.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Donation Update!

As you know, during our hike we are hoping to raise one dollar for each mile we've hiked on the Pacific Crest Trail ($2,650) for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. So far we've raised just over $200 toward our goal. Thank you to those who have donated!

Miles hiked to date: 369 miles hikes on the trail

Our miles are starting to get a little ahead of our fundraising though, so if you can, please help us get them to match up again!

Trail Angel in Wrightwood

We've met a lot of awesome people with kind hearts who have helped us out in one way or another. Some people are committed to helping PCT hikers because they themselves have done it before. Others help because, well they just have kind hearts. Our most recent helper was a woman who was going out on a day hike with her dog and stopped to help, not just one, two or three of us, but eight of us poor, lost, stinky souls. We had just spent the night at 8,000 feet and were hoping to get into town Wrightwood for some good breakfast and more food before we continued onward. The highway was strangely empty and we just couldn't figure out why. One of the few people who drove by was this blessed woman who stopped and said the road was closed (due to the snow and rains this winter) just a few miles past where we were standing, thus the lack of traffic. She took pity on us and offered us a ride back into town 6 miles away in her suburban.

Soo in case you were wondering, you can in fact fit 8 stinky hikers, 8 stinky packs, one dog, and a driver into a suburban!

San Jacinto: 10,834 feet

On top of San Jacinto. Note the ice-covered trees in the backbround.

 A view of San Jacinto peak from below as we descended into much warmer climes...

A Day in the Life

Some of you may be wondering what a typical day is for us as we continue our hike on the Pacific Crest Trail so we thought (we have a lot of time to think...) we'd let you'll know:

5:30-6:00 am: Wake up with the birds!
6:00-7:00 am: Eat a calorie-loaded pre-breakfast snack (like oatmeal cream pies) and head out of camp.
7:00-8:30 am: Hike.
8:30-9:00 am: Eat breakfast, typically granola and vanilla protein powder).
9:00-11:00 am: Hike.
11:00 am: Eat another snack, like a protein bar.
11:00am-12:30pm: Hike on!
12:30-1:00 pm: Eat lunch, usually consisting of peanut butter, nutella and some sort of bread/tortilla.
1:00-4:00 pm: If its hot, like really hot, this is siesta time under some shade. If it is not hot, we continue our journey.
4:00 pm: That's right, its snack time again!
4:00-5:30 pm: Hike.
5:30-6:00 pm: Cook dinner. Currenty favorites are cous-cous, parmesan cheese and tobasco sauce; mashed potatoes and cheese; and stuffed pasta.
6:00 -7:30 pm: If we are really motivated, we continued hiking. This typically happens when it has been a reallly hot day and we want to hike in the cooler evening air. In the last week though, it has been so cold (high of 50's during the day, and 20's and 30's at night) here that we have not taken siestas and stopped hiking by 6:00pm.
7:30-8:00 pm: Stretching & yoga. Don't forget--one more snack before bed!
8:00 pm: Hiker midnight--its time for bed!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

It's Snowing on May 15th

Its snowing outside as we wait for our ride back to the trail outside Big Bear City. Others are a bit nervous about the snow but I'm not really too phased by it. Bring it on, I say! The trail is still calling us back. About once a week we have to stay overnight in town and honestly it is getting harder to sleep in a real bed inside. The sound of the wind and the cool, fresh breeze across my face as I shut my eyes to sleep is hard to beat.

We've experienced quite a range of weather and climes in the last week--

We summited San Jacinto Peak at over 10,000 feet and had to hike through a lot of snow pack and use all our map navigation skills and good luck to get back to the PCT. The side trail loop to the summit had not been used enough yet to know where the trail was under the snow pack. Every once and we while we were rewarded with a glimpse of trail tread so we knew we were on the right track. It was a big confidence booster since we know it won't be the last time we run into snow. When we finally got to the summit, it was awesome to have a 360 degree view of where we had already hiked and where we were heading. Where we were heading was down to the San Gorgonio Pass which is at around 1000 feet, just outside Palm Springs. Within less than 36 hours we went from a snow-capped peak to a hot desert floor. Crazy!

I'm so thankful for those who worked hard to get the PCT trail together.  The incredible expanse of wilderness that we are traversing, climbing and descending through is just at times overwhelming. We are only a 10th of the way through the trip and we've already seen so much that few people get to see, just because of the remoteness of the hike at times. Until the next post...~Maya