I first hiked the Pacific Crest Trail over the course of 1994 and 1996, then I hiked the whole thing in one go in 2013. During the latter hike I kept this website updated as I progressed up the trail. I still have about 45 hours of video to edit, but in the meantime there is a lot for you to look at here. Over the course of the 168 days I wrote 138,734 words and put 13,644 photos on this website.
"If I lived in California I wouldn't give a fuck about Europe....there is everything here! Mountains, deserts, oceans ." - Norwegian hiker girl's thoughts on US Geography.
California also has a lot of wind in places, specifically right where my tent was last night. Sometime during the evening the wind picked up and was shaking the tent everywhere. I jammed a bunch of toilet paper into my ears and went back to sleep, or tried to. Had to pack inside the tent to keep it anchored and so stuff wasn't blown away.
Reed passed by me as I was stuffing the tent into my backpack. I ended up seeing him later up the trail, would have met him sooner but at some point my hat came out of my pocket and I had to jog 1/2 mile back to get it. A couple trail runners passed me on the final climb up to the 6,000 foot level.
We turned off to go to the town of Mt Laguna ( po, store, outdoor store, cafe). It was a wiry mouse maze to get through the campground but we made it to the cafe...they were closed, for another half hour. Walked a bit further up to the outdoor store. The store is tiny, yet stocked with more things than many outdoor stores in the northwest. The owner, Dave asked if he could take my photo and I said sure. I told him my name and a lady turned around and said. "I love your planning program!" A While later and a girl Carol asked if I was "Craig Craig". Later on Reed found out too and was excited since he had used the planning program a lot and we had been walking together on / off for the last two days and he didn't even know it.
By now the cafe was open so we went there and talked. Turns out one of the guys who was doing a weekend hike was the brother of a guy I met on my 1996 hike. The cafe was a nice change of pace from hiking.
There were about 10-15 hikers at the post office. After getting my box I went to the store next door and bought a coffee and a 24 oz beer. The store owner pointed to a log across the road and said that was the "drinking log".
I went back to the campground that was closed and did housekeeping things, then back to the cafe for dinner with a few folks. I decided to hit the trail again so I cut back to the trail south of the maze campground and rewalked about a mile of trail I had already walked this morning. Found a big open field under the stars on top of a mountain and made camp. No tent this time, just the sleeping bag on my ground cloth, with the tent rainfall ontop.