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.
Couldn't sleep and ended up packing things at 3:00am. Left a thank you note for Meadow Ed and got onto the trail.
The trail climbed an eastern slope so it was good to be hiking it before the sun came up. On the downside, there was some good opportunities for taking photos but I didn't have my camera. The iPhone doesn't do so hot in low light.
After the sun was up and I reached the top of the ridge...it was time for breakfast. Left after about an hour, so odd to be this low on food. Not starving low, but that I will basically be out when I get to Kennedy Meadows.
Actually looked at the net and saw that there is a fire burning near the Anderson's and they were having to pluck hikers off the PCT with a helicopter.
Put on a bunch of The Thermals and Titus Andronicus and the music really kicked things in for me. Suddenly I had visions of pushing a 40 mile day or the whole way to Kennedy meadows.
I flew up and down hills for the next couple of miles. I had an inline water filter on my camelback and it wasn't working well at all. I had been using chemicals for water treatment and was wanting to do something else for a change. Should have stuck to chemicals...the damn inline filter was so slow that I got a bit dehydrated. The weather was really hot so this wasn't a good situation.
Finally I reached the spring near Spanish Needle Creek. I stopped for what felt like 30 minutes and it was nearly two hours.
I saw something off in the distance and it was a "Congrats" Mylar balloon. I strapped it to my pack and put the pack onto my back.
As I was leaving U-turn and Yard Sale came up the trail. Yard Sale left with me and we flipped flopped over the next couple of hours. I started wearing down a good bit. There was a lot of elevation gain over this part of the trail. It was looking like Fox Mill spring was going to be the destination for tonight. I saw from a trail register that I was catching up to a few people. Chief is a day ahead of me but he will probably be gone when I get there.
For the final push up the third ridge, I took a couple advil since my feet were hurting. Yard Sale and I got to the spring around 9pm..32.3 miles. I did the math and saw that 40 miles would be about 12:30am. This was not gonna happen. Ate a cold dinner and was asleep in no time.