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.
Woke up about 3am feeling really sick. I thought I could hold things down but eventually knew it was not going to happen. I unzipped my tent, leaned out, and puked all over the ground. I think the huge amounts of a new and exciting foods was making me sick.
Woke up again about 6:30am and the mosquitoes were waiting for me. Soon they disappeared and the raindrops took their place. I put my rain jacket on and kept walking.
I met a Scottish guy whom I hadn't met before. We walked together for much of the day through the rain. It started to get really rainy and windy
. I was starting to get really cold and uncomfortable. I stopped at one point and had hot cocoa in about two minutes. That is something I could not do with my alcohol stove.
We went over a ridge and saw someone's tent perched in some trees. Ugh, that looked like a horrible spot to be camped. Just further down the trail were some trees, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.
The Scottish guy was into computers so we talked about programming languages and stuff, it kept my mind off the fact that I was freezing.
Finally we rolled into Ebbetts pass about 3pm. I think today was the fastest I had walked so far...had about 22 miles in by 3pm.
At Ebbet's Pass was a guy named Waldo filling up coolers to leave hikers. He asked if I wanted a beer and for once I said "no", since I was freezing. He took all my trash though which lightened my load a bit.
I knew I was too cold and wet to continue on so I made camp. My tent and sleeping bag which was good. I didn't want to continue on since I didn't know how long the rain storm was going to last. If I had to bail off the trail, I wanted to be near a road so I could hitchhike to the nearest town and wait it out. The Scottish guy was going to continue on though so we bid each other well on our respective endeavors.
I spent the rest of the night in the tent as the rain poured down. I'm actually writing this entry a few days later because my phone and backup battery were all dead and I couldn't charge them up. I did however finish the New Yorker so I had something to stay busy with at least.