June 18, 2017

Total daily miles: 5.9 miles

Total PCT miles: 883.3 miles

Start: Belden (mile 1284.3)

End: William’s Cabin site (mile 1290.2)

Total elevation gain/loss: 2102/699.8 ft

We slept in this morning and it was glorious! We’ve been getting up at 4:30 every morning and it’s been exhausting to keep up. Sleeping until 8am was divine.

We had breakfast at the restaurant and, to my embarrassment, I couldn’t finish my omelette breakfast. Doggie bag for me! I’m such a sad thru hiker — I get hungry a lot but I can’t eat much at any given meal.

We spent most of the day sitting on the porch at Beldentown. Today was hot! There was no way that we’d be hiking the exposed climb out of Belden before it cooled off a little. We made our Fathers’ Day calls, uploaded blog posts, ate ice cream sandwiches (or two), and researched upcoming snow conditions. It’s looking better than we expected, so we decided to head out today.  

We also took care of some shopping for the next section. The store at Belden has an okay selection, but a weird pricing scheme. Almost everything there costs $2.99 — from the medium peanut butter to the large peanut butter to dental floss. We made our selections carefully and I think made out okay.

We also chatted a bunch with Matt, another PCT hiker who arrived this morning and seems to be making good time. It was great to see a new face given how few hikers we’ve been seeing and it was fun chatting with him.

As we waited out the heat, the news kept on talking about the upcoming heat wave. It should be an interesting few days!  

It didn’t cool down enough until 6pm for us to hike out. We hiked out with Matt with the intention of putting in about 5 miles of ascent before calling it a night. The climb is largely exposed and even though we were in the shade for much of the climb we were sweating up a storm. Luckily, there were quite a few water sources, so we were able to stay hydrated and didn’t have to lug up a bunch of water. I’m not sure the climb would have felt very difficult in cooler weather, but the heat added a bit of a challenge today.

In wildlife news, both Michael and I saw rattlesnakes during the climb… but we saw different ones. Nothing quite like knowing I walked past one without knowing it!

We got into camp at about 8:30pm. Our site is called the William’s Cabin site, but the cabin is long gone. There were a couple tents already set up, but plenty of room to join them. We’d heard that there are lots of bears in the area, but all that we saw were a bunch of mosquitoes! Another quick dinner before I ran for cover in the tent. Due to the bears though, we’re actually properly using our bear cans (which we’re still carrying) and storing it outside our tent. I’d like to see a bear, but not at night trying to get to my food!

Current ailments:

Elizabeth: sore knees.

Michael: bruises on hips.