Day 93

Mile 1435.7 to mile 1465.0

PCT Miles: 29.3 (46.9km)

Total Miles: 1465.0 (2344.0km)

From waking up to trail in 20 minutes, I started the day in a good rhythm.

It’s still very hot and I need to always be vigilant with my water: everyday I need to make sure that I know where I’m going to refill my water and figure out how much water I want to carry from one source to the next.

My golden rule so far is 1 liter of water every 4 miles. If the next source is 10 miles away, I pack 2.5 liters of water. Easy.

Because I’m hiking a bit faster now, I’m changing that rule to be 1 liter every 6 miles, specially if it’s not scalding hot. If it’s hot and there’s no shades, I do 1 liter every 3-4 miles.

I don’t know exactly how, but around lunch time, right after refilling my water (2 liters for the next 12.5 miles under the sun) I stopped to take some pictures of Mount Shasta and continued to hike. Half an hour later (about 1.2 miles) I see a hiker that I was sure was behind me coming on the opposite direction. I knew already what had happened:

“I’m going back, aren’t I?” I asked the other hiker. “Yup” was the obvious answer.

I lost a whole hour, hiked 2.4 miles for absolutely nothing and the worst: now I had to hike almost 15 miles with 2 liters of water only and at the warmest time of the day. Great 🙂‍↔️!

In the end everything went well. I’m managed my water very carefully and when I finally arrived at the source, the water was fresh and cold, so it felt like a prize 🏆.

In this part of the PCT there are deers everywhere and they absolutely don’t care about us. I crossed a few on trail today and right now there’s one here at the campsite, acting like he’s the campsite patrol 🏕️🦌👮.