PCT Day 88, 08 August 2022 (Monday)
“Feet, Heat, And Counting Sheep”
Start Location: |
Mosquito Creek |
Destination: |
Trout Lake |
|
PCT Miles Day 88: |
9.3 |
Cum PCT Miles: |
1,583.7 |
|
Non-PCT Miles Day 88: |
0 |
Cum All Miles: |
1685.9 |
|
PCT Miles Remaining: |
1,069.1 |
|
|
|
Elevation Gain Day 88: |
1,603 |
Cum Elevation Gain: |
272,230 |
As of today, I do not have any future lodging reservations as I’ve had for much of this hike. The advantage of this is that it’s much easier to change plans. This is exactly what I did today. And it turns out to be a good thing that I did change plans.
I knew there was going to be trail magic today after about 9 miles of hiking. This is because the trail magic was provided by the dad of a young hiker named Shortcut, whom I’ve seen sporadically on trail since Southern California. I ran into Shortcut the first day I started hiking out of Cascade Locks, and a couple days ago he mentioned to me that his dad was going to be set up on the road that leads to a small town called Trout Lake. Trout Lake is a popular stopping spot for many hikers, but I had not planned on stopping there.
However, my feet have been hurting quite a bit the last few days, and it was quite hot out today, and I just was not feeling super excited about hiking a bunch of miles today. Going into town and getting cold drinks, ice cream, and other town snacks sounded better than hiking another 15 to 20 miles. It is also quite easy to get into town and back to the trail as there are multiple trail volunteers who provide a shuttle service. Additionally, I wanted to see if I could find something at the general store in town to provide extra padding to the insoles in my shoes, since I don’t have my regular Superfeet insoles.
Well, I did everything I wanted to do, except cool down; it is still blazing hot and very muggy. As far as the insoles, I did add some padding and we’ll just see how it feels when I start hiking again tomorrow.
There was one other unexpected advantage of being in town and having a lot of time on my hands. My air pad has had a very slow leak. It hasn’t been bothering me much, and I thought it was just a tiny pin prick of a leak. But today my pad was deflating very quickly, so it was obvious the leak had grown in size.
Though the leak was larger, it was still very difficult to find. If I had done my usual thing, hiked a bunch of miles and gotten into camp near dark, it would have been very, very hard to locate and repair this leak. It’s really a good thing I wasn’t out on the trail tonight with this leaky air pad, it would have been extremely uncomfortable to sleep and been very, very frustrating. But because I had time in town, I discovered that the leak was really a very small separation in the seam of the pad near the bottom. We’ll see tonight how my repair holds up.
Lastly, Shortcut’s dad, Bruce, did a really nice job with the trail magic, he did a variety of homemade bagel sandwiches, fruit, cold drinks, pudding, and other snacks.
No photos today
