Saturday, September 15, 2012

Day 144: holy forest fire batman!

Sunday 9/9/12
Miles 1954-1977 (23 miles)

Well today was an interesting day. We went through the Three Sisters wilderness area, which is hugely popular amongst locals, as there were tons of people everywhere. It's also a weekend so that adds to it. By the way, I LOVE Oregon. Even the day hikers and backpacker people are so much cooler than the ones in California. Lol! Oh, and every puppy I saw had a puppy backpack. Lol. That is so cool!!

Apparently this morning sometime there was a forest fire started on the other side of a nearby mountain (the south sister). I saw the smoke from it pretty early on. The PCT goes right by the mountain so all day I was watching that fire grow. Towards the afternoon I got to a point where I was watching the smoke billowing from ridge. It was nuts.

Early on today, I lost Kyle's footprints. I figured it was because there was so much traffic on the trail that it just covered up his prints. There there were lots of people on horseback, and a pack team that rolled through, and the trail was very dusty and powdery so prints were easily covered. I didn't even see the prints of hikers that were ahead of us.

Sometime around the late afternoon, I was pretty sure that Kyle was not ahead of me. Because at that point, I had passed the area where all the other people and hikers were, and all the equestrian people, and I still don't see Kyle's footprints. That always makes me nervous. Kyle has a tendency to get lost. :( I kept going, only because I wanted to be as far away from the fire as possible, and as close to the highway as possible, incase things got really bad. I kept leaving notes for him on the trail, so he'd know I was ahead.

I ended up camping about 10 miles from the highway. It was around 9pm at this point and I still haven't seen Kyle. This really sucks because he has the tent (I have poles and stakes), and there's a 20% chance of thunderstorms tonight. Great. So I rigged a mini puptent/lean-to out of my space blanket (those Mylar emergency blankets) and hiking poles. It's pretty badass. I really really wish I took a pic of it, it was quite a feat of engineering genius. I tied my poles together to make one long pole, and I tied one end of that to a baby tree and put the other end on top of a rock. This was all on a slightly slanted hill. Then I put my Mylar sheet on top of that, weighted the corners of the downhill side with huge rocks, and tied guy lines to the uphill corners, and staked those down. It was just the perfect size to cover my sleeping bag which was underneath. This way, if it rained I wouldn't get wet, and all the water would be directed downhill.

Right as I finished my project, Kyle shows up. Holy crap! He got lost early on and ended up doing an extra 8 miles. So that's why I didn't see his footprints. Geez I don't understand how that boy gets lost all the time. The PCT is a blatantly obvious and well marked trail. Even at all the trail junctions, as long as you read the map you'll know where to go. Eh, whatever. Lol! Yaaay, im so Stoked I saw him, it would have been a crappy night, especially if it rained. And all the hikers I thought was in front of me ended up stopping at Elk Lake, so they were now behind me, hence I didn't see their footprints. So my tracking skills are still up to par. Lol :)

Oh! This whole area is covered with obsidian. That's so awesome!!! Its funny, when I first pulled up at my campsite, the sun had already set long ago. I saw what I thought was broken glass. My first thought was, what asshole left a bunch of broken beer bottles all over the place?!? Upon closer inspection, it was obsidian! Cool!!! I love obsidian, it's so pretty :)

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