The Pro Move and Squirting Juice

Day 2

11.2 miles

Camped at mile 22.6

And there I was, at 2:17 in the morning, quite certain I was going to die if I didn’t eat peanut butter immediately, but I couldn’t find it and I had to pee and where was my spoon?

Oh the torture of being on trail…

When 5am showed up, Angie laughed. “It’s okay, you just had a peanut butter crisis. It happens.” Of course I also dreamed my tent was pitched at the bottom of a swimming pool and I was naked and being hit on by some creepy dude named Darren, but whatever. It was a long night.

“I left my shoes outside my tent and now they’re covered with ice,” I said.

“Rookie move,” she said. “I just tied my shoes with my gloves on.”

“Pro move,” I said.

It took us two solid hours to pack up because we had to beat the ice off our tents and we were desperate for a hot cup of coffee. Anji took the best photo in the world of a morning manzanita, and then we left just as the sunlight drifted around and settled on our heads.

We hiked for a long time before we were warm enough to shed some layers, and then we went down-down-down into Hauser Canyon where there is notoriously no water before a mega hot and difficult climb. But there was a glorious amount of water. Everywhere. Water-water-water. And we drank to our heart’s content. Then it was straight up in the heat for a very long time, and we did not envy the folks who will attempt this climb in May.

We made it to Lake Morena in time to get an extremely mediocre and expensive burger at a malt shop, but driven there by an awesome trail angel named Rachel, The Animal, who thru-hiked the PCT eight years ago and came to revisit parts of the trail. She even agreed to mail some of Anji’s stuff back home for her. Super duper trail angel. She was awesome.

We charged our electronics outside the bathroom and laid my tent out to dry while we put a needle over the stove until it was red hot, and then I poked it through my toenail. Squirting juice everywhere. I’d run it into a rock earlier in the day and it had already been hurting, but this was the last straw. It had ballooned up, and the pressure was really bothering me. Anji took a video of the whole thing and we posted it on Facebook as I squeezed fluid out of the hole in my nail.

So gross and amazing.

Anji hiked and I hobbled my way up the mountain again until we found ourselves on a ridge where we set up camp and ate a delicious chicken and black bean dinner we rehydrated.

It is so cold…