I had a great time in Oregon. After spending the better part of three and a half months in California, it seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. 

I entered Oregon with Feather and Shorts. The border was mile 28 of a 31 mile day. I was racing to meet Bill in Ashland. I was surprised at how easily I walked the 31 miles. I was, however, dismayed at my hunger and the lack of skin on the bottom of my toes the next day. Nothing a 24" pizza and some Neosporin couldn't fix!

Bill and I set out the next day for the longest romantic walk in the woods ever. Well maybe not the longest...but 105 miles is pretty long for anyone not thinking in thru hiker terms. We had a great week (read bills account in the last post). Well I had a great week. I think Bill had fun...?

We met my parents, brother, and his fiancé at Crater Lake. They had rented several motel rooms in the nearby town of Prospect. I knew that the rooms slept eight total and so partly to help entertain my family and partly because I didn't want my friends to camp in the rain, I invited them to join us. 

Now see, town was something like 30 miles away. This didn't concern me because my brother drives a Crown Victoria. You know, like a police car. It is an enormous car, although apparently it is larger in my mind than in real life. In my head, I thought that we could fit eight people onto the two bench seats no problem. In the end, we had to completely rearrange the trunk. In the backseat, I sat on Bill's lap, mom sat on dad's lap while WeeBee was squished in the center under a grocery bag of snack food. Fun Size, my brother, and his fiancé filled up the front seat. Loaded thus, the Vic was quite the low rider. A stinky low rider as four of the eight of us hasn't showered for at least five days. Yum. 

I had a great time with the family. We are spectacular food and paraded as normal tourists in denim shorts at the crater's rim. It was tough saying goodbye, but WeeBee and I has to make miles, so off we went. 

We sped through the rest of southern Oregon and into the Sisters Wilderness. Let me tell you, if you ever have the chance, definitely go explore that area, it was so beautiful.  One day, WeeBee, Goodall, and I were hiking along as we do, several hundred meters between us, when I ran into a couple heading in the opposite direction. I spoke with them briefly in order to ascertain whether there was a Trader Joe's in Bend. They confirmed this and then we parted ways. Two hours later, when we all met up for siesta, WeeBee excitedly told me that the couple, Mark and Chris, had offered to let us stay with them when we got to Bend! 

WeeBee, Goodall, Bagels, and I ended up staying with Mark and Chris for two nights. They were hands down, my second favorite trail angels (sorry! First place goes to my "California parents" Kermit and J-Bug). They fed us exquisite food, have us comfy beds to sleep in, helped us run errands, and let us play with their friendly pets. We entered their house already as friends and left as family. If you are reading this, Mark and Chris, please know that I cannot thank you enough! This break revitalized me and helped me continue through Oregon. 

Stay tuned for our adventures on Mount Hood and in Northern Oregon!

Captain’s Log: Star Date 8/11/13.

To begin, I am not Carrie.  I will never be Carrie.  Carrie will probably proofread this before she lets me post it, so I half expect this paragraph to be gone by this time tomorrow.  I had the honor and the privilege of hiking this past week with Carrie Rose Agnes Eidsness, formally known as Siesta.

Our itinerary for the trip was to begin in Ashland, OR on August 4th, and end the trip in Crater Lake in August 10th.  This meant we were traveling 104 miles of PCT over 6.75 days for an average of 16 miles per day.  Now, as many of you know, Carrie often refers to her 24 to 27 mile days.  Now, when you’re hearing these sorts of numbers being casually thrown around, it kind of skews your perception of distance.  That being said, when Carrie informed me we were doing 16 mile days, I was stoked.  “Heck,” I said to myself, “16 mile days are for scrubs.  I am going to crush through these days and show Carrie what a real hiker looks like.”

The first night was bad.  We started the day at 11:00 a.m. after waiting 45 minutes for a motorist to take pity on us.  Apparently, having non-cute boys with beards with you isn’t that best way to get a ride.  For those of you that aren’t aware, Southern Oregon isn’t the coolest place during the mid day and August 4th wasn’t an exception from this rule.  The first ten miles were a blast.  Carrie and I had tons to catch up on and chatted up a storm while climbing a mountain.  Side note: The South Cascades tend to skew your perspective of what a mountain is as well.  What normal people call mountains are apparently “flatlands” to PCT hikers.   At about mile 12 I was starting to feel it.  I should probably mention that I had done a poor job conditioning my feet prior to starting the trip.  While I had been biking daily, it hardly builds foot calluses and my soles felt more like velvet than leather.  We had taken a break on the side of the path when another through hiker passed by.  Carrie informed him of our game plan and he commented on the posh lifestyle that 16 mile days would afford.  I almost slapped him. By mile 16, I was miserable.  We had stopped once an hour for the past eight hours, effectively limiting us to a pace of about 2 miles an hour.  It was 7:15 p.m. and Carrie mentioned that I was stumbling back and forth across the trail.  In turn, I informed her that we had to either find a campsite in the next 5 minutes or I was going to break down in tears.  We ended up in the middle of some wonky, incredibly lumpy, wasp infested field.  I managed to choke down some dehydrated soup with 86% of my daily sodium intake before collapsing in the tent. Through a haze of pain, I performed surgery on my feet, draining the liquid from the 4 blisters I had accumulated throughout the day. I’m not sure I was even inside my sleeping bag.

Day 0000002 of the exodus from Ashland:  I don’t remember half of this day… I remember waking up at 6:15 a.m. and forcing Carrie to pack up the tent before eating a Poptart.  She looked angry. [Editor’s note: I was angry, but only because he didn’t let me eat my poptart in my sleeping bag, as I do every morning].  I choked down some apple cinnamon oatmeal and looked to the trail.  It was pure hell in the most basic sense of the word.  My body, in an effort to figure out what I was doing, had sent all the blood down to my feet, making them, and the blisters, swell in size.  Once I had squeezed these elephant feet into my shoes, I took off at a tiptoeing run down the trail in an effort to put as little weight on my heels as possible.  This became a ritual for me every morning, after every break, and basically any time we even considered stopping.  The rest of the day was a blur of pain and regret.  That evening, we stopped after Grizzly Creek and I drained a blood blister that had merged with a wart between my toes.  It was cute.  Once again, I feel asleep somewhere in the tent.  Additional details are unclear.

On day three Carrie woke up with a sore throat.  We decided this was from the massive smoke clouds that had been chilling over the trail since Ashland or earlier.   It was kind of like hanging out in a club with a smoke machine and as a bonus, you were also getting emphysema.   We hiked our traditional 16 miles and ended up at the edge of the “Lava” fields at about 7:00 p.m.  I was feeling feisty after drinking two liters of Gatorade, and after dinner I challenged Carrie to walk another thirty minutes.  Two steps into this challenge, I knew I had made a terrible decision.  The “Lava” fields had a trail paved with small pebbles on which we walked.  These “small” pebbles were the size of golf balls minus the smooth exterior.  With every step, a pebble would poke through the shoe into my blisters just to say, “Hello!  I see you’re still sore!” Unfortunately, I had challenged Carrie, so on we went.  As the time went by it soon became clear that lava fields were not the best spots for camping.  On either side of us, mountains on mountains of rocks ranging from baseball to SUV size were stacked on one another with small breaks for trees with rocks at their base.  At 8:30 p.m. I was ready to cry but was too exhausted to even make the effort.  We had one liter of water between us and were 5 miles from the next water supply.  Fortunately, Eagle Eyes Carrie spotted a campsite in a small gap in the trees and we were able to set up the tent moments before the blood red sun vanished behind the smoky mountains.  That night, I woke up at 12:30 a.m. with 3 ants crawling up my leg, one on my stomach, and a raging dry throat.  I downed half a liter of water and performed a partial xenocide before the fireworks started. The first bolt of lightning hit at 1:00 a.m. and Carrie was up in a flash.  We spent the next hour watching an impressive display only marred by the fact that the surrounding landscape was dry as dust and ready to go up like a stack of hay.  By 2:30 a.m. it had finally died down and we managed to fall asleep for the remaining four hours of the night. 

On day four, with our remaining half liter of water, we completed the final five miles into Fish Lake.  There, we enjoyed a breakfast of steak & eggs and pancakes accompanied by the traditional 8:00 a.m. milkshake.  After downing four liters of water my throat still hurt and I had a runny nose leading me to an unfortunate conclusion: Carrie and I both had colds. Hiking through a creepy forest afterwards, we met Stumbling Beef and Swiss Army, respectively the funniest and most caring hikers I met on the trail.  Again, this day faded away into a pained march, ending at 7:30 p.m. at Christi’s Spring.  Swiss Army took off into the night but not before enquiring about my blisters and offering his condolences.  We fell asleep to the sound of mosquitoes bombarding the rainfly, like the sounds of the forest cd.

Day five we played leapfrog with Swiss Army all day.  We ended camping at a couple of streams at the beginning of a 20.8 mile dry stretch before Crater Lake.  The trail before the campsite was filled with thousands of tiny, tiny toads, about the size of quarters.  We tiptoed into the campground, for reasons other than the blisters this time.  At 10:30 p.m. Swiss Army hiked back past us looking for his spot.  Apparently he had lost it in the last 21 miles and was looking for it.  I didn’t have high hopes for success.

This blog post is going downhill.  I am losing steam as the hour grows late and my time with Carrie is growing short so I will wrap this up with much fewer words than it deserves.  In retrospect, I have forgotten many critical events in several of the past days, but when the journey is this packed with fun, everything can’t be included.

On day six, we completed the trek with a 22 mile day.  I was exhausted and when we hit the town, the first order of business was to get myself a family sized pizza at the local restaurant.  Carrie, Swiss Army, and I also bought milkshakes, endless soda and just about depleted the restaurant of side dishes.  A fellow hiker named Wight shared his campsite with us and we ended the evening roasting marshmallows by a roaring fire while the car campers next door brought us a plate of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes.

All in all, this trip was eye opening for me.  In many ways, it really illuminates for me how often our perception is skewed, both by what we are doing and what others are doing around us.  This trip with Carrie gave me a real opportunity to experience what she experienced.  Throughout the trail, Carrie’s hiking buddies have praised me as a tough guy who did a great job hiking these 104 miles.  I’m not a great guy.  I’m just a guy who moaned and griped his way through 104 miles while hiking 16 miles a day.  That’s not impressive.  What’s impressive is that these PCT hikers do more than what I did day after day after day.  Not only that, they are able to wake up every morning and say, “Yes!  I AM looking forward to xxx hundred more miles of this!” I don’t have that kind of mindset and am thrilled that I know someone who does.  Carrie’s strength and commitment have been astounding to me in this hike, more so when I found out what she was going through every day.  I admire her, and I admire everyone who even attempts the PCT.

As a couple of last notes: PCT folks are fantastic.  The amount of support I received from Swiss Army was incredible.  The man knew me for a combined total of three hours over 4 days but made me feel like I was not only a hero, but an important member of the trail community.  Carrie’s friends WeeBee and Funsize are awesome individuals who provide great support and friendship to Carrie throughout her journey.   Finally, if you are intimidated by an adventure of this proportion, don’t be.  WeeBee said it best, “Thru hikers aren’t amazing people.  We are just people that put one foot in front of the next for five months.” Sectional hikers, people that hike only part of the PCT at a time, are amazing too.  These people experience the same great landscape, the same awesome towns, the same incredible stories that PCT hikers do.  They just smell better in the process.  So if I can leave you with one message in all my ramblings, go out and hike.  Even if you moan the entire time, you are on your way to becoming an incredible person.

-Bill