We’re up and out by 5, which is good – we’ve got a peak to bag and a thunderstorm to avoid – plus, we’ve got to actually get back to the trail. At 5am, there aren’t exactly cars around to give us a hitch, so it’s walking to the Ernie Maxwell Trail, which will take us to Humber Park, where the Devil’s Slide Trail is, which, finally, will put us back on the PCT.
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I wake up in a bed – sheets and everything! And still dark at 8:30, given the curtains! The miracles of modern technology.
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I wake several times during the night – a few times to the sounds of Saturday night revelry, another time to silence, during which I take out my earplugs. I regret this when, during the hour of 4am, the family in the site next to ours starts up the party again. Loudly. In Spanish, which, not understanding, my brain tries really, really hard to decipher, keeping me awake. I fumble for my earplugs, but once I get them in, it seems like my 5:30 alarm goes off pretty immediately. Continue reading
When 4am rolls around, a pickup truck rolls up to Paradise Valley Cafe, lights off – so I assume he knows there’s a smattering of hikers sleeping on the porch. But he and his buddy pop out of the truck and, I shit you not, one of them starts giving a tour to the other. And not like an inebriated tour, with slurring and overly annoying attempts to keep quiet, which would’ve almost been forgivable. Nono, these two sound stone cold sober. Apparently, I just need to get up, so I do so, refraining from throwing dirty looks in the direction of the tour, though only just.
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I enjoy cowboy camping, with the swirling stars and the traveling moon and the warmish evening. I’ve got my alarm set for 5, but someone walks past me at 4:30 and then again at 4:45, headlamps in my face1, so I just start getting up. It’s easier to pack when you’ve been cowboy camping, so I’m out basically by 5:30.
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It’s less freaky than I expect it to be, sleeping in my shelter without the rain fly – even when a person walks by after an undisclosed amount of time, my anxiety about the whole thing just seems unfounded. This is the most normal thing, even when I wake in the middle of the night and see the stars instead of a roof. Continue reading
I wake at 8:30 – oh, the luxury! – to a bustling mass of tents under the cottonwood tree. The first thing I do is pack up, put my tent away so I’m not tempted to stay another evening. I am going to nero, though – head out around 4:30 to avoid the heat, go five or six miles – there’re a bunch of sites in that vicinity. And until then, it’ll be so, so nice to spend a day resting in the company of hikers!
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I find my headlamp under my butt in the voids of my sleeping pad in the middle of the night, sleepily chastise myself for misplacing it before rolling over and going back to sleep. The morning comes, and I’m up and out as per usual, paying especially close attention to the prickly pear cactus near the door of my tent. Continue reading
I can tell the Aleeve has worn off when my alarm goes off at 5:30 – my knees are achy again, but not so achy as to be unusable. It’s a bit of a struggle to pack up since I’m one of the first ones out, again, but that’s the only way I make miles. Today, especially – Yogi’s guide warns about the “long, hot, dry climb” out of Scissors into the San Felipe Hills, and I’m hoping to make the 14 miles to the Third Gate Cache before the sun gets too high in the sky. Time to officially implement plan “Sleep all night and also some during the day”. But first, I gotta get to my next sleeping place.
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I say I’m going to be up and out by 6:30, but 6:30 rolls around and I’m barely out of bed. I want to get out though, want to be back out there as soon as I can be, so I’m grabbing thankfully-dry bits and bobs, stuffing them in my pack hoping, hoping that I can get a hitch back out to mile 47.5. I’ll roadwalk if I have to – it’s an early morning, and who knows who’s going to be out and moving – but that’d be a rough way to start the day.
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Brown Girl on the NST 