We’d agreed, Sasha and I, to be out of camp by 5:30, though Sasha had suggested 6:30. 4:30 rolls around, and my first reaction is “aaaabsolutely not”. She starts to rustle, I weakly say “6:30?” The rustling stops immediately. Oh good.
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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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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
My tent isn’t pitched quite as taut as I’d like it to be, and so it’s flappity flap-flap all through the cloudy night. I’m still convinced that my stupid ears won’t fit my stupid earplugs, so I deal by being vaguely annoyed. I’ve set my alarm especially early this morning, to make up for the deplorably small number of miles I did yesterday, and when that buzzes I’m actually pretty surprised to be rested up. The sun’s barely up over the horizon, and I manage to crawl out and pack and grab some water from the now-seemingly-clearer trough and hit the pit toilet and the trail by 6:05am.
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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 