Tag: PCT

Day 3 – Jingle Bells

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Sure enough, I wake around what a groggy look at my clock says is 2am, and it’s raining, though I’m still warm and dry. It’s raining when I wake again at 1am, and at actual 2am, and again when my alarm buzzes in my sleeping bag at 5:15am1. I listen to the rain for 15 minutes before I decide that its steady, soothing pace means it isn’t going to let up anytime soon. I look around, take stock of everything, but it seems something’s missing – oh. oh no. I did not do my idiot check last night as well as I had hoped. I peek under the vestibule, and yep, sure enough, there are my shoes and socks, sitting out in the rain, like they have been all night. Ehhhhhhhhh.

So, sighing, I pack up inside and bundle up against the cold and stuff my feet into wet shoes before dashing outside to take down my tent. It’s a Sisyphean effort to get it completely packed without getting any water inside, so I put it away on the outside of my trash compactor bag, to keep the dry stuff and the wet stuff separate. Then it’s oh-god-get-out-of-camp-or-I-might-freeze, ten miles to the Desert View Picnic Area and Mount Laguna.

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Day 2 – Momentum

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My alarm is set for 5:30 – I want to beat the heat for the climb out of Hauser –  but someone else’s alarm goes off loudly at 5:15. I try to roll over but soon the whole camp is alive with movement, unpracticed hands packing up camp slower than what will probably be usual. It takes me a full hour to get out of camp, but I’m off and moving at 6:30. Continue reading →

Day 1 – Bringing the Heat

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Someone’s alarm goes off at 5; someone else is already packing up under the large open-faced tent I called home last night, so there’s no getting back to sleep for those last five minutes before my own alarm goes off. I feel like I should mind more, but it is what it is, and so I’m up myself, unplugging and packing and doing a million idiot checks1 before Frodo calls us all in for breakfast.
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New Hike’s Eve

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I barely get any sleep – my mind’s constantly bouncing from one incidental to another, and it’s hard to get it to calm down. I know it’s really just avoiding the real start of my journey – leaving Colorado, leaving Spesh, leaving home. Another thought crosses: maybe if I never go to sleep, then tonight will last forever! But I don’t want that, I want to go, want to hike, even if it’s throwing my life into a shambles to do so. Or, at least, the state of my apartment, all a-covered in gear.
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Last-Minute Necessities

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It’s nearly a week from my departure date, and my apartment has exploded in gear and resupply food and ziplocs, more ziplocs than any human should ever need. I’ve spent evenings surrounded by the pages of Yogi’s Guide, figuring out where to stop, where to shop, where to mail and when; squinting to interpret the initially-arcane PCT Water Report; making sure I’ve got maps in both hard copy and soft copy. I’ve also tended to a dozen more real-world things than I’ve cared to – what are taxes and car registrations and employer meetings in comparison to hiking? – but I’m not there yet, I’m here, and even though I’ve taken care of business in every instance that’s come up, I still feel as though I’m forgetting something.

Like, after getting this amazing, entirely-unexpected opportunity, paying it forward.

So I’ve decided to fundraise for Big City Mountaineers again. Big City Mountaineers is an organization devoted to mentoring under-served urban youth in the outdoors, offering over 1,000 teens per year the opportunity to participate in single day, overnight, and week-long expeditions in the backcountry. These trips are given free of charge to participants in hopes they will foster new connections with themselves, with their peers, with volunteer mentors, and with the environment. As urban youth are preponderantly youth of color, I thought it appropriate that a hiker encouraging folks of all colors to get outside support an organization with a similar cause.

So if you’d like to help me spread the outdoorsy love, please consider donating. Even a $5 donation supports a teen’s full day in the backcountry; every little effort counts. And to sweeten the pot a little, any donation of $30 or more will see a postcard from the trail in return!

…starting in about a week.

So it’ s buying smartwater bottles for their lids and buying a pack of trash compactor bags for a single one and turning local places upside down for leukotape, and then… walking.

And hoping that, with your help, I can help others experience the challenge, the escape, and the solace there is to be found in exploring the great outdoors.

Waking Dreams

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I’ve been having a lot of vivid dreams recently – the type of dreams that you feel, the ones that are hard to distinguish from reality. I mean, not the suddenly changing scenery or the odd situations, but these days I often find myself wondering whether I actually did something or whether it just happened in a dream. It’s made for some interesting scenarios in the waking world, where I swear I’ve done something but haven’t quite actually managed it while conscious.

I think the exuberant activity of my slumbering mind’s a combination of the weather getting warmer and my workload ramping up and me actually getting occasional exercise and and and – life’s waking up after a long, weird winter1, and my dreams are echoing the sentiment. All my friends are waking up, too – going on adventures, doing lots of hiking, taking lots of pictures. And as soon as I get through this last hard push, I’ll be doing the same thing.

I’m not kidding. I start the Pacific Crest Trail in less than a month. Continue reading →

Before It Began

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Well, 2015 is a bust – at least for the PCT.

I started this site thinking I would be hiking the PCT in a scant few months. I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on, looking at maps, breaking out the food dehydrator to try out recipes, and feel that, despite a lot of moments of self-doubt and not a few invigorating butterflies, I could be ready to hike. But between fiscal responsibilities and generally wanting to have a life to come back to – given that transitioning back to “normal” is hard enough when you’re coming back to something – I’ve decided to let it go for this year.

To say coming to terms with my ostensibly “adult” decision has been difficult would be an understatement. I’m more irritable these days, more gloomy, more pessimistic than I’d like to be. I’m a mover and a shaker, and when I’m not moving and shaking, I feel defeated. Stuck. Even with a second job incoming and a third, full-time job to get me through the summer, I’m experiencing a bit of cabin fever.

On the upside, the loot from said secondary and tertiary employment is primarily going towards the “Get AmJam off a’Backpacking” fund, and since 9 months is too long long enough to stay in one place for my liking, I’m sating my wanderlust by hitting the Colorado Trail this summer. It’ll be a nice warmup for the longer trek next year, and I’ll still be able to update with fun hiking-related things.

I’m excited to see what the future holds.