Tag: thruhiking

Day 11 – Detour the First

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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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Day 10 – Paradise

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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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Day 9 – Almost 20

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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 →

Day 8 – Ripping off the Bandaid

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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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Day 7 – 100

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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 →

Day 6 – The Hills Have Cactus

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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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Day 5 – X-ing

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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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Day 4 – Early Magic

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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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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 →