Week 22

Darrell is well into Washington now.  He has left the hot weather behind and is now hiking in comfortable conditions.  It is starting to get colder at night--not as cold as the Sierras but cold enough that he is setting up his tent and crawling into his sleeping bag as soon as he can to warm up.  I think he's growing weary.  Please pray for him each step of the way.

Darrell was delighted to run into Father Sebastian at a watering spot a couple days into his hike in Washington.  He was the one with whom he had hiked through the Sierras on his second attempt.  He hadn't seen him since our trip to Yosemite.  We had dropped Father off in Mammoth; Darrell got right back on the trail, but Father had some things he needed to take care of in Mammoth and was planning to stay a couple nights there before taking off again.  He ended up having to take a couple weeks off due to illness.  He skipped ahead to Tahoe, and he and Darrell have been leap frogging over each other without running into one another along the trail as they've been avoiding the burn areas.  Father was planning to meet up with his girlfriend this week who flew in from Germany to hike with him for the next three weeks.  She wanted to do the part with him  that he had skipped from Mammoth to Truckee, so he's going back down south.  Darrell will probably not see them again before they head back to Germany.

This is how Darrell has been filtering his water during this hike.  He used to have a pump filter, but he decided to use this system on the PCT.  It is a gravity-flow system.  The unfiltered water flows down through the filter directly into his drinking bottle, which is a one-liter Smart Water brand bottle which the filter fits perfectly into.  This way he doesn't have the weight of the pump to carry, and the weight of the filter itself is minimal.

Because of the trail closures due to fire there are a greater concentration of hikers in this area.  Although there are many fellow hikers, he has mostly been hiking alone during the day, but there are many people and tents at the good sleeping spots at night.  He is really not alone, though, with jackrabbits and deer to keep him company.  

At least here in Oregon he hasn't run into the likes of the legendary Hank the Tank, a black bear who is notorious in the Lake Tahoe area and is rumored to have devoured the food of a group of backpackers this year who had ditched their bear canisters when they were no longer legally required to carry them once they left the high Sierras and Yosemite National Park.  Hank came in at night and feasted on their easily accessible food. After this incident, the Forest Service mandated hikers to carry their food in bear canisters further up north through Tahoe.  The hikers don't like the extra weight and the awkward bulkiness of the containers.  Darrell has carried his food in a bear canister from the beginning and will continue to throughout his hike.  Bears don't know park boundaries and don't care about the rules.

I receive these pictures when he gets into a town with cellular/internet service, so although he's walking in Washington right now, these are pictures from Southern Oregon, from Ashland to Crater Lake.  The signs are exciting because they document progress.

Mt Ashland, I believe

Mt McLoughlin

Looking back at Mt Shasta from Oregon

Darrell will let me know if I mislabeled these!

Crater Lake

Beautiful wildflowers along the way.

Remember that Darrell is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to raise money for clean drinking water around the world through Team World Vision.  Donations can be made using this link:  https://www.teamworldvision.org/participant/pctwaterboy

Thank you for following Darrell's adventure.

Week 20.5

 When I dropped Darrell off in Castle Crags State Park, his plan was to head north toward Oregon, then Washington, and then to touch the final PCT trail marker on the Canadian border.  The weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 100's for the next ten days.  Fortunately, the higher elevation and shade of the forest trees along the trail made for lower temperatures and more tolerable hiking conditions. He made it 100 miles to Etna, California, where he was picked up by Jen.  She is a friend of a friend of a friend who enjoys supporting PCT hikers passing through the area.  Darrell and several other people (Darrell referred to them as "the Belgians") camped out in her yard while they were in town resupplying and resting.  It was over 100 degrees here, and Darrell slept in her yard without a tent, laying on top of his sleeping bag in his swim trunks.  While they were there,  she let them all use her shower and do their laundry, and she hauled them all to a local pub for meals, drinks, and live music.

Once again, we are reminded that we can make our plans and commit them to the Lord, and he's the one who directs our path.  As Darrell was preparing to get back on the trail from Etna, he received word that the trail had been closed that day from where he was getting ready to start and that hikers were being evacuated.  A wildfire had ignited from a dry thunderstorm that came through that night and more dry lightning was predicted for the next night.  Buses were provided for the hundreds of hikers in the area to skip over the closed section and drop them off in Ashland, Oregon (67 miles by road, bypassing over 100 miles of trail).

Darrell made contact with a couple he had met along the trail in California a couple months earlier. At that time they were doing a section hike of the PCT in order to complete a portion of the trail they had skipped in their through-hike last year.  They completed this section and then returned to their home in Ashland, Oregon, offering their help when Darrell made it up that way.  They were true to their word and allowed him to stay at their home and helped him make plans for this next part of his journey.  

Leaving Ashland, he headed toward Crater Lake approximately 105 miles away, his next big pit stop along the way.   He was picked up by Ken and Nancy Goss who drove all the way from Grants Pass to take him to their home for a scheduled rest.  They had arranged this  months before Darrell actually started and have been keeping track of his progress and waiting for word from him that he was ready to be picked up.   They have been making sure he's well fed and giving him a nice comfortable bed to sleep in.  Darrell was able to go to church with them and was even able to share his adventure with the people there.  Thank you to those who made donations for clean water!

This brings us to the next change of plans.  A fire broke out last week just above Crater Lake, and another portion of the PCT has been closed in that area.    There is a great amount of trail strategizing on his zero days:  where the next water is, where the next food is, is there a store in town big enough to carry the kind of food he needs to carry, how close to town the trailhead is, how hard will it be to get a ride into town, where the next hamburger stand is, etc.  During his hiatus in Grants Pass he studied the map and decided the best course of action would be to skip Oregon at this time and walk through Washington.  The Goss' have offered to take him up to Cascade Locks in the Columbia River gorge that divides Oregon and Washington.  This way he will avoid the trail closure due to fires and he will be able to get through the mountains of Washington before the cold and snow hit and keep him from finishing the hike.  I guess he'll tag the PCT end point trail marker on the Canadian border and then take a bus back down to Oregon and hike the parts he had to skip if the fires are out and the trail is open again.

Random notes:  Darrell was able to pick up his pace the last two weeks and was averaging between 20 and 25 miles per day on the trail.  He is sleeping without a tent more often than not.  He has essentially quit eating instant oatmeal for breakfast because he doesn't want to be bothered with heating up water.  He actually prefers the granola with powdered whole milk that we prepackage in ziplock bags for the trail.  The instant oatmeal doesn't go to waste, though, because he now eats it for dinner occasionally since it is much quicker than the dinner meals he has packed.  

In Grants Pass, he purchased his third pair of hiking shoes for use on this trail.  He had to buy another hiking shirt, too, because one of the shoulders has worn through from the shoulder straps on his pack. It's interesting that it is only one shoulder; perhaps the pack straps need to be adjusted. He did try a patch job with duct tape, and he asked me to iron on some patches when we met last, but that was even less useful than the tape. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Just buy a new shirt!" His home remedies fortunately worked to get him through to the next available store that sells this shirt that he has come to like hiking with. 

The pictures below are from Castle Crags to Etna.  You can see how Castle Crags might have got its name.  There are several pictures of Mount Shasta from different vantage points, and you'll notice smoky skies in many of the photos. 

Thank you for reading this post.  Thank you for your prayers and encouragement and donations to World Vision for clean drinking water.  We had the opportunity to see this young girl in Ethiopia enjoying the clean water that was made available to her family and community from donations like yours.  Donate at:

https://www.teamworldvision.org/participant/pctwaterboy

Week 19

 The two nights in South Lake Tahoe gave Darrell much rest and encouragement.  There was a campground with an area specifically designated for  PCT hikers.  There were showers and most importantly large camp areas for people to have big family reunions and other kinds of celebrations.  The PCT hikers were the grateful recipients of the leftovers from these literal fiestas...platefuls of  enchiladas and rice and beans they were invited to eat.  In the mornings the local campers brought over huge breakfasts with sausage, bacon, eggs, and potatoes for the hikers.  I don't think Darrell is the only PCT hiker who talks incessantly about the food they devour when in towns...real food does not go unappreciated or unconsumed by people living on instant mashed potatoes, instant rice, and various other "add boiling water only" foods. Some of the backpackers don't even boil the water for their meals; they "cold soak" them, which is adding cold water to the dried food at lunch and hiking all afternoon with them soaking in hopes that they will be digestible by dinner time without having to boil water.  One young man we gave a ride to from the trail to a nearby town has the trail name of Sixty Cent because he stocks his pack with the cheapest frozen burritos he can find and hikes with them and eats them cold as they thaw over the days.

This is a picture of the camping area PCT hikers' in Tahoe (affectionately known as "hiker trash"). Here, as on the trail, the tents are so close they hear more than they want to hear from their neighbors.  Darrell might have made some enemies one morning on the trail because he got up to "use the restroom" before his alarm went off early in the morning and while he was out, unbeknownst to him, his phone alarm went off and rang incessantly until he got back. One night he was in his sleeping bag in his tent wrapped up in his mummy bag talking to me on the phone about how to start the lawn mower and the next day some random person he encountered on the trail asked him if his wife was able to finally get the mower started.

This is the cage provided at the Tahoe campground for hikers and campers to put their food and anything else scented, like toothpaste or deodorant (the deodorant is a joke--have you smelled these guys?), in to keep the bears from getting it.  Also, around it you can see bear canisters that the hikers carry on the trail for the same purpose because there is nothing along the trails to keep the bears out.  They are designed so that the bears cannot break through them nor grip them nor get their mouths around them.  The hikers leave them several feet away from their tents at night so if a bear does smell it and try to get it, they are not too close to the tents.  Darrell told me that the canisters in this picture were neatly stacked around the cage before they went to bed, but bears came at night and strew them about trying to get at the food inside them.  Hopefully, a hiker will not be near a ledge or downhill slope where the canister can get pushed down the mountain.  While he was here at Tahoe, several bears came down both during the day and night to get at the food.  During the day the campers made lots of noise to scare them away.  They are advised not to chase them because it can train the bears to become aggressive.  Also, shout out to Nancy and Shawn Turner for picking him up and driving him around and taking him to lunch one day while he was here.

Remember the story in my last post about the screaming lady and the Search and Rescue people?  The last night Darrell was here at this camp in Tahoe, the lady hiked in to this place!  Here is the rest of the story:  As it turns out, she was hiking alone and had set up camp and noticed she was being stalked by a mountain lion.  She spent three hours on high alert, always facing toward the cat as he circled around through the trees, sometimes in her line of sight and sometimes not.  If he got too close, she would cry out loudly to scare him off (hence the question by Search and Rescue "have you heard a lady screaming?"). She was able to send an SOS on her satellite device before the battery went dead.  It turns out she was less than a mile away from where Darrell was cowboy camping, far enough away for Darrell not to have heard her crying out, yet pretty close in my estimation.  I'm so glad she was safe and knew how to handle herself in such a dangerous situation.  I also question why the Search and Rescue people didn't warn Darrell since he was sleeping alone without a tent with a mountain lion in the vicinity.  It got me to thinking about grizzly bears being in Canada and Yellowstone and how I'm pretty sure they aren't aware of national and state boundary lines--what's to keep them from coming in to Washington?  

This is Shapes.  He hiked with Darrell for several days before they got into Tahoe.  He was going to hike out with Darrell as they left camp and headed north toward Sierra City.  They shared a ride with a trail angel back up to the trailhead where there was a small store that also mailed packages for hikers on their way out.  Shapes had a package to mail there, but when they arrived they were no longer mailing packages.  Shapes then had to catch a ride back to town and mail his package and would join Darrell later on the trail.  As it turns out, the smoke that was making its way over the mountains became too much for Shapes, and he ended up having to jump ahead further up north to avoid the smoke and breathe easier.  Darrell will be looking out for him and Father as well as he hikes north in  hopes of meeting up with them again.  It is not too often that he comes upon someone who walks the same pace as he does.  I know the companionship means so much to him and makes the going a little easier.

There are so many interesting signs along the way.  Some are mile markers, some are welcoming hikers to new forests, some are warnings, and some tell wonderful histories, but they all bring hope and mark progress and give a sense of accomplishment.

I love the signs that tell a little history.  I can't imagine coming over these mountains in covered wagons.  Our German friends have commented about a sign post about the Donner Party, which we grew up learning about, but they like to tell this new story to their families about that fateful group and their "series of bad decisions".

This is at the top of Dick's Pass, a dreaded pass to climb a few thousand feet in elevation over a relatively short distance in the Desolation Wilderness.  This was also part of the trail we hiked when we did the Tahoe Rim Trail a few years back.

The smoke from the fire near Yosemite is spreading out all over northern California.  Many hikers are circumventing this part of the trail and will come back later in the season in hopes of clearer air.

This hike hasn't turned out to look the way Darrell had envisioned when he first started out.  With the snow and COVID he has had to skip ahead and circle back and detour in ways he hadn't planned.  I've made more trips to move him around and he's had more down time than we had expected, but he has finally come full circle and has covered all the trail down south of Dunsmuir and is now back on the trail at the point furthest north that he hiked.  Hopefully, from here on out it's North to Canada.  This is where I dropped him off on Monday entering Castle Crags State Park.  He was dreading getting back on the trail with temperatures predicted to be in the low 100's over the next ten days.  He briefly entertained the idea of my dropping him off at the ending point in Canada and his heading back down to end here to avoid these extreme temperatures.  He didn't have his passport, there is still snow on the mountains in Washington, and other logistical stuff helped him make the decision to continue to move forward from here.  He'll need to carry lots of water, get up before dark and head out on the trail in the cooler part of the day, take longer breaks during the heat, and  hike a little more in the evenings.

I have posted more pictures below showing the diversity of landscape he has encountered as he walked so many miles across this large area of California surrounding Lake Tahoe.  Before I posted them I wanted to once again give the link to his donation page for World Vision.  He has set a goal of raising $100,000 for clean water projects around the world through Team World Vision.  So far, our friends and family and even many strangers have donated $52,510 dollars.  Isn't that  incredible?  Thank you so much!  I guess that leaves $47,490 to go.  Darrell has hiked 1,535 miles with 1,115 to go!  Thank you for supporting him on his journey by giving, praying, and following his progress.

https://www.teamworldvision.org/participant/pctwaterboy