06.07.18
June 8th 2018 - Belden Town CA PCT mile 1,286
Sitting on an old couch at the Belden Town lodge. Campsite is broken down, laundry clean. First clean clothes since getting back on the trail around Donner Pass over a week ago. We’d hitched out of Lee Vining after turning around 3 days into Yosemite...the snow was nonstop. The creeks were raging. The lakes were covered by sheets of broken ice and snow. We didn’t belong there. At lunch along Smedberg Lake we looked into the distance, storm clouds looming and made the call. We’d return when we could actually see the Sierras. So we turned around, hitched out of Lee Vining to Reno with a series of characters in van/living situations who are used to picking up hikers. Picked up the rental car. Drove. Three days in Arizona. Another rental car. Through the night to North Kennedy Meadows at about 5 am trying to sleep sitting up in the car until a diner opened and I could retrieve my resupply package from Albuquerque. A good hot breakfast. Coffee. Back on the road to South Lake Tahoe to drop the rental. Hanne’s bounce box was at the post office here and we walked to the bus station and all over town for a few more resupplies. That night we looked at the best places to get back on the trail i.e. no snow. A few patches or slopes here and there are ok obviously but we didn’t want to spend entire days making half-time with our GPS in one hand and two trekking poles in the other. It looked like somewhere around Donner Pass by Truckee would be the best option. Something below 8,500 feet where we’d seen the snow line before. So one more night at a Budget Inn for $38 split between two of us was a good deal. We rested and I tried to get my head and heart around everything I’d been through in the past week. Things were happening too fast, out of my control, and I didn’t understand why, but we had to keep moving. The trail had been good for that so far and I just wanted to get back into woods. Two more hitches from got us to a rest stop by Donner Pass. I felt like I’d forgotten how to hike that day. Awkward steps and trekking poles sliding around rocks and mud, but I was glad to have my Asics trail shoes back. We hit snow for two consecutive days after that which slowed us down again but on the third day we wound down out of the high mountains to Sierra City, crossed a great footbridge over Yuba River and hitched into town-sleeping in the yard of the local Methodist Church. This is where we also met the fake Irishman we’d heard about a month before at South Kennedy Meadows. Unfortunately neither of us remembered the warning or description for our whole tenure in Sierra City and we endured his fantastic tales while we tried to repack and lighten our loads at the picnic table. He claimed to be walking for Wounded Warriors. He claimed to be a combat veteran of virtually every conflict that occurred in the Middle East in the past 30 years. He claimed to be a widower and he claimed to have already gone southbound last year and done the Sierras in February. We were too busy to put two and two together until the morning after we left, hiking up the trail to the lookout tower at Sierra Buttes to catch the sunrise. "Ohhh that makes sense...that’s why he didn’t know what my Spot was. That’s why we never saw him on the trail. That’s why his pack weighed 50 lbs." The news in South Kennedy was that he was just some homeless guy who got rides to different towns on the PCT, took his fill out of the hiker boxes, and lost his accent when he had a few drinks.
We climbed and climbed the 1.5 miles to the lookout tower while the sun rose and began hitting the cliffs all around us, turning the morning into a glowing cathedral of amber light. We climbed the tiny steps running 50 feet above the summit and walked around the catwalk with railing surrounding a tiny hut at the top of Sierra Buttes. We’d seen the very peak we were on days before in the distance-a hazy black spire that looked like the Matterhorn, but we didn’t know the PCT came anywhere close to it. Thousands of feet below on all sides were crystal blue lakes starting to reflect the light. Over the next couple days we crossed between some of the them, and now that we were officially out of the heavy snow I began loving the trail in a way I hadn’t before. The Northern California section was becoming dense and humid and it was easy to hit 20-23 miles per day until Buck’s Lake. We walked in along a long quiet impeccably paved road past giant resort and family cabins for 2.5 miles until reaching Bucks Lake Lodge around 6pm. The kitchen was officially closed but a man appeared through the two way doors and said he could do burgers and fries if we wanted...and we wanted. So we ate and ate and managed to get some free chips and salsa out of the deal too before signing the guestbook and heading back toward the campground. It was dark and we just sort of snuck in and snuck out in the morning because we couldn’t find anyone to give any money to. Across the street we did a small resupply and I used my first pay phone in 15 years to call the RV Park in Belden and ask about their laundry, shower situation. At this point everything was dirty. We thought we’d have facilities at Buck’s Lake based on the guides we’d read but no such luck. I’d been wearing the same socks for three days and we were feeling pretty desperate to just clean up a bit.
A couple days later we made it to Belden. Through deep manzanitas almost covering the trail, down about seven miles of switchbacks and across some train tracks-we came in on a small paved back road that basically stopped at Belden Town with 23 official permanent residents and host to an array of popular seasonal music festivals. A few other hikers ambled about, some took relief in the shade of the hotel porch. Others sat inside sipping cold beers, looking dazed but happy to be off the feet. It’s the ‘hiker stare’. It’s not a frown or any indication of discontent or exhaustion...more of a vacant, expressionless gaze that is just happy to be done with the day’s hike but too tired to say anything relevant about it or desiring to do another Q and A session with tourists.
All we wanted was a shower. It cost $2 for 3 minutes. 1 token equaled 3 minutes and I was lucky to find some broken pieces hotel soap someone had left on the counter. 1 token to get the dirt off. 1 token to actually clean under nails and behind ears. 1 token to turn the water on full hot and wash out my hair over and over until the water stopped.
Laundry machine stopped on rinse and ran water into the machine indefinitely which took us two cycles to figure out. We put up the tent and finally had two bags of warm dry clothes. We sat by the window of the hotel restaurant and I started trying to take stock of where we were at. There had barely been a moment to think since day one at Campo and it felt like I’d been on the trail much longer than 3 months. We still had so far to go and as soon as we hit Canada we had to turn around and head back to the Sierras for the last 3 weeks of the journey. As we came within s few hundred miles of Oregon I began writing:
"Minus the Sierras we’ve now walked 1,000 + miles. 50 or so campsites, a couple air bnbs, one hostel, a Budget Inn, and dozens of improvised situations (wherever it’s flat after 20 miles). We’ve relied on hitches at least 20 times - to post offices, back to the trail, to airports, into towns, etc. We’ve also done around 100 miles of non-PCT side trail to either get into towns, get water, get to campsites, or walk from one side of a town to the other. At Belden we’ve taken roughly around 3 1/2 million steps through sand, rock fields, mud, creeks, rivers, snow, hurricane-force winds, miles of non-stop post-holing through snow, from around 85 F to below 0 F on Mt Whitney where we stood at the highest point in the lower forty-eight and looked down at its lowest in Death Valley.
Most of the people I’ve been around have been from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, or Slovakia. The whole train of hikers moves all the time. Just today we ran into Vlado who we hadn’t seen since the long LA Aqueduct stretch beneath the windmills...it seems like ages ago and when you run into someone who’s gone through the same trails and storms as you there’s an instant smile and exchange. "What did you do there? How’s the leg? Where are you headed next?" And I somehow remember most hiker’s names after one meeting when I’m generally terribly at this back home.
In 1,000 miles we’ve seen rattlesnakes, deer, lynx, marmots, picas, coyote, squirrels, chipmunks, lizards and hundreds of birds and listened to owls and bears in the night not to mention all the grazing animals that roam the land. The mountain chickadee has been present the whole time since the first week and I only able to positively identify it outside Tuolumne Meadows when it finally fluttered up to a pine branch and said dee-doo-doo.
We’ve had sun sickness, sun burns, infected blisters, shin splints, sprained ankles, splinters, ant/mosquito/spider/bee bites and stings, metatarsal and toe nerve damage, and pretty much constant scabs and scrapes up to the knees from bushes and bad dismounts from blowdowns on the trail.
Our water comes almost completely from rivers, lakes, streams, and springs and I haven’t filtered anything since we went into Sierra country.
We walk an average of about 17-23 miles per day with our longest day being 26 miles. Right now we’re debating whether to go for a ‘30 day’ since Northern California is probably the place to do it. We’ve been passed by other hikers who actually average 30 miles per day! Unbelievable considering that on the PCT you are almost never walking any flat distances rather, you walk through passes, up and down all day one to the next. Sometimes if we’re lucky we get to walk across the side of a mountain and wind around slowly’
And I’d written:
"Most of the time when I walk I’ve got nothing but songs on repeat in my head. Songs and old memories and lately what feels like some long-lost childhood spirit I’d long forgot or forsaken. Feelings I’d stored away in safe corners, making sense of the mad rush of life. Stepping back. Way, way back...and I’m happy to be on the trail; brief encounters with exceptional people. Fathers and daughters. Retired world-travelers. Teenagers brave enough to try and find themselves out here. Sunsets and views so exceptional I just lack words for most of and try to capture tiny moments with the camera. Strange sounds in the night that make me feel suddenly small and vulnerable and the next day summits and landscapes that make me feel part of something so vast that I just have to shake my head in wonder and keep walking.
Sitting on an old couch at the Belden Town lodge. Campsite is broken down, laundry clean. First clean clothes since getting back on the trail around Donner Pass over a week ago. We’d hitched out of Lee Vining after turning around 3 days into Yosemite...the snow was nonstop. The creeks were raging. The lakes were covered by sheets of broken ice and snow. We didn’t belong there. At lunch along Smedberg Lake we looked into the distance, storm clouds looming and made the call. We’d return when we could actually see the Sierras. So we turned around, hitched out of Lee Vining to Reno with a series of characters in van/living situations who are used to picking up hikers. Picked up the rental car. Drove. Three days in Arizona. Another rental car. Through the night to North Kennedy Meadows at about 5 am trying to sleep sitting up in the car until a diner opened and I could retrieve my resupply package from Albuquerque. A good hot breakfast. Coffee. Back on the road to South Lake Tahoe to drop the rental. Hanne’s bounce box was at the post office here and we walked to the bus station and all over town for a few more resupplies. That night we looked at the best places to get back on the trail i.e. no snow. A few patches or slopes here and there are ok obviously but we didn’t want to spend entire days making half-time with our GPS in one hand and two trekking poles in the other. It looked like somewhere around Donner Pass by Truckee would be the best option. Something below 8,500 feet where we’d seen the snow line before. So one more night at a Budget Inn for $38 split between two of us was a good deal. We rested and I tried to get my head and heart around everything I’d been through in the past week. Things were happening too fast, out of my control, and I didn’t understand why, but we had to keep moving. The trail had been good for that so far and I just wanted to get back into woods. Two more hitches from got us to a rest stop by Donner Pass. I felt like I’d forgotten how to hike that day. Awkward steps and trekking poles sliding around rocks and mud, but I was glad to have my Asics trail shoes back. We hit snow for two consecutive days after that which slowed us down again but on the third day we wound down out of the high mountains to Sierra City, crossed a great footbridge over Yuba River and hitched into town-sleeping in the yard of the local Methodist Church. This is where we also met the fake Irishman we’d heard about a month before at South Kennedy Meadows. Unfortunately neither of us remembered the warning or description for our whole tenure in Sierra City and we endured his fantastic tales while we tried to repack and lighten our loads at the picnic table. He claimed to be walking for Wounded Warriors. He claimed to be a combat veteran of virtually every conflict that occurred in the Middle East in the past 30 years. He claimed to be a widower and he claimed to have already gone southbound last year and done the Sierras in February. We were too busy to put two and two together until the morning after we left, hiking up the trail to the lookout tower at Sierra Buttes to catch the sunrise. "Ohhh that makes sense...that’s why he didn’t know what my Spot was. That’s why we never saw him on the trail. That’s why his pack weighed 50 lbs." The news in South Kennedy was that he was just some homeless guy who got rides to different towns on the PCT, took his fill out of the hiker boxes, and lost his accent when he had a few drinks.
We climbed and climbed the 1.5 miles to the lookout tower while the sun rose and began hitting the cliffs all around us, turning the morning into a glowing cathedral of amber light. We climbed the tiny steps running 50 feet above the summit and walked around the catwalk with railing surrounding a tiny hut at the top of Sierra Buttes. We’d seen the very peak we were on days before in the distance-a hazy black spire that looked like the Matterhorn, but we didn’t know the PCT came anywhere close to it. Thousands of feet below on all sides were crystal blue lakes starting to reflect the light. Over the next couple days we crossed between some of the them, and now that we were officially out of the heavy snow I began loving the trail in a way I hadn’t before. The Northern California section was becoming dense and humid and it was easy to hit 20-23 miles per day until Buck’s Lake. We walked in along a long quiet impeccably paved road past giant resort and family cabins for 2.5 miles until reaching Bucks Lake Lodge around 6pm. The kitchen was officially closed but a man appeared through the two way doors and said he could do burgers and fries if we wanted...and we wanted. So we ate and ate and managed to get some free chips and salsa out of the deal too before signing the guestbook and heading back toward the campground. It was dark and we just sort of snuck in and snuck out in the morning because we couldn’t find anyone to give any money to. Across the street we did a small resupply and I used my first pay phone in 15 years to call the RV Park in Belden and ask about their laundry, shower situation. At this point everything was dirty. We thought we’d have facilities at Buck’s Lake based on the guides we’d read but no such luck. I’d been wearing the same socks for three days and we were feeling pretty desperate to just clean up a bit.
A couple days later we made it to Belden. Through deep manzanitas almost covering the trail, down about seven miles of switchbacks and across some train tracks-we came in on a small paved back road that basically stopped at Belden Town with 23 official permanent residents and host to an array of popular seasonal music festivals. A few other hikers ambled about, some took relief in the shade of the hotel porch. Others sat inside sipping cold beers, looking dazed but happy to be off the feet. It’s the ‘hiker stare’. It’s not a frown or any indication of discontent or exhaustion...more of a vacant, expressionless gaze that is just happy to be done with the day’s hike but too tired to say anything relevant about it or desiring to do another Q and A session with tourists.
All we wanted was a shower. It cost $2 for 3 minutes. 1 token equaled 3 minutes and I was lucky to find some broken pieces hotel soap someone had left on the counter. 1 token to get the dirt off. 1 token to actually clean under nails and behind ears. 1 token to turn the water on full hot and wash out my hair over and over until the water stopped.
Laundry machine stopped on rinse and ran water into the machine indefinitely which took us two cycles to figure out. We put up the tent and finally had two bags of warm dry clothes. We sat by the window of the hotel restaurant and I started trying to take stock of where we were at. There had barely been a moment to think since day one at Campo and it felt like I’d been on the trail much longer than 3 months. We still had so far to go and as soon as we hit Canada we had to turn around and head back to the Sierras for the last 3 weeks of the journey. As we came within s few hundred miles of Oregon I began writing:
"Minus the Sierras we’ve now walked 1,000 + miles. 50 or so campsites, a couple air bnbs, one hostel, a Budget Inn, and dozens of improvised situations (wherever it’s flat after 20 miles). We’ve relied on hitches at least 20 times - to post offices, back to the trail, to airports, into towns, etc. We’ve also done around 100 miles of non-PCT side trail to either get into towns, get water, get to campsites, or walk from one side of a town to the other. At Belden we’ve taken roughly around 3 1/2 million steps through sand, rock fields, mud, creeks, rivers, snow, hurricane-force winds, miles of non-stop post-holing through snow, from around 85 F to below 0 F on Mt Whitney where we stood at the highest point in the lower forty-eight and looked down at its lowest in Death Valley.
Most of the people I’ve been around have been from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, or Slovakia. The whole train of hikers moves all the time. Just today we ran into Vlado who we hadn’t seen since the long LA Aqueduct stretch beneath the windmills...it seems like ages ago and when you run into someone who’s gone through the same trails and storms as you there’s an instant smile and exchange. "What did you do there? How’s the leg? Where are you headed next?" And I somehow remember most hiker’s names after one meeting when I’m generally terribly at this back home.
In 1,000 miles we’ve seen rattlesnakes, deer, lynx, marmots, picas, coyote, squirrels, chipmunks, lizards and hundreds of birds and listened to owls and bears in the night not to mention all the grazing animals that roam the land. The mountain chickadee has been present the whole time since the first week and I only able to positively identify it outside Tuolumne Meadows when it finally fluttered up to a pine branch and said dee-doo-doo.
We’ve had sun sickness, sun burns, infected blisters, shin splints, sprained ankles, splinters, ant/mosquito/spider/bee bites and stings, metatarsal and toe nerve damage, and pretty much constant scabs and scrapes up to the knees from bushes and bad dismounts from blowdowns on the trail.
Our water comes almost completely from rivers, lakes, streams, and springs and I haven’t filtered anything since we went into Sierra country.
We walk an average of about 17-23 miles per day with our longest day being 26 miles. Right now we’re debating whether to go for a ‘30 day’ since Northern California is probably the place to do it. We’ve been passed by other hikers who actually average 30 miles per day! Unbelievable considering that on the PCT you are almost never walking any flat distances rather, you walk through passes, up and down all day one to the next. Sometimes if we’re lucky we get to walk across the side of a mountain and wind around slowly’
And I’d written:
"Most of the time when I walk I’ve got nothing but songs on repeat in my head. Songs and old memories and lately what feels like some long-lost childhood spirit I’d long forgot or forsaken. Feelings I’d stored away in safe corners, making sense of the mad rush of life. Stepping back. Way, way back...and I’m happy to be on the trail; brief encounters with exceptional people. Fathers and daughters. Retired world-travelers. Teenagers brave enough to try and find themselves out here. Sunsets and views so exceptional I just lack words for most of and try to capture tiny moments with the camera. Strange sounds in the night that make me feel suddenly small and vulnerable and the next day summits and landscapes that make me feel part of something so vast that I just have to shake my head in wonder and keep walking.
Comments
Post a Comment