10% Complete!

At my old warehouse job that I had in college, the bosses used to announce over the intercom every so often - "Attention orderfillers ... we are currently 23% complete!" This either sucked (when you were only at, say, 16% by breakfast) or it was a beautiful, wonderous thing (34% complete by breakfast). It wasn't one of those set-hour jobs where you just clock in and out 9-to-5. If you weren't done, you weren't done. Walmart could care less if you were hitting your 16th hour when food still needed to be shipped out ...

So, when Maury and I awoke at 6am on May 22nd to pack up our things and then hiked nine miles to reach Hwy 18 (Mile 265), we also happened to hit our own personal 10% mark - 265 miles out of 2,650! 

The news that you were only 10% complete could either disarm or mobilize you, but for us, it was a nice milestone. As the proprietor of Paradise Realtors told us during our lunch break - "If you hikers can make it past 300 miles, you can make it the whole way!"

"Really? Why is that," I asked.

"It's the desert, I guess. Well, that's what they say."

How true. The desert ... the desert. It's such a harsh mistress. So beautiful in Spring (flowers blooming on every cacti, sweet smells that you could swear have been bottled into perfumes wafting through the air) and yet, in only a couple of months, the sweetness goes away and its replaced by hot, wilted, stifling death.

Maury (from here on out, Twinkletoes) has been burned to the point of blistering on her legs ... the tops of my ears started to bleed. The problem with walking through the desert is not so much the heat (though it did reach 100 around the Mesa Wind Farm), it's the oft-talked about "exposure." There's no cover. Twinkletoes and I once curled up like lizards underneath a large boulder just to escape the slow-bake from that Noon to 4pm stretch. It was the only place within two miles that gave off a large shadow.

Twenty days out, and it's getting hotter. Our late start (May 3) was at least a week, if not more, behind most other hikers. We just couldn't get out of work. As a side-effect, the Pacfic Crest Trail has been a ghost town. It's a little unnerving at points just how alone you are. We've walked for days seeing only lizards, snakes, and the dissolving bootprints of our peers in the sand. 

I know my fellow hikers only by their distinct shoeprints these days ... and I've gotten decent at judging just how old those markings are.

Long story short, we're skipping Section E temporarily and jumping ahead 100 miles to try and find ourselves in the thick of both people and the proverbial "hunt for Canada" again. And today, Maury and I are joining her brother and his girlfriend for a trip to the awesome, mind-bending Stone Brewery - home of some of my favorite beers on Earth. And also REI to exchange a couple key pieces of gear that have been giving us fits!

It's a much-needed respite from the lonely desert sands and a nice reminder that long-distance trails, for us, were always meant to be "the best time of your life, interrupted only by small bouts of hiking." I don't know who coined that, but it's absolutely true. Maury and I have been 100% business these past three weeks and we've suffered mentally because of it. It's time for a change of pace - a shakeup. It's time to speak with humans and not lizards. It's time to get back to our long walk - but in our own way. See you up the trail, pardners!

Idyllwild

We're chilling in the small mountain town of Idyllwild for a "zero," or rest day. It's at mile 178.8 out of 2,650 and all's well! We're high in the mountains, now, after traversing 151 miles of low and high desert in SoCal. Good riddance to the chapparal ... at least for a bit!

Since the library here is closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we don't have computer access that's powerful enough to upload many photos or ANY video, at all, so for the meantime, please enjoy these few tidbits from our journey north!

Not a day passes that I don't think of how this hike would be pretty much impossible for someone with MS until better treatments or a cure is found - the balance required, the heat endured, and in general, the strength needed to lift a 30lb. pack on to one's shoulders. Still, I wish everyone with MS could see the things were seeing up here. More photos and videos to come!

- Shawn

Into the desert...

Maury and Shawn are headed into the Anza-Borrega Desert for several days of hiking. Send some good hiking vibes their way, and look for updates on their journey when they reach Idyllwild in five or six days.

PCT Lessons: Week 1

And finally, here's a short blog for our friends and fellow hikers who are planning to hike the trail in the next coupla years.

Best/Most Suprising Gear

1. GoLite Chrome Dome Umbrella - Coated in a reflective metallic material, the "Chrome Dome" has been a life saver for us out in the sunny desert. So long as you find a way to reliably attach it under your backpack's sternum strap for hand's free use, there's no reason not to love this 6 oz. sunblocker. Maury and I have been able to hike under cooling shade during even the hottest parts of the day because of these guys. Note: Like any umbrella, they're not going to be great in windy sections. Luckily for us, that's only been 10% of our hike.
2. Dirty Girl Gaiters - Not just for keeping dirt and sand out of your shoes (although these do that really well), DG Gaiters come in an array of bizarre, awesome designs, are cheap, and they also help in the desert sections by keeping prickly burrs and other nuisances out of your shoes.
3. Zpacks Waterproof Pack Liners - We both love our pack liners. On the Appalachian Trail it was common to see people toting around elastic rain covers that fit around the backpack during storms, but seeing as the PCT is renowned for its sometimes chest deep river crossings, I knew we'd need something better to keep our stuff dry. This cuben-fibre (read: really, really light), velcro & roll-top sealed bag makes the perfect addition to any hiker looking to face the elements without fear. The 18"x36" liner is designed for use with the ULA Circuit backpack (my pack). Mine fits perfectly.

Rookie Mistakes

Even though Maury and I have hiked thousands of miles before, the PCT is a different monster altogether with new challenges, hurdles, and elements we've never faced. Here's our first-week mistakes and hopefully some wisdom for future hikers.

1. Respect the Sun - Wear loose-fitting pants, desert shirts, and bring sunglasses. For the exposed areas of your body, use sunblock. You don't see Saudi Arabians traipsing through the desert in shorts and tank tops for a reason, so listen to history and don't think you're smarter than a bunch of guys and gals on camels. I've seen at least five or six hikers with burns so bad that they're near blistering, so far, and we haven't even walked through the low-desert sections, yet!
2. Free-Standing Tent - This isn't 100% required, but there are a lot of spots on the PCT that are either filled with loose sand or are rocky. Having to stake things into the ground isn't always the easiest, and since there's not much rain in SoCal, having a tent with a free-standing mesh set-up (like the MSR Hubbas or Big Agnes Seedhouses) is a real bonus. Plus, think of the sweet, starry nights. We shipped our Nemo Meta home in exchange for the Hubba Hubba. We'll let you know how it goes.
3. Shoe Tips - First, always try them on. Don't order a size online and expect it to fit properly. I ordered some New Balances that should've been the right size, but wound up a little too small. As a result, I had to buy some new shoes at the end of Week 1 and have two dead toenails to show for it. Second, buy your shoes 1/2 size or 1 whole size too large, intentionally. Your feet will expand from all the walking and pounding. It happens to everyone, but there's a fine line here. If you buy them too big (2 sizes), some find themselves sliding and blistering up. Buy them just right, and you have the same problem. 1/2 to 1 size larger seems to be the magic number. Since your feet may eventually grow to be 2 sizes larger by the end of the hike, DON'T BUY YOUR SHOES IN BULK BEFOREHAND. There will be outfitters along the way.

Day 5: Hitchhiking ain't easy

Whoever said that "there's no such thing as a free lunch" wasn't thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and hadn't stopped at Mom's Pies in Julian, California.

The free apple/boysenberry cobbler with cinnamon ice cream would've been enough but the free turkey sandwich on freshly-baked ciabatta bread put it over the top. Oh! And free soda, too. That was just my deal. Maury had her own set-up ...

It was almost as if the proprietor of Mom's Pies knew that we'd just crumbled into a worthless, ashen heap mere hours before in the liquidless desert outside town, and that pie - specifically the free kind - was quite literally the only thing that'd come close to revitalizing our crispen human shells.

Thank God, too, because after trying to hitch a ride into this little tourist trap of a mining town for an hour and a half with no success, I felt like a piece of my soul had shriveled up and died.

"No Southern hospitality here," said Maury, dusting granules of salt from her reddening right arm.

"No lie. This is definitely worse than the AT," I said, exasperated, trying to encapsulate my 230 lb. mass in the drifting shadow of a highway pole. "Did you see those bad-asses on Harleys? The first guy was cool - smiled and waved, but the second ... man, who knew that 60-year-old men on $60,000 bikes could be so scared of a coupla dirty hobos?"

I was a little bitter. Sorry, California, but it was hot. My brain was melting. It didn't help that the truck who picked up our three friends (Buffalo, John, and Cheap Thrills) an hour and a half earlier was the same truck that drove right by us, without so much as a blown kiss or flip-off. I swear that half of the cars that passed us by pretended that we didn't exist, hid their faces as we passed or pretended to answer important phone calls ... cellphone being fumbled with and held upside-down, no less.

I took off my prescription Aviators and tried to slick back my uncouth moustache, but the salt from my fingers started burning the open cracks in my lips, and I recoiled from the sting.

The moral of this story is this: it doesn't matter how expensive your synthetic REI desert shirt is or how cool you think those TOP GUN aviators make you look, a mustache always spells trouble for Californianians. No one here trusts a man in a mustache. You're either a porn star or a pedophile, neither of which is allowed in a Californian's car or even in the sidecar of a clown's motorbike.

Luckily for us, a cool couple from Wyoming who not only knew what the Pacific Crest Trail was, but had also hiked sections of it, wasn't so shy. They stopped, picked us up, and didn't even mind that our accumulated 5-day Eau De Hiker perfume made their new Prius smell like toxic waste. Good people, those Wyomingians. And don't worry Julian, I still love your pies.