PCT Day 3

Mount Laguna to Bushcamp

22.1 miles

Mile 63.6

It rained all night.

I woke up alarmed in the middle of the night when my tent smacked me in the face. Half my tent had collapsed when the wind yanked one of my stakes from the ground. I crawled from my disheveled shelter and quickly repitched it. Wet, cold and mad at myself for not pitching it better in the first place, I made my best attempt of falling back asleep.

Around 5 I decided I absolutely had to pee. The rain was still coming down, and having just rewarmed from the incident earlier, there was no way I was leaving the comfort of my tent. After a quick deliberation a opted to attempt peeing from my tent rather soil one of my precious water bottles. I won’t go into the details here, but I believing I discovered another hidden talent!

Finally got up around 630 to begin tearing down camp. The mountain top was in a cloud, so visibility sucked and everything was wet. All packed up my pack felt twice as heavy from all the water trapped inside. Not a great start for the day.

Things improved quickly though. Within a couple hours the sky was blue and the views were epic.

Around 1 the trail led into a pleasant campground with picnic tables and leafy trees for shade. There was a group of hikers drying out the contents of their pack, which I decided to was a good idea. Once I had everything spread out drying in the sun it looked as if a bomb had gone off inside my.

With time to kill I headed over to chat with a group of three hikers. Their names were Mountain Goat (not the Aussie I met day one), Rebel Yell and Jenna. Mountain Goat and Rebel Yell hiked the AT in 2016. Jenna shared a twissler with me and I reciprocated with some leukotape for her badly blistered feet. They were a neat group. After I packed up my now dry and much lighter gear, we made plans to meet at the same camp that night and I was off.

I approached Sunset Trailhead around 5. This was the last water source until Scissors Crossing, so I decided to top myself off. While filling my bottles a dude named Otter rolled up. He was a positive guy who had hiked the AT in 2017.

Bottles filled, I set off to eat the last four miles of the day. After a annoying long and steep decent I reached my camp for the night around 6. There was already a tent setup when I arrived, whose owner I soon learned was Wallet. Chatting with him I learned he’d hiked the AT, about 500 miles in Europe and had backpacked around New Zealand for 8 months.

Over the next hour Otter, Mountain Goat, Rebel Yell and Jenna joined Wallet and I around a small fire we had built. We chatted and ate until the desert night chill kicked in forcing us to dispersed into our tents for refuge.

P.s. I got my trail name today…but y’all are going to have to wait until tomorrow to hear that story.

Cheers!