The Bad Week (1983.7 mi +114.7 -73.1)

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I'm in Bend! After a hell of a time getting here. It's been hot. My feet are pounding due to suboptimal equipment, changing back to minimalist footwear, long days, and sharp rocks. I just spent $200 at REI bringing my gear almost up to par with what I had before this week. Ugh.

In Mazama Village, the resupply was awful. I had heard about it, but still was unprepared. The only protein options were overpriced jerky and peanut butter. I made do, having packed in an extra dinner and some good trail mix. I was warned about the quality. The general store also had the slowest internet you could possibly call internet, shared among a bunch of teenagers who were unhappy about being pulled out to a National Park for a day, and a bunch of thru-hikers trying to upload pictures and download podcasts and audiobooks.

Then I made a huge mistake: I hiked the PCT. Almost everyone near Crater Lake takes the Crater Lake Rim Trail, an alternate trail that cuts a few miles off the PCT, but has harder climbing than the actual PCT. As a consequence of this mistake, I never actually saw Crater Lake. Whoops.

And then I made another mistake: eating lunch in a parking lot in a national park. When I finished my meal, my trekking poles were gone. There was enough person-traffic and car-traffic that I have no idea when in that hour my poles were taken. They were just on the other side of the tree from me! I was fuming mad about this for a while, obviously.

And then, bam, trail magic! Sam's (not the Pizza Brikk Sam that I know) grandparents were waiting for him, and had a nice spread by the side of Highway 138, where I interrogated every thru-hiker about whether they had seen who took my poles. No luck, obviously. Not a great Sunday out of Crater Lake.

Monday was mostly uneventful. But I found a walking stick that miraculously managed to pitch my tent, so I was reasonably optimistic about getting into Bend without being eaten alive by bugs, which started to show up as water became more plentiful. Ponds and lakes everywhere. (The reason I ate lunch in a parking lot on Sunday was the water cache located there.)

Then Tuesday was a relatively short day (25 instead of 30+) into Shelter Cove, which also had a low-quality general store, though well above Mazama. I also reconnected with a bunch of hikers I hadn't met in a long time there: Splash and Tamale, Near Miss (formerly Brian of Brian and Jasper fame. Jasper had to drop off trail to start senior year), FKAT (Formerly Known As Tall. Small dropped off trail), and some of the Blob, who I briefly met near Cajon Pass. The Blob remembered me better than I remembered them, since I met all 12 of them at once, while they met me when I ate my first Happy Meal on trail.

I was feeling reasonably optimistic about getting back on trail Wednesday morning, and had a hard but satisfying day Wednesday. I even got trail magic again for lunch! Ducky's parents do magic pretty regularly near Charlton Lake. I almost stopped before there for lunch, but pressed on just long enough to see the unique signs that they had posted.

So naturally Wednesday afternoon had to suck. I was hiking near the end of the day through an area with a ton of downed trees. On one of those trees I leaned on my walking stick a little too hard and broke it. It had been buggy all day, so pitching a tent was necessary. I was only a mile or two out from camp at this point, and I did not find a stick that would pitch the tent well. I did find one to pitch the tent poorly, but bloodied my left hand a bit snapping it down to size. My feet were also killing me at this point, after a 31.6 + 1.5 mile day (Shelter Cove was a decent way off trail.) As the mosquito swarms woke up, I managed to get inside my tent, but without enough room to sit up. And barely enough room to roll onto my side.

I don't remember if I cried or not that night, but I was certainly miserable enough. I didn't have the room to cook dinner, instead eating Hershey's and Skittles for a 600 calorie (read: not nearly enough) meal. I woke up as miserable as I went to sleep. And also dehydrated, since I hadn't gotten water in the tent-setup-fiasco. I debated taking a picture of my sad, sad, tent, but instead broke camp as fast as humanly possible on Thursday morning.

I got water pretty early on Thursday (yay ponds everywhere) and had plenty to drink at that point. Dumbbell Lake is a cool name for a place to accidentally leave your dirty bladder. I realized that particular mistake about 12 miles later, well past the point of no return. I definitely enjoyed cooling off my legs at Sisters Mirror Lake after failing to call some people. (It was probably better that they didn't hear me bitch relentlessly.) I demoted one of my clean bladders to dirty, and finagled the lines so that the gravity filter still filtered. It didn't work very well, so it took a while.

I did the same long filtration at dinner, at Bitch Please Pond (not it's actual name, but there's agreement among hikers that it should change). I also took a poop that used the last of my toilet paper on Thursday night. That's always a worrying spot to be in.

I picked a spot where I could cowboy camp without dealing with mosquitoes. But oh boy did I not sleep well  I woke up twice to night hikers coming through. (One of the groups made a wrong turn off the PCT, and I directed them back. My cowboy spot was 50 ft down a side trail.) I woke up 3 or 4 times to insects in my ear. Would not recommend. Since I wasn't sure whether they were flies or ants, they didn't add to the kill count. And I swear I heard a mosquito once, but I may have been drifting in and out of a nightmare.

I woke up later than usual, exhausted. I would have mixed my last instant coffee, but I was worried about stimulating my digestive system. I got water without filtering it at the beautiful natural waterfall in the cover photo. Of course, once I had drank this water, I walked up trail to find a group of weekenders camped within 20 feet of the source of the falls, with a line strung up indicating that they had recently done laundry. I drank all of the water unfiltered anyway. This was a bad idea.

Naturally my easy 15 mile day today was mostly over lava rock, which made my feet feel like they were on fire. At one point, when I was ready to hit a climb hard, I had to wait a few minutes for a pack train to pass. I've waited for freight trains that moved faster than this group. When I finally got to Mackenzie Pass, I was convinced the hitch was gonna be impossible, since there was nowhere for cars to stop.

But then everything improved as I walked up the road a tenth of a mile to the observatory, where there were multiple people giving hikers rides. I got fruit and soda and brownies and beer and a ride into Bend. The REI had more or less what I was looking for (trekking poles, but not as good as the ones I lost, and a dirty bladder, but not Platypus brand). The Red Robin had a good burger with endless sweet potato fries. I'm now sharing a room with Splash and Tamale, about to go out to dinner with other hikers. I'm clean and optimistic about the future, and neither of those have been true since last Sunday afternoon.

Happy Meal, 1112