Plane got in last night to Medford. In the morning it was uber rides around town to pickup a fuel canister then a $120 uber ride to the trailhead around noon. Got dumped at the edge of a busy highway and headed into the bush.

About .1 mile in, I ran into my first PCTer. Magid Marker was laying in her tent by a stream sleeping off the days heat. We chatted for a minute then I was on my way, getting in the first big climb of the day from 5k to 6.5 or so.

The heatwave is pretty rough right now. Low 90’s to start, but got cooler as I climbed higher. The trail is super shady, which is a nice change from hiking the desert last month. The downside is no views to speak of, just green tunnel on a comfortable trail.

I got to Twin Ponds trail junction around 7. There are two choices: go left for swampy pond or right for squaw lake. Took the right which turned out to be a rightous campsite right on the lake. Even the mosquitoes took the day off today and were not that bad. After I setup my tent and was eating dinner, Magic Marker turned up. She setup next to me and we chatted for a bit.

She said I must be “fresh to the trail, because I seemed so happy when we first met at the stream crossing”. Heh. I didn’t realize how charged up I was to get back out here.

She is a speech pathologist from NYC. She came out in March to do the first section of the PCT starting from Campo. It was her first backpacking experience. Well apparently she liked it and decided to keep going. She put her house up for sale and closed escrow when she got to Kennedy meadows! I asked her how she delt with all the paperwork. She had given power of attorney to some lawyer and poof….house sold, check in her account, and continue hiking. Her plans after the trail are undefined. Love it.

On a side note, she is the first african-american gal I’ve seen on the trail. Hope there are more in the future. I told her about the asian guy Vincent from NYC who had a similar story. There should be a club for NYC expats who have forsaken the City for living in the dirt.

8 miles for my first few hours on the trail. Feeling good.

Today is June 30, 2021.  Just checked my Oracle laptop for any last minute emails…login not found.   At 5:00 PM PST some automated script erased all my access.   That’s how it ends….login not found.

It is funny how when switching jobs in the past I never noticed this.  I was moving on to something new and exciting.   My previous contacts would be a source of advice, people I could network with, hire, generate leads, continue to discuss ideas, etc.   Frankly, I never really quit a company, I just moved to another gig.   The cloud of friends and associates stayed with me.  Moving forward.   Onward to the next thing.   

Well this is different.  There is no next thing in technology for me.  I’m not off to build a new product, rescue a project, or build a consulting team.   I’m not joining an organization to solve the world’s next big business problem.   Nope, it is just me and my daughter’s dog sitting here in my man cave.   I’m drinking some gifted 18 yr old Scotch and trying to deal with the void I’ve created for myself.   The dog?   He’s hoping I’ll give him another treat.   My loyal staff.  

Despite the decades of planning this is hitting me pretty hard.   It is tough when so much of my life was defined by a career that was both challenging and so much fun.   Alice threw me a fantastic retirement party.   I received some wonderful emails from previous employees and employers.  Over my career I have done a few bad things, a lot of good things, improved the world in some small way, and reaped reasonable financial rewards doing so.   I’ve climbed the career ladder, reached my personal zenith, and lingered for a while.   Even though I no longer wished to climb the next rung, I was comforted knowing it was there above me.  Waiting.  Now there is no ladder. 

There is no spoon.   

For the first time since May, 1989 I am jobless with zero career prospects.  If I spend much time in my current mindset I’m pretty sure that bottle would soon be gone.   Thankfully I will not have much time to sulk.   In a few days I will be back on the Pacific Crest Trail and have far more basic worries to occupy me.

So, here’s the plan.   I just booked a flight to Medford, OR for Saturday night.   On Sunday morning, July 4th 2021, I’ll find somebody to take me to the PCT and start walking North.   I’ll have 2 months on the trail to figure out what comes next. 

In the morning Vincent and I jump up when the first day hiker arrive in their cars. We head back into town to shower at the campsite. I get a room for the next night, eat a bunch, catch up with a few other hikers and make arrangements with Steve to get a ride out the next day.

Stormtrooper shows up with Patches and we have a good breakfast and dinner together. Looks like Patches found a new hiking partner in a gal named Jenny. He does ski patrol in the Winter in Utah, she does the same in Vail, Colorado. Both want to do bigger miles. They seem to be hitting it off.

Meanwhile Stormtrooper is getting that “look”. That boy is ready to turn on the afterburners. It was fun hiking with him in the early stages, but I think my timing for leaving the trail is a good one. I’d never keep up. I look forward to hearing from him as he crushes the miles ahead.

As for me, I accomplished everything I set out to do. I did my 180 miles and got back into the swing of things. My pace was about 2.5 days faster than last time, averaging ~18 miles a day. I’m pretty confident I can finish this thing when I get to Oregon. I’ve a nice bonus of meeting a bunch of folks that I will likely run into in Oregon. It will be nice to see some of them again.

That said, I made a list of stuff I need to ponder before I hit the trail in July. Among them are:
– A busted Sternum strap on my pack
– My water bladder / filter / hose setup is a mess
– I might need to switch to a lighter pack and tent. I don’t need all the carrying capacity my current pack has.
– New foam pad. The one I have is getting pretty ratty
– A smaller battery with more USB ports. 20000 MaH is overkill
– My earbud and spotify music stuff is not working
– My iPhone’s front glass is starting to crack
– A few meal augmentation ideas (bacon jerky is amazing, need some starbursts, some kind of fruity dry powder to improve my water on evening meals, etc)

I’ll deal with all that in June before I start. See you on the Trail !

Packed, filled up a few bottles of water and headed uphill with Patches. The climb out was some work and I quickly fell behind. Stormtrooper caught up and passed me. We agreed to meet in town later that night.  He’s hiking with Patches today. 

The trail followed last night’s script of skirting the ridgeline until around 165 where it turns into a ledge along a steep granite drop off.  Scree is everywhere. This is the most Sierra like trail I have seen in SoCal. Along the way I met Mr Giant Rattler sitting on the trail.  I really started him when I turned the corner.  He flips all over himself trying to get get reoriented to face me all freaked out shaking his rattle. In the end, he turned out to be cooperative, slowly slithering away uphill while I edged closer. It was interesting. He would give me a rattle or two when I got too close, all the while climbing up the steep hill. Eventually I had enough clearance and ran by while he made racket.

Climbing up a long switchback section, I saw a couple hikers coming up below me. I was making a good pace and figured they’d catch up in 30 to 45 minutes. I was shocked that 5 minutes later a gal is barking an urgent “excuse me”. I jumped out of the way and the couple passed me at a fast walk heading up hill. They disappeared a few minutes later, never breaking their pace. I found out later that they were trying to yoyo the trail in 150 days ! They want to go from Mexican border to Canada, turn around, and come back for a total of ~5,300 miles. Wow.

After that I encountered the rock slide everyone’s been talking about. I should have taken a picture, it was scary. There was a frayed rope attached on both sides to help, but basically I was scooting along a giant fallen rock that was lodged in the ledge over a 500 foot drop. After that there were a bunch of huge trees to climb over, some of which are slick and pointed downhill over said ledge. It all went well, but caution was pretty important.

I lapped some more new hikers today. Mostly kids. I heard at Paradise Cafe that a big bubble of hikers passed through a couple days ago. They are one of the party groups who are maxing out their town days with alcohol. Seems to be affecting their pace a bit 🙂

A few miles before Saddle Junction I ran into Vincent and we hiked together one / off. We met up at Saddle Junction and took the 3 mile route down Devil’s slide into town. This was some serious downhill. Great for me since I’m done after this. Not so great for Vincent cuz he has a 3k climb out. When we arrived at the trail head, with lots of day hikers were running around. I talked to a few, hoping to set their mind at ease in case they happened upon us during the road walk into town. It worked out as we picked up a hitch a little while later.

Arriving into town at 7, Vincent and I made a bunch of calls only to find out that the all the rooms were taken and the campground was full. We finally decided to duck into a burger / bar place to eat and figure out our next step. Our only option was a $600 airbnb booking. I drank a couple beers and was pondering our fate over dinner when the Karaoke festivities started up.

I call Stormtrooper to find out where he is and he’s like “I called ahead and their are no rooms”. Yeah, no kidding. He and Patches are camping on the trail near the bottom of devil’s slide.
Vincent is an interesting dude. He is Asian from NYC and has never been out West. Never been much of anywhere as far as I can tell. Somehow, he decided to change up his life and gave up his apartment, loaded up his SUV, and headed to Arizona to park it for 6 months. His ambiguous plan after the trail is to “roam around sleeping in his car”. He hasn’t told his family. Wish I could be a fly on the wall when that message is delivered.

Anyway, sitting there listening to the locals doing a poor job singing 80’s songs isn’t getting us anywhere. We both decide that Tequila shots might help. And it does! After the first round, 10+ hikers show up from bar hopping and proceed to join the Karaoke party. Gormet is there with Skids and Late Start. We spend some time catching up and I buy a few more rounds of Tequila shots for the reunion. I can’t convince anyone to share floor space in their rooms, and these folks can’t sing any better than the locals, but we do have a pretty good time.

Eventually, Vincent and I decide it is time to do some stealth camping. We head out to a trail head a mile out of town stumbling along talking about life. He’s a good guy. I think he made the right decision to leave NYC behind and try something new. Hopefully I’ll run into him again sometime. Anyway, we reach the spot, plow through a few bushes and cowboy camp on a flat spot.  20 miles of hiking + 4 extra miles of hiking/town walking and half dozen tequila shots insures I have a good nights sleep.  

I told ST last night that today would be a late start which turned out to be a little after 7. We packed and headed down to the water tank to load up for the ~6 miler to Paradise Cafe. Mary is the gal responsible for this water stop. She has built up the area a bit more than I remember in ’17. A few picnic benches, lots more water storage, and an expanded book library. Mary was there in the morning so I got the chance to thank her.

Chatted up a few of the hikers milling around then headed out. Nice cool hike to Paradise exit, then a 1 mile roadwalk. ST and I got a table outside and settled in. Shortly after, Patches turned up together with a gal named Artemis. Artemis started on April 27th (!?!) and has been hiking 10 to 12 miles a day. Nice gal and good attitude, but she’s going to need to step up the mileage soon.

Splinter, Graceland and Vincent also turned up a bit later. I gorged on a huge burger, several Radlers, and tied it off with some Apple pie. It was heaven. We all busted out around 2:00 eyeing Live Oak Spring as our next stop.

Patches, Graceland, and Artemis left first, starting the 1 mile walk back to the trail. I thought I’d try my luck with the waitress first asking her how hard it would be to get a hitch. She thought for a moment, then said “well I can give you a lift”. Hah! Not only am I exceeding my mileage goals, but my Yogi (i.e. begging) skills are warming up.

On the way out, we saw the French gal we talked to the night before walking in. The waitress gal will pick her up on the way back. So now we are 15 minutes ahead of Patches. Storm and I were laughing about that…we know he is going ot be pissed.
This section of the trail is new to me. It was closed in ’17. The climb is substantial, we go from 5k to 8k+ in a little over 6 miles.

I cut StormTrooper loose after climbing a bit telling him it was going to be a slow day for me. Took my time. Along the way I ran into about a dozen hikers in several groups that I had not met previously. Apparently we have jumped ahead into the next bubble of hikers. Nice folks, though they clearly prefer to remain tight in their new trail families. The cliques are forming.

After the major part of the climb, I was hiking up and down along a ridge line until the cutoff to Live Oak. The San Jacinto foot hills form a single barrier between the low flat basin to the west and the equally low and flat basin to the east (Palm Springs). On every saddle between the west and east sides, the wind was ferocious. All the level tent sites I saw along the way looked really exposed. Near Live Oak I ran into several groups setting up there, but one look at the permanent bent over trees next to their campsite told me a story of big wind gusts slapping their tents around.

Fortunately or not, the trail to Live Oak Springs and the only water on this stretch is a long 1 mile hike downhill on the east side. Just as I was about to head down guess who shows up? Patches. There is no “Hi howyadoin”. The first words out are: “How the F&^k did you get ahead of me?” Well young man, you need to learn the art of begging !!!!

We arrived around 8 and it was getting pretty dark. Bunch of folks setup camping. Some lady showed me around, cautioning me not to camp under the “widow makers” as she called them (i.e. Dead Trees). Well they took all the other spots, so I told her I’d have to take my chances. She wanted to argue about that which I dismissed by throwing my bag down and unpacking. Lady disappeared. Found Stormtrooper and we caught up for a few minutes. Patches was still grumbling about coming in last. Almost a 15 miler today with 3+ hours of lounge time in the cafe.