Day 115: Forest Rangers and Permit Checks
Date: Fri 8/10
PCT Start Mile: 1925.2
PCT End Mile: 1957.2
PCT Mileage for Day: 32
Total PCT Mileage: 1957.2
The Highlights: old PCT markers, ranger permit check, and a beautiful camping spot
After packing up and slathering on some Desitin, we hit the trail, quietly hiking past the trail magic site where Sparkles and Hannah slumbered. In another hour, they would be up cooking pancakes for hikers. Oh to stay… but we continued on. Big miles to get in today.
The morning brought us through another burn area before returning us to healthy forest, where I spent my morning snapping pics of some of the old, charred, and disappearing PCT markers on trees.
After 18-19 miles, we took our lunch break at a tent site on Horseshoe Lake, where we met a few other hikers including a couple from Taiwan and a girl from Hungary.
The couple from Taiwan was older… maybe in their 60s. The husband explained to us that his wife’s trail name was Crazy Woman, because she wanted to hike the PCT, and his trail name was Dumb 67, because he was dumb enough to join her. I assumed 67 was his age, but didn’t ask. They had started on March 18th and said they were slow, but just kept plugging away at it.
The hiker from Hungary had the trail name Rocky, and we spent the afternoon leapfrogging with her a bit.
Horseshoe Lake.
After lunch, we hiked about 6.8 miles through mostly shaded forest en route to the next water source. The short exposed sections revealed the heat of the day, so we were happy we were mostly under canopy.
Along the way, we met a couple rangers that looked like they could have been about a day out of high school. They were out doing a bit of trail maintenance, talking to visitors, and checking permits. We talked to them a bit about the area and they asked if we were just PCT hikers. I’m not sure what the “just” part meant, but was happy they didn’t ask to see our permits, because mine is buried deep in my pack and I wasn’t too keen on fishing it out. This luck was short lived through.
Not too much further up the trail at the small stream where we stopped to collect water, there was another ranger, and he was checking permits. Ugh. I dug it out of my pack.
This is actually the very first time on our entire trip that we’ve had our permits checked. Many people never run into a single ranger on their entire hike. We had chatted with one way back at Aloha Lake (our first day hiking after leaving South Lake Tahoe), but he hadn’t even asked about our permits. The three today now brought our ranger total up to four.
This particular ranger had actually hiked the PCT in 2016, so he loved chatting with PCT hikers. His trail name was Droplet (like a sweat droplet), and many on the trail called him Ranger Droplet, since he was already a ranger before doing the PCT, and so was quite a stickler for all of the LNT (Leave No Trace) principles. He was fun to talk to and, so long as I had my whole pack unpacked to dig out my permit, I sat and stuffed Fritos into my face while we chatted. Eventually Rainman, Pitch, and Mustang hiked up and we chatted with them a bit as well before hiking on.
The last seven miles of our hike ended with a four mile climb to the ridge where we planned to camp. The Fritos must have given me an extra kick, because I was able to keep up a three mph pace, even up the climb. I was also highly motivated to be finished for the day, and ready for dinner.
While much of our hike for the day was in the trees and actually somewhat boring, our tent site for the night is pretty awesome, with fantastic views. The site is definitely a bit exposed, so hopefully the night will remain calm.
After dinner and camp chores, I crawled into my sleeping bag, one of my favorite moments of the day. Not that I don’t enjoy the hiking – I do – but there is a great feeling that comes with crawling into a comfy sleeping bag after a long day on the trail. And once it’s dark, we can stare up through our mesh tent at the stars… but who are we kidding, we mostly fall asleep immediately.
