Day 45 - Hiker Heaven - May 20

In the middle of the night, I heard lions roaring nearby.  We had been warned about them by overhearing the staff tell a non PCTer there is an African lion reserve next door.  Some other PCT hikers had not been warned, and spent a sleepless night worrying about that noise.  The PCT hikers aren't warned, even though we're all on edge, used to listening for rodents and bears coming to eat our food and cougars coming to eat us.  I guess we're less likely to complain.

We woke to the smell of Boy Scouts cooking, which smell like coffee at the adult area and burnt eggs from the kids.  As we hiked out, we said goodbye to the adults and they wished us luck on our journey.

As we hiked, we saw a small group gaining ground on us.  They looked like day hikers.  One passed us, carrying nothing.  We saw a rattlesnake on the trail ahead, it moved downhill into a bush and we warned the dayhikers behind.  We were going to let them pass, but they let us lead, saying that we had more practice with the rattlesnakes.  Good point.  We talked with them for a while as we hiked.  They were two couples, Brandon, the guy who passed us, and Isabel.  I got the names of the other couple, but they were lost on my phone.  Probably need to use a better program, sometimes it overwrites.

At one point, Matt hiked ahead with the guy, and the ladies asked us about female hygiene on the trail.  We talked about the two different ways of dealing with your period on the trail.  One is to use tampons and pack out the used ones, the other method is to use a menstrual cup and dump the contents into a cathole like you would with poop.  You have to keep your hands clean for that.

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