Endless P Summer

Cascade Lockes, OR

In case anybody was wondering, I demolished Oregon, absolutely demolished it. I put ‘Eye of the Tiger’ on repeat, walked all day everyday and finished the state in two weeks. It was exciting, grueling, overwhelmingly beautiful, and very rewarding.

In Mazama Village I ran into my friend Tami who I hadn’t seen since the Sierras. I spent a day hiking with Tami and also Nesquick and 5 Star who I had only met briefly about 1500 miles before. Crater Lake is quite the spectacle and definitely worth checking out. After Crater Lake and north of Mt Thielsen Schemes and I hiked with Distance and Castaway for a few days until we got to Shelter Cove Resort. This place was cool, it was a little campground on a lake with a store. They had a good supply of ice cream sandwiches and also my favorite trail snack, Franz Pastries. I should say they had a good supply until I got there.

We left there just before noon and crushed major miles. The following day Poca AKA Pocahontas, another formidable friendly female hiker, joined Schemes and me and hiked with us the rest of the way through Oregon. After a few chilly nights we started getting into some pretty serious heat. Just south of Big Lake Youth Camp was one of the hottest days I had on the trail. We hiked through burn zones that provided no shade and then lava fields that I think inspired level 8 of the original Super Mario bros. I was low on water and was feeling like Clark W. Griswold in NL’s Vacation. Things worked out though, I traded a Clif Bar to a southbounder for half a liter of water, what a deal!

BLYC treated us pretty well. I picked up a resupply package, there were couches for us to chill out on, they fed us burritos, let us shower, and had a sweet beach for us to camp on. Oh yeah I should probably mention that the Oregon Cascades were wicked awesome!! The Sisters are these prominent mountains in a line that are spaced out along the trail like every 30 miles until Washington. There’s 3 sisters and then 4 other big time mountains that the trail goes right along. It’s quite a sight to see. The biggest and most northern peak is Mt Hood, where people were skiing up until August 2nd. This is where the famous Timberline Lodge from ‘The Shining’ is located. It’s not as scary in person though, and there’s no hedge maze.

I had been hearing about their incredible breakfast buffet for days if not weeks and we were originally planning to camp a few miles south so we would have just a short walk in the morning. Plans changed once we were within striking distance though, we decided to make a push for it and to make it there the night before to see if the pizza rumors were true. They weren’t, but everything worked out really nicely. There was a big wedding going on and as much as I wanted to get out on the dance floor and whip and nay nay, I smelled a little funky and didn’t want to offend anybody. The bar with the pizza was closed so Schemes, Poca and myself got a meal at the fancy restaurant that was still serving. We sat next to this really nice couple, Ron and Christel. We had a great meal, and a great time. When we got the tab we found out that Ron and Christel, who had already left, took care of the whole thing. I couldn’t believe it, it’s people like this that restore my faith in humanity. If you’re reading this, thank you so much.

We camped outside the lodge that night and then put an absolute beating on the buffet the next morning. The rest of Oregon was simply majestic. We hiked along the backside of Hood, next to Ramona Falls and along Eagle Creek. Eagle Creek was spectacular and included Tunnel Falls which I thought was just the cat’s ass, easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life.

On August 3rd we got into Cascade Locks and finished the state with a few hours to spare. A local hiker Randy was really cool and nice enough to give us a ride all the way to Portland. If you’re reading this Randy please respond, one of us left something in your car. I took the red eye to Boston on the night of the 4th so Schemes and I spent the day exploring Portland. I’m quite fond of the PMW and this is a great city. Her friend Jen gave me a ride to the airport and I had a fantastic whirlwind 4 day intermission at home.

The reason for my trip home and the major event of the summer was my brother Jake and sister in law Jodi’s wedding. The wedding was a blast and it was quite an honor to be cast in a supporting role as the BM. We got great weather, ate good, danced for hours and were dazzled by the newlyweds’ moves on the dance floor. A bunch of us had a campfire and set up tents in Jake and Jodi’s backyard afterwards. I was used to that. Besides the wedding I had a bunch of other stuff to do so I’ll just list them; town chores and preparing for Washington, dinner to celebrate my parents 40th anniversary at my brother Mike’s, the rehearsal dinner at Chianti’s in Beverly, I ran up the woods with my father, saw the mighty Atlantic Ocean, checked in on the guys at work, and golfed before the wedding with my father, Rick Skalski, and all the groomsmen. It was a really great trip home. I had so much fun and it was so good to see everybody.

Now back to the trail. I’m flying back to Portland, have a ride lined up to Cascade Locks and then life gets really simple again. As much fun as these past few days have been, I’ve heard good things about Washington state and I’m really looking forward to catching up with my friends and hiking the rest of the trail.

Crater Lake

massive mountains
Burn area

 Mt Jefferson

Me, Schemes, Poca

M
 Tunnel Falls

  The Bride and Groom putting on quite the performance.

 The siblings Carmody. Me, Mike, Molly, Jake

Across the Imaginary Line into Northern California

While doing a little research before the trip I learned that of the 5 sections of the trail (the desert, the Sierras, NorCal, Oregon, and Washington) there’s not much information about Northern California. I’m not even 100 percent where the Sierras end and NorCal begins. One thing is for sure though, I’m in it now and this mysterious section is unfolding pleasantly before my eyes.

The overwhelming scenery of the Sierras is behind me now but the trail is still awesome. A lot has happened in the last week. I saw a bear. A good sized black bear from about 30-40 feet, it took one look at me and jetted into the woods. It was about ten minutes after I left camp one morning I came across this beast just chilling out in the trail eating berries or something. It happened to be the day after I sent my bear canister home.

We’ve still been putting in some big miles but also checking out some unique towns. On the summer solstice, Schemes, S+M and I hiked 44 miles and the timing was perfect. Any slower and we would have been evacuated from the trail by the ‘Washington Wildfire’. The smoke was visible the night before but luck and the wind were on our side. We got to a road crossing about 20 miles into our day and heard rumors the trail would be shut down, but some hikers coming in our direction told us it wasn’t so bad so we made a push for it. It was a good move. We hiked into the night, dealt with some big time winds along a ridge and could see heavy smoke a few miles away but lived to tell the tale. Once we got to South Lake Tahoe the following day, we heard from other hikers the trail was closed shortly after we passed through and they had to spend the day hitching around the closure.

I’ve stopped in a few interesting towns lately; South Lake Tahoe, Auburn and Sierra City. I went into SLT for a night and it had everything you needed but it was big and spread out. I won a salad bar challenge at this pizza place but only because I declared myself the winner of a contest I invented. Schemes won an unofficial breakfast contest the next morning at Ernie’s Cafe when she ordered two gigantic breakfasts back to back before I could finish my pancakes. After leaving there we hiked along Echo Lake, through Desolation Wilderness and over and along some sweet ridges. Once we got to Squaw Valley there were lots of runners on the trail getting ready for the Western States 100 mile trail race going on that weekend.

S+M had been living in Auburn before the trail and a few days after Tahoe we stopped there and stayed in the house she was living in with Bill and Debi. It was fun and relaxing, the first time I stayed inside a house in months. We checked out the town, ate massive burgers and sweet potato fries at the Club Car and the girls went to get foot massages. Since I had been whining about my feet for a few days and felt a little peer pressure I decided to get a foot massage myself. It was not an enjoyable experience, let’s just say it was the last time I pay somebody to tickle my feet for a half hour. My feet have however felt fantastic ever since. We devoured about 40 more miles of trail before coming within a mile of the tiny little town of Sierra City and I wasn’t passing up an opportunity for real food. We had a quick stop here and I ate breakfast and lunch in succession at the Red Moose Inn before getting back up into the mountains.

I’m almost halfway through this trail and things are still going really well. I feel like I’m getting the hang of it, enjoying myself, and my body is holding up well. Food has become more important to me then ever before and I often find myself pretty hungry. If my food stories bore you well I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.

Kennedy Meadows North, CA

I know how confusing this must be so I’ll elaborate. There are two Kennedy Meadows, I’m not going in circles. This one is about 10 miles east of Sonora Pass on highway 4 and has a store and a restaurant. I hitched down here after delivering the trail a thorough beating with my feet for the last week or so. While I was here I stuffed my face with a big cheeseburger covered with chili and then over did it on ice cream cones. Going overboard on ice cream is a mandatory town activity for me. More importantly the real reason we stopped in here was to get a few days worth of food to get to Tahoe.

As we get deeper into the hike the crowd really begins to thin out. It’s difficult to keep a big group together when people travel different speeds, want to see different towns, or just have different agendas. For awhile we had a group of about 10-12 of us traveling together but lately I’ve been hiking with Boone(yellow beard, purple short shorts and usually seen either walking fast or ripping a heater), S+M, and Schemes. S+M(Smiles and Miles), an artist by trade, is super talented, is our team seamstress and made all her own gear. She’s a hardcore hiker, walks all day long with a smile on her face and as a side project makes sure that she sufficiently busts my chops whenever possible. Schemes might be the ultimate badass. She’s the fastest person I’ve hiked with and does it while wearing a sundress, gardeners hat, and carrying around a little kids backpack. Schemes stays in bed for about an hour longer than everyone else and usually catches me before lunch. She likes to sneak up on me while I have my headphones in and scare the bejesuses out of me. It’s not even remotely funny. Don’t get me wrong, I can still dust her on the uphills but she’s got it all over me the rest of the time.

This last section of trail is the reason I decided to thru hike the PCT in the first place. During a road trip around the country last year I found myself hiking along the Washington Coast in Olympic NP where I met my friend Carol. Carol aka ‘Lucky Winner’ hiked half the trail in ’13 and was continuing last summer. I invited myself to stay at her house in Seattle and She invited me to join her hiking, so I did and hiked 112 miles from Red’s Meadow to Sonora Pass. I decided then that I would make it a priority to thru hike the trail. This section is incredible and I was glad to do it again. It travels through Yosemite and up and over Sonora Pass which is what I imagine the planet Mars to look like. Every day I saw deer and tons of yellow-bellied marmot. Two of the mornings I saw a big grey coyote that I was really hoping were wolves. We did however just finish reading Jack London’s Call of the Wild so there’s a chance it was a ghost dog. There was lots of water and I swam every chance I could get. Not only was the icy water exhilarating and invigorating, it was good for my hygiene. I thought I was pretty familiar with this section but I did make my first significant blunder, hiking two miles down a side trail before realizing it and hiking back. It was a little stupid.

Supposedly we’re out of the Sierras now and moving on to Northern California. For future reference I’ll be referring to this area as NorCal. I don’t know much about NorCal but I’m excited and have a pretty good feeling about it.

A wooly mammoth, me, Boone, Schemes, S+M