Please excuse me while I scream and curse into and at the wind

As soon as we left Mount Laguna, the wind picked up considerably. I knew it was going to be windy, I told myself. My brother and I had spent a week in the Mojave/Colorado deserts last March and were shocked by the wind. “Not this time!” I reassured myself… I’m coming to learn that the pct has a way of blowing (no pun intended) your expectations to pieces and showing you who’s boss, time and time again.

Day 5 (18 miles hiked): I slept terribly the night before, in fact the only reason I got any sleep at all was that I drugged myself (twice) with Benadryl. Beyond that hour or so of knocked out bliss, I was wide awake as my tent flapped in the increasingly insane wind. I couldn’t figure out why me tent was so low that it was hitting me in the head while I tried to sleep. In the morning I discovered that my poles had somehow shrunk from about 4 feet to approximately 3… which explains why my tent was so loose that it was smothering me. At around 5am I finally lost my patience and said “f*ck you, wind, I’ll just get up and start walking.” At which point the wind picked up speed so that packing up my backpack became near impossible and a monumental effort. And so started my 5th day on the pct.

The wind was overwhelming and constant all day long. We were hiking along a ridge, and there was absolutely no protection from it. It constantly was pushing us towards the cliff (we had some distance between us and the ledge, at least), but every once in awhile the trail would switch directions, at which point it would become a headwind that you had to crouch to get through. It was blowing constantly at about 20 mph, with gusts up to 45. My backpack was acting like a sail, and while I could stabilize myself, my pack had different ideas. Occasionally the wind would stop all together, which made me almost fall over several times since I was walking with adjustments for the wind. I felt like my 1yr old nephew, in that I was never quite stable on my feet and was constantly stumbling. To say in the least, it was a mentally challenging effort to put one foot in front of the other today.

Another challenging part of today was that the water situation started to get dicey. Streams are drying up, but the app that I mainly use to find water wasn’t exactly easy to use or accurate. Thankfully we never ran out, but there were definitely times when I was carrying way too much, out of fear there wouldn’t be something further up trail.

I hiked with Blase and Morley for most of the day, and the scenery was stunning! Definitely helped make me feel better about the pounding wind and heavy pack. We tried to find a place more sheltered from the wind to take a midday break. We found a place sheltered by boulders that reduced but didn’t eliminate it, there’s just no escaping it!

After booking it in the morning (7 miles by 9 am), then taking a series of long breaks, we slowly made our way to our campsite, 18 miles away. It was by far my longest day so far, but I felt pretty great about it. We found a more sheltered campsite where it was only slightly windy and as a bonus it had a small creek that we could get water from!

In this video, I try to explain how windy it is, but you can’t really hear me at all because it’s too windy. I say that I feel like a drunk person because I can’t walk in a straight line due to the wind. I also say it’s day 4, but it’s actually day 5.

Day 6 (16 miles hiked): did I say my campsite was sheltered from the wind? Because it was, and it was great… until about 6am, when it all of a sudden started howling and basically evicted me from my tent. My tent now has a layer of dust/ sand inside and everywhere because the wind blew it in in the 30 min it took me to wake up and pack. Oh well, early mornings in the desert are good because you can get some solid miles in before it gets too hot.

Today was rough, because I thought it was 28 miles and one night of camping before the next water source. At 1L/5miles, and 1L for camping, I was fully loaded with all of the heavy water I could carry (6L)! After about 10 miles of this, I was informed there was a water cache (where trail angels bring water to the trail for hikers during long stretches without natural water sources) and I had carried it all for nothing. Because I had so much extra weight on my back, I struggled to keep up with Morley and Blase, so I ended up walking alone for a lot of the day. We took breaks together, but it was slow going for me.

The scenery changed a lot today in terms of plant life, and I wonder if we crossed some sort of border between the deserts (eg. Sonora to Colorado?). There were sooooo many new cacti that were blooming, and this was also making me walk much slower than my buddies because I couldn’t stop taking pictures of all the flowers!

Blase and Morley planned to stop in the town of Julian, but I had decided against it so that I could push up to the next one where I had a box of goodies waiting for me. As such, we said goodbye 😦 though I really do hope to hike with them again! I waited under an underpass for several hours until it was cold enough to continue on up the massive hill in front of me. I got to a tent site and set up camp for the night. Now mind you, I’ve been sleeping near people I know for every night so far, and this was my first night on my own where I didn’t know anyone. I got all set up for the night and began to read my book. I looked up from the pages and found a walking stick walking across the outside of my tent door. I was super excited, because I’ve never seen one before. Then, just as I was falling asleep, all of a sudden I felt a tapping on my back! I screamed and jumped up to see who or what had come into my tent, only to see that it was just the f*ing wind, again, reminding me it’s still there. It had blown so hard that it pulled up one of my stakes, causing my tent pole to come down and tap me on the back. This was despite the fact that I had put giant rocks on all of my stakes. So out of my tent I went and doubled up on all of the rocks. It took me a good hour to calm back down again and get some rest.

Why hello, friend!

Day 7 (15 miles hiked): I’m finally starting to feel like I’ve got this whole thing down, so of course the pct again comes in to show me how wrong I am! I got up early and started hiking. The giant hill I climbed the day before meant that I was walking along a ridge all day, and it was absolutely beautiful. I decided that I should no longer walk or do anything between the hours of 11-1, because it’s always sweltering, and I hate it. I found some shade at 11 to settle down for a nap, and it was the first of its kind for several miles. As such, there was a steady stream of people coming in and trying to squeeze under the tiny amount of shade the bush was giving… so no nap for me! It was great fun chatting and hanging out with this new group of people.

When it came time to leave, I packed up and headed out on my own, as the others were moving more slowly. A few miles later, I walked up a small hill with a bush on top to the left. As I reached the crest, I heard a strange noise that I couldn’t place, as I’d never heard it before. I looked around to find a rattlesnake 2-3 ft away from me (he was on the other side of that bush I just came alongside), coiled, rattling/hissing, and looking generally pissed off at me. I screamed and ran back down the hill, where I proceeded to scream more, with several f bombs included. Thankfully it was extremely windy, so nobody could hear my cowardly roars. A couple of minutes later, a new friend, Courtney, walked up and asked me what was wrong (at this point I was hyperventilating and hunched over my poles feeling like I was going to hurl). I told her what happened, at which point, she said ok, lemme go check it out. Oh the bravery I witnessed as she clicked her poles and walked slowly up to where she knew a rattlesnake would be. She couldn’t see him anymore, so I walked up after her. I got a glimpse of his tail (photo below), and I believe based on its colors and patterns that it was a red diamond rattlesnake, and a rather large one at that. I tried to continue walking, but the adrenaline was really doing a number on me. I was dizzy, shaking, and having a hard time breathing, so I went a few yards and rested for 20 min before being able to continue onward.

About 3 miles after the rattlesnake, there was another water cache where we all stocked up. We were all sitting around taking a break when up out of nowhere it began to pour. 10 minutes into it, it began to thunder and lightning. I have to say a lightning storm is one of my biggest fears for on trail (as are rattlesnakes). There’s not really a safe way to experience lightning when you’re in the wilderness, so it’s very tense whenever a storm roles in. Thankfully this lightning had a 15 second delay before thunder, so it was pretty far away from us. Nonetheless, that night I giggled in my tent as I contemplated that I had to deal with two of my biggest fears about the trail, and with less than 2 hours between them… the pct needs to tell me time and time again who is in charge, cuz apparently I keep forgetting.

There’s a rattlesnake tail in this picture