22 miles
I wake up early and toss and turn until I go back to sleep, not waking up again until after 7. I'm sure Kneif is gone by now, but I hear him rustling and call out to him. He was slow to wake up too, he says, but I can't tell if that's true, or if he's just waiting for me. We break down camp, and he's ready 10 minutes faster than me, so I tell him to go ahead and start and I'll catch up.
The day is hot, and we take a few long breaks, drying our tents out in the sun and sharing more stories. We catch up to another hiker, Plant, who passed us early in the morning, and we all eat lunch together. Plant smokes a lot of weed, and later Knief and I muse that he probably got his name for that very reason. They both have similar hiking speeds, and soon leave me in the dust. I catch up with them again at the junction Knief planned to camp at, and Knief asks him if he got his hiker name from smoking so much pot. To both of our surprise, he tells us it's short for faceplant, since he took a bad fall early on in the trail. Just goes to show, you can rarely guess the origins of a hiker name.
The hardest part of the day comes in the form of a water source. We have a warning that there is no water for about 16 miles, and the last source we come to before the dry stretch is .6 miles off trail. I get to the side trail just as Plant and Knief are finishing their cigarettes, having already gotten their water. I ask how the trail down is and Plant tells me it's steep. Coming from another hiker, this is not what I want to hear. I make fast time down, but realize it's going to be a pain to climb back up. The first pool I get to is scummy, so I continue on to get to a tiny, trickling flow of clearer water. I fill 3 liters and awkwardly start the rather nasty climb up. I hate having to go off trail for this very reason--a mile extra of walking, plus a nasty climb, and I'm not closet to canada.
When I get to the topcoat Knief is still waiting for me, to make sure everything was okay. These Europeans are so gentlemanly!
We realize there is an alternate trail that leads directly into Shelter Cove, bypassing 8 extra miles we would have to hike to get there from the PCT. Both Knief and I have packages there, so we decide to do the alternate, though are not very sure where it starts. Plant has no gps, so he decides to camp with us for the night, and follow us in the morning.
A sherif drives by on a forest road, and I flag him down to ask about the trail. He ends up driving down the road for us to tell us exactly how far down it starts and what to look for. Our maps call it the Oregon Skyline trail, but we soon learn that this name is outdated and not on any signs.
We are in another long dry stretch without water, and the water cache that is here is completely empty. Knief tells me he doesn't need all of the water he carried out, so says I can have some in the morning. Knief makes another fire, this one starting in a fraction of the time, and we enjoy our little hiker party with some hot cocoa and trail stories. We joke around with each other easily, and it feels like I've known Knief far longer than 3 days.
Tomorrow we hit shelter cove, and I send a text to Barrel to see if he'll wait until I get in before leaving. Twenty more miles on an alternate trail--I'm hoping to crush it and get there around 3pm.
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