Day 54: shelter cove to Maiden Peak shelter

July 27
10 miles

We all wake up late. I can tell no one wants to get up, and assume the boys have significant hangovers. I feel pretty good, but I never want to get up. Barrel is the first one up, and sounds peppier than I expect, since he had more to drink than Knief and I combined. He convinces me to come out of my tent by telling me he bought me a peach. Fresh fruit is a delicacy I won't pass up. It's the best peach I've ever had.

I decide to take a shower and do my laundry here, even though Barrel gives me shit for having done both a mere three days ago. I seem to get dirtier than most people, and feel that it's wrong to pass up the opportunity to get clean. Even though it only lasts for a few minutes once you get back on the trail.

The showers are $1.50 for three minutes. I waste the first minute trying to figure out how to get hot water, and though I think I'm moving fast, the shower shuts off just as I've lathered up. Figures. The rest of my quarters are for laundry, so I leave the shower only slightly cleaner than when I got in. Disappointing.

Barrel keeps saying he's going to leave and do at least 20 miles today, but he's still around by 1, and I wonder what's taking him so long to head out. I've read there is an awesome shelter about 10 miles from here, with solar powered lights (for some reason, this seems awesome to me), so I tell everyone this is where I'm headed tonight. Barrel says he's doesn't want to just do ten miles, so I anticipate him being ahead of me again for a few days.

By 1:30 Barrel comes up and tells me he actually had been waiting to hike out with me, and will decide in ten miles if he wants to stay at the shelter or not. We leave an hour later--I'm happy, clean and full. Ready for some solar powered lights!

It's an easy ten, and we get there a little before 7. We make a fire, sign and read the trail registry, looking for friends who have already gone past. Soon we hear voices, and see a family coming up to the shelter. A mother and her two daughters, 12 and 17, are hiking Oregon, and have been joined by her husband, brother and best friend for a few days. They saw the smoke and followed the little known trail to the cabin. We invite them in, but since there's so many of them, they decide to pitch tents outside--which was very considerate of them, considering it wasn't a very big cabin.

They invite us over for s'mores, and soon we're all singing songs around the campfire, as the brother plays his travel guitar. They are a fun family, and we enjoy our evening of songs and laughter.

The solar lights are pretty awesome, and we putz around the cabin until it's time to go to sleep--setting up our bags in the beautiful loft. A day done well, I think.

Day 53: shelter cove and trail lessons

July 26
20 miles

Day 53
July 26
20 miles

I'm ready to go by 7:30, but Knief and plant have already left by 6--the standard hiker time. I find one of knief's water bottles outside my tent, which he thought to leave me so that I would have extra water. What a guy!

I make my way to the trail head of this alternate trail, and hope it's fairly straightforward. I make good time for the first 8 miles, even though the sun is hot on my back. I start thinking about the transitory nature of trail friendships. How I've shared more with people I've hiked 25 miles with, than people I've dated for 6 months.

I wish I could transport all of these hikers to one place, and we could live with each other after the trail, in a magical land of made up names and big miles. But I know it wouldn't be the same. There is something special about this narrow piece of ground we walk; something that bonds us together, even for the short distances we may have together.

This all feels like an experiment in holding close and letting go. It's the letting go part I've always had trouble with, and now, almost 1,000 miles in, I realize this might be my most important trail lesson. How to enjoy what I have when I have it, and let it go when its time is done. I'm hoping that Barrel is waiting for me in Shelter Cove, but I remind myself that this hike is each our own; we owe nothing to each other. If my friends aren't there, it's not the end of the world, I simply have to hike my own hike. Say it like it's so easy.

In the midst of my musings, I pass by a side trail. I look at the sign, "MW Horse trail"...I don't think I want to take a horse trail, and the one I'm on looks more worn, so I continue on. In a mile the trail dumps me onto a gravel road. With no other directions to go on, I turn left and head toward what I think is the lake I'm supposed to walk past. As I'm walking down the road, a truck slowly goes past me, two older women looking at me with their windows down. I yell out, asking if I'm close to the lake, and before I know it, they are offering me a ride to Crescent Lake. I gladly accept, thinking the lake is less than a mile away. They end up driving me to Crescent lake the town, much further from the lake. They drop me at the visitor's center, and tell me they will come back after they go to the store, and will take me wherever I want to go.

The visitor's center is also the Realty office, and it's busy, so I study some maps and head back outside to wait for Deb and her wife to return. Barrel calls me while I'm waiting and gives me better directions to where the trail picks up again back at the lake. The ladies happily drive me back, and their happiness is so infectious it doesn't even matter that I'm behind schedule--I'm just glad I got to meet two more awesome trail angels.

I finally locate the trail--oh, guess what, I WAS supposed to take that random horse trail that I walked past--and head on my way. I stop at a nice little lake, called Diamond View lake, to each lunch, and stare out at the mountains. I decide to take my time, no longer trying to get there at any particular time. Barrel told me he might head back out on the trail this afternoon, so I figure there's no use rushing past a nice spot--either he's there whenever I show up, or he's not. Hold close; let go.

I make okay time the rest of the afternoon--finally getting to Shelter Cove around 5. Shelter Cove is an RV/cabin rental spot in a cove on Odell lake. There is a small (expensive) store with food and tackle, but otherwise there isn't much to do here. Walking through the park I see Plant, Knief and Barrel playing horseshoes. I'm glad I didn't rush to meet them, at the expense of enjoying my day, but I'm sure happy that they're still here.

They all seem to be well on their way to tipsy, but claim they are hiking out tonight. After another round of horseshoes, two large pizzas from the store, and more beer, I have convinced Knief and Barrel to stay the night. We pitch our tents in the designated PCT hiker spot, and spend the evening around the communal campfire. Knief and Barrel have had a large amount of beer, but claim they will hike out tomorrow. I plan to take a Nero--leaving around 1 or 2 and hiking out ten miles to an awesome sounding shelter that I discovered on my new Guthooks map ap.  We all go to sleep a little drunk, and I think about how the trail seems to turn us into glutenous alcoholics whenever we get off it, some of us more than others.

Knief tells us a bedtime story about children being turned into raisins, and I laugh, drink a lot of water, and go to bed feeling pretty darn happy.

Day 52: to the junction

July 25
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.