Daily Miles: 12.5
Total Miles This Hike: 114.1
PCT Miles Covered: 1810.8
Well, the mosquitos weren’t that bad when I got here last night. By the time I got out of my tent this morning though they all came out of the woodwork. Packed up quick again and threw a poptart in my mouth and headed up the trail just as 3 northbound hikers were showing up to get water. As I climbed the hill towards the Maiden Peak Ski Shelter, I was glad I didn’t try to head up there last night. It wan’t too far but was probably the steepeet uphill grade I have hiked yet this trip.
When I got to the shelter I quickly headed inside to get away from the mosquitos. It was actually a pretty nice and clean completely enclosed shelter. It had solar panels to give it electricity, and a wood burning stove as well. It had a loft to sleep in and probably could have accomodated 8-10 people. I signed the guest log just as I heard music walking up to the shelter in the form of another hiker. I have personally never really enjoyed listening to music while hiking. First and foremost if you have earbuds in you can’t hear that rattlesnake rattle, or that bear or mountain lion growl at you from the side of the trail. To each their own though. However, it does somewhat bother me when hikers not only listen to music but they attach one of those bluetooth speakers to their pack so that everybody can hear their music including the wildlife they are scaring away.
So the hiker walked in and actually seemed down to earth and friendly, but he did seem a bit off. He was trying to catch up to the 3 hikers I saw earlier but didn’t really seem to be in any hurry to leave. I asked him some questions about Shelter Cove and he was very helpful in giving me advice on what to do there. By happenstance I mentioned that I wished I wasn’t walking into a resupply with 4 extra pounds of food, and he said he would take some of it. He definitely seemed like one of those hikers on a shoestring budget if he was a day out of town and knew he needed more food. I knew how much food was in my resupply box and knew I hadn’t been eating as much as I planned yet, so I was glad to give him about 6-8 chewy granola bars. He turned down the oatmeal and peanut butter (I would have too). And then for the second time in 6 days, I was offered weed in return. Once again I declined. Starting to think I should just start accepting the weed and hold onto it until some hiker is all out and willing to trade something good for it...
So I finally got the courage to head back out into the mosquitos and made it up to the top of Maiden peak.
Now that the rest of the day was all downhill, I put on the afterburners to try to get to Shelter Cove as fast as possible. I did come across this interesting signage at a junction however, not really screwing me up but making me laugh:
Finally made it down to Willamette Pass and made it the 2 additional miles into Shelter Cove Resort.
I forgot to take any pictures of the actual resort but it seemed a little bigger than Elk Lake, and definitely a lot more hiker friendly. Same kinda place though. Large car camping resort on a lake with a marina. It is Saturday, so they actually had some sort of big fishing competition on the lake today, so it was pretty packed. I headed right into the restaurant/food pickup area and got myself a large fountain root beer for $1, followed by another, followed by another. Only then did I go in the store and pickup my resupply box. It did cost $5 per box to pick up, which I guess I understand for their inconvenience of storing all the boxes and keeping them organized enough to find each box specifically. Just think about it. Lets say 2000 hikers come through here a summer and half (though its probably a lot more) send themselves a box here, thats $5000 they are making each summer just off of having mail delivered to them and keeping the boxes organized. Crazy.
The store was decently stocked though still a bit over priced. Alas they did not have any dayquil or nyquil for my head cold/cough. I had run out yesterday and though I’m feeling better it is still lingering. I paid the $11 to camp again though I could have camped a quarter mile away for free if I wanted to, it was just easier this way. Then came one of the best parts of my hike so far. I got to sit and hang out with all the northbound hikers. I was finally in a setting where I could talk to other hikers, share stories, joke around, and talk about the trail. I really hadn’t realized how much I had missed it this last week. Going southbound can be a very lonely experience at times.
I went and set up my tent and came back to the picnic tables all the hikers were congregating at. There were about 10 of us total. They were all starting to order dinner and get some beers. I decided to have one beer and hang out before I headed over to the back to back buildings that housed the laundry and the showers. Laundry was $1.50 each for wash/dry/detergent. The showers were pay showers based on a timer. $2/3 minutes. I splurged on 9 total minutes. It might not seem like that long, but its an eternity when you haven’t felt hot water in a week.
The other cool thing Shelter Cove had was a separate tent set up just for PCT hikers with multiple hiker boxes where you could throw unwanted items or food into and others could come along and pick through what they wanted, and a full on charging station which was lined with hikers phones and battery packs trying to get every last bit of juice in them before they headed back into the woods. I had plugged both my phone and power bank in before I set up my tent, and though I didn’t expect to get too much in the bank, the phone was already back to near full.
The store had wifi, but unfortunately I had no AT&T service. The wifi was dreadfully slow too. I was able to get out an imessage to my brother to let him know where I was and to tell my family. And I was able to get one out to my cousin to let him know I was still on track to get back to Ashland around the 25th-26th. Speaking of Ashland, I checked the status of the fire and it is now 90% contained, still without touching the trail. Hopefully it will be at 100% any day soon now.
Unfortunately the wifi didn’t have enough juice to let me upload these blog posts. After this I will have 6 of them just sitting here on my phone waiting to get service to upload. I couldn’t even get a proper facebook message out with pictures. The first time I tried with 14 pictures, and it timed out. The second time I tried with 4 pictures, it timed out. Finally I had to just type an update with no pictures to get it to go through.
Now that all my business was done (I will go through my food and resupply box tomorrow morning) I was able to have a couple more beers and got the hiker special at the grill. 4 ribs, french fries, cole slaw, and baked beans for $10. Well worth the price. As the sun set over the marina I was able to get this shot:
I’m gonna take my time getting out of here tomorrow morning. Usually I try to do a zero day about every 100-150 miles hiked. I’m starting this trip planning on doing 280+ miles before I give myself any, so short days in and short days out (neros) are gonna be very important going forwards.
Heres to the first roughly 100 miles and the 800+ more to go!!!
Keep on keeping on
- Patch
