Day 30 – Friday, June 23

PCT Mile 485.6 to PCT Mile 508.1

Day Total: 22.5 miles

Rough first half of the day. We woke up early and got going around 5 a.m. Almost immediately I started feeling bad and was dragging.

We ate breakfast an hour into hiking and I knew I needed to find a shady spot to rest. We hiked on for another half hour searching for a good place to set up the tent. We found good cover and went back to sleep. 

We originally planned to make it 15 more miles before getting more water but, having stopped and it now being in the hottest part of the day, that wasn't realistic. We saw that there was a campsite – Upper Shake Campground – about a half mile off the trail with water and decided we would get there and wait out the heat of the day. 

The trail to the campground was a very steep downhill. The campground looked long forgotten; every trash can was overflowing and the sites were overgrown.

The water was down an unmarked trail but, with the directions from the water report (a PDF the PCT Association updates regularly) we were able to find it. It was down another very steep downhill trail (read: a steep climb on the return trip). After following what looked like a very dry stream I saw a pool of green algae and just past that a real trickle of clear, cold water over some rocks. I was able to fill our four-liter bag and bring it to where we dropped our packs. 

We put our head nets on to keep the bugs from flying into our eyes, ears, mouth, and nose and napped.

When we couldn't nap, we read. When we thought it was finally reasonable to start moving Kelly ventured off to fill the bag of water again while I cooked some food.

After what was our most challenging day, we were starting to feel better mentally and physically. We climbed back up to the PCT and had mile-500 in our sights. 

The evening hike was really nice. We downloaded podcasts and listened to those for the first time on our hike.

We stopped listening when Kelly saw something larger than a bird, lizard, or squirrel moving ahead of us on the trail. After some concerned moments searching with our headlights and going at a more cautious pace, we found that what we had seen earlier was a skunk.

We were relieved that it wasn't anything larger but we very much didn't want to follow this guy. We stayed a respectable distance behind "le pew" for about half a mile before he finally got off the trail and we scurried past. We decided being sprayed by a skunk would have been worse than all but the most serious animal encounters. 

Around 11 p.m. we made it to our campsite where there were already several other tents and people "cowboy camping."

We found a flat enough spot for the night and slept well. (SM)