When I opened my eyes this morning, we were in ground fog that was bitter cold.  There was ice all over our tarp! Brrrr!  I was on kitchen crew for much of today, starting at 6:30am with cutting bagels, then continuing on with work on scrambled eggs, followed by scraping and scrubbing very dirty egg pans! What a feast we had for breakfast! In the very cold morning, with ice on the tables, we served up all kinds of bagels with cream cheese, jams, peanut butter, and lots of fruit, plus all sorts of scrambled eggs with sausages, etc. I had fun talking to Georgi Heitman, the trail angel from Old Station.  She told me about their SCARY time last fall when a forest fire almost reached their house!

The pot-and-dishwashing side of being on breakfast crew is actually kind of fun!  We had a very jolly crew who joked and scrubbed diligently.  I was running around collecting MORE dirty stuff to wash, and every time I came up with an armful of messy whatevers, the crew would cheer, “Let’s go, guys!  Incoming!”  They were awesome!  I also took on the job of carrying the dirty dishwater off to the toilets to dump it in.  I made lots of trips with those buckets!  Last night after dinner, on one of my “dump the bucket runs”, I noticed a small crowd of hikers standing around near the row of portable toilets.  Thinking nothing of it, I opened one of the doors and went in with my bucket.  Oh my!  Sitting on top of the toilet was a large browncolored SNAKE!  My immediate reaction was that it must be a fake plastic snake that someone put there as a joke–but then it MOVED!  I said, “Hi, Mr. Snake!   OK, OK, I’m outta here!” and quickly backed out.  I heard a muffled “Aw, darn!” from the crowd of hikers.  Turned out that they were hanging about for the fun of watching people freak out when they found the snake, and I hadn’t been much fun to watch! 

Since ADZPCTKO doesn’t provide lunch, Bill and I took a stroll into town and enjoyed sharing a table with a couple of  other hikers. Then we went tearing back to camp just in time for seminars on mountaineering and snow travel, plus snow and water reports. The snow reports are very troubling. It’s continuing to snow up there, instead of melting! I am personally praying that the weather will warm up and clear up to take care of it.  Bill started talking about skipping the Sierras again and heading for Oregon instead, as we did in 2005,  but quickly changed his mind when we heard the report on OR/WA–they had tons of snow up there, too.  In 2005, there was a sort of drought and snow levels were low, so we were able to “skip up” and not hit many snow problems.  Not this year!  Georgi Heitman of Old Station was going around literally begging hikers, “PLEASE don’t even THINK about skipping up to Northern CA to avoid the Sierra snow!  We are up to our eyeballs in snow–it’s BAD!”. So Bill and I resolved we’d just “go for it” and see what happens.  If it gets really tough, we can always bail out. We also learned about TWO major detours up ahead in Southern CA–both due to fires last fall. 

In the afternoon, we also had a great time meeting the Rosanders, who have offered to help us in Tehachapi, plus other people from Sonoma County. We got our 2010 “class picture” at the rocks by the lake. Our 2010 class is the largest one yet! At the gear contest, I entered my lightweight, hands-free umbrella holder and tied for 6th place out of 13 contestants. Not bad! Then I was put in charge of the kitchen dishwash crew for dinner, which was another feast of all sorts of hamburgers and all the fixings, potato salad, cabbage salad, fruit salad and brownies. (By the way, I think brownies should be classified as the Official Dessert of the PCT–everywhere we went along the trail, we found brownies at every trail angel’s house! )

 The first item on the evening program was a slide presentation of the first thru-RIDE of the PCT in 1959 by a husband and wife team. She’s 84 now, sharp as a tack and a wonderful lady!  Eric Ryback, the first “official” PCT thruHIKER was there, too.  We enjoyed the presentation, but both Bill and I were really tired and headed for bed after that.  We didn’t get much sleep last night because our campsite mates stayed up so late talking and making noise.  They were having fun, which was great, but I was up so early this morning that I ended up short on sleep.  So we missed seeing the “premiere” of the new National Geographic film about the PCT.  I am not a National Geographic fan–they so misrepresent things in many fields of science and history that I no longer look at any of their stuff.   Their “PCT film” was typical–it exaggerated and misrepresented what the PCT is really like.  We began to hear shouts from the hikers who were watching the film.  They were yelling “Extreme!  Extreme!” in a mocking way.  (In the morning, I asked some folks what they were yelling about, and they said it was because the film narrator kept using the term “extreme” so often that they got disgusted and started yelling every time he said it again!)

It felt good to lie down and rest after a busy day.  And it was so nice to see sunshine and be warm again!  Tomorrow we will head for Canada!

The rain stopped during the night, and we were up at 4:30am (30 degree temperature) to pack up and walk by headlamp in the darkness.  Turned out we didn’t need the headlamps as we walked through Campo–every building we passed had motion detectors, and lights came on constantly!  But once we were out of town into the sagebrush, it was pretty dark!   We reached the PCT monument as the eastern sky began to lighten. We were disappointed to find there was no longer a way to “touch Mexico” with your foot. A new net and barbed wire fence keeps you well back from the border. As we were standing there looking at this new development, TWO border patrol vehicles came zooming up–one on the “inner corridor” between the fences, and the other from Campo.  They aimed their searchlights at us!  Guess they thought we were illegals?  (Not sure why illegals would be walking TO Mexico??)

Once they saw we were PCT hikers, they just waved and smiled, and I boldly asked the guy who’d come from Campo if he could take our picture.  “Sure!” he said.  “Stand by the monument!”  He carefully aimed his searchlight to “light us up” and took a couple of great pictures. Awesome!   I signed the register, “What is this?  Christmas in April?  There’s FROST all over the monument, the plants and the ground!  I thought we were ‘sposed to see that in Canada!   Oh well, here we go!”

Then we took off on what I like to call “the rock garden hike” to Lake Morena. The trail glittered with mica and fools gold, the wildflowers peeked out from every nook and cranny, and the morning air was cool and breezy. Bunny rabbits were hopping around in the bushes.

We “leapfrogged” several times with another couple, “No Trace” and “Unbreakable”. After last night’s rain, the trail was often muddy (gee, just like the trails we’ve been practicing on back home!)  And oh my–we could see SNOW on the Laguna Mountains up ahead! During the morning, we met one couple who were having a “garage sale” (and it was only the 2nd day of their hike!) because they started hiking yesterday afternoon and got caught in the pouring rain.  Wow, I am glad we were able to camp under that truck trailer last night! 

The trail gorillas have done a great job on the PCT between Campo and Lake Morena–everything was in great shape!  We planned on eating lunch at Hauser Creek, which used to be a favorite PCT hiker gathering place, with soft green grass under lots of shady trees by the creek.  But oh, bummer!  The trees were all dead or dying, and what used to look like a park was full of dead branches.  Nobody was there.  We ate lunch there anyway, but it was sad. 

 We reached ADZPCTKO around 2:30, signed in, and set up camp.  It was a sunny afternoon, but very cold and windy. Setup didn’t take us long, so we were soon socializing, checking out gear, and talking to vendors. More and more hikers kept coming in— this is the biggest ADZ ever!   I had volunteered to help WS Monty in the “kitchen” and ended up being the “beer runner” and pot washer.  The beer runner job was interesting–we had an assembly line of hikers who were making big fat burritos for the dinner, and I kept them well supplied with whatever kind of beer they wanted.  It took 1 1/2 hours to make 750 big burritos! 

At dinner,we met some people from Windsor (a town north of where we live)— the wife is doing the PCT and her husband is providing support. They know all the same trails we do!  We also met “Jack Sparrow”, and lots of other “characters.”  The other thruhikers in our campsite are all very young, and are spending their time at ADZPCTKO drinking lots of beer and hanging out.   We left them to it, and headed off to an interesting seminar on making “one liners” from grocery store items instead of paying the big bucks for freezedried dinners.   

The Friday evening program was short films made by PCT hikers.  The topics were quite varied–everything from trail gorillas to trail angels.  It was a very cold and windy evening–all of us were bundled up to stay warm, but we greeted every film with cheers and enthusiasm.   Back at our campsite, our site-mates built a campfire and stayed up talking till I’m-not-sure-when.  Bill and I just conked.  It has been a fun day!

Walk to Rivendell: On Stock Road in the Shire