Bill “White Beard” and I spent today hiking around Lake Sonoma, which is a huge reservoir where our city of Petaluma gets a lot of its water.  For the past several winters, we’ve been a bit short on rain, so the lake never really got full, but wow, it is now!  The steelhead are running in the river that comes out of the dam, but we didn’t stop to watch–we wanted to get on the trail!  Both of us are fighting off some sort of cold (snuffly noses, scratchy throats) but we loaded up our packs and went anyway–the only difference is we didn’t walk as fast, and we took a whole hour to eat lunch.

It was a muddy trail, as we expected, and there was one tricky creek crossing where (sigh) I had to cross on a couple of logs.  Bill zips across logs–I am a “chicken maximus”.  Once I got across the creek, I had to climb well up on a steep hillside to avoid using a very narrow slippery trail on the edge of a cliff, which would have taken me back to the “main trail” very quickly, but I was too chicken to follow it.  But my scrambling up the hill had a couple of dividends–I found a two-point antler AND a wild pig jawbone.  

And the wild pigs certainly are to be found in abundance around Lake Sonoma!  The trail is sometimes hard to follow because they have plowed it up so much, and sometimes they make a wallow right in the middle of the trail.   The pigs are really elusive, though–rarely do you SEE any.  We certainly saw none today, though we came upon what was obviously VERY freshly plowed up ground.  Because of the pigs, instead of green meadowy ground under lovely big oak trees, what you get is rough ‘n tumble, muddy dirt, all worked over by the pigs.   The backpack and boat-in campsites all have tall poles for hanging your food so the pigs don’t get it.

Personally, I’m cheering for the hunters!   Every now and then, the rangers let them have a go at pig hunting.  Wish they’d do it more often; I hate to see whole hillsides all brown and muddy instead of green and full of wildflowers.

Well, to switch to the subject of cooking on the PCT…..   Some thruhikers cook.   Some don’t.   We are in the “cook-once-a-day” category.  We find that having a hot meal really makes a difference. It feels homey and comfortable.   But since we don’t want any bears and critters visiting us in the night, we cook in the MIDDLE of the day, around noon, unless it is really ghastly hot, in which case we wait till things cool down a bit, say around 5:30 pm, cook then, and make as many miles after that as we can before we camp.

Our system is that somewhere around noon (preferably near a water source, if possible) we stop to eat.   First order of business is to find a place to set up the stove, where there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of starting a grass or forest fire.  We look for flat rocks, bare dirt, whatever we can find.  Sometimes we will even CARRY a nice “cooking rock” over to where we want to cook and eat.   Once that’s done, I set up the “kitchen” while Bill airs sleeping bags.    I cook, we eat, then Bill “washes” the dishes (which we have pretty much licked clean, so there isn’t much to do!).   Then we pack up and hit the trail again.  The whole process takes 40-60 minutes, depending on how much of a hurry we’re in.

Our “kitchen” is an alcohol stove made from the bottom of a beer can.  We have a small pot rack for the pot to sit on above the stove, and we have a small titanium pot with folding handles.    We each have a plastic cup and spoon.   Some thruhikers just eat straight from the pot, but with two of us, it’s easier to divvy things up if we have the cups. 

Here’s our basic food plan:

First thing in the morning  (usually 5:30 am) as we hit the trail:  I eat a Larabar, while Bill snacks on jerky or some other bar.

Around 7:30ish, it’s  breakfast:  Granola with freezedried fruit, nuts & seeds, powdered milk.  We vary the type of granola, fruit & nuts.

Around 10:30,  we stop for 10-15 min. for a Snickers each.

Around noon, we cook.   I have a “base” of either instant mashed potatoes or stovetop stuffing mix or instant rice or freezedries, to which I add freezedried veges and meats, or a package of tuna if we are getting close to a resupply.   Once you open a tuna packet, it gets REALLY SMELLY really fast, even if you try to rinse it out, so I saved the tuna till almost the end of each section.  We usually also eat a cookie of some sort, and we each also drink a cupful of Emergen-C, and take some vitamins.

Around 3:30, we stop for 10 minutes and have another Snickers.

Around 5:30 or 6:00, we stop for supper–crackers and cheese or peanut butter; dried fruit; nuts.   We might have plain water or might add some Crystallite.  Sometimes I toss in something from town, if we have just come out of a resupply.   Some of the nicest suppers we had on the PCT were when trail angels gave us fresh veges or fruit.  At Ebbett’s Pass (oops, make that CARSON Pass–thankyou to a helpful comment from one of our blog readers!) the visitor center people LOVE thruhikers.   They keep fresh fruit in the refrigerator for us.   When we came through, they gave us a HUGE canteloupe, which was a great addition to peanut butter and crackers!   Another time, we were almost to Burney Falls when we went past a PG & E place, and the guys there gave us fresh tomatoes and cucumbers!   Wow!   Peanut butter and crackers with tomatoes and cukes! 

The last comment I have about food is–when you are in town, eat LOTS of high calorie food!   When we did the trail in 2005, we were trying to be all virtuous and only eat healthy food, especially NO candy!   The result was that after two months of hiking, we were both starving hungry all the time.  Bill lost a lot of weight and began to lose strength, too.  Finally, at a resupply, I was talking to fellow thruhiker Pika and told him of our troubles.   He said, “You need Snickers.”   He explained that we seriously needed to start getting caught up on our calorie deficit.  We took his advice, and boy, did it make a difference!   We started eating Snickers,  and in town we ate as much as we could.   I started bringing cookies on the trail, and more cheese, etc.   It really helped. 

So beware of calorie deficit!   Mangia, mangia!  as my Italian neighbors used to say whenever we were at their house.  Eat!   Eat!