Last summer Fixit and I did the whole Tahoe Rim Trail by starting at Mt. Rose Summit, and resupplied at the halfway point, which was the Echo Lake resort post office.\u00a0 We’d resupplied there both times we did the PCT, and had found the owners to be very friendly and helpful.\u00a0 They even let us pick up our box outside of the posted post office hours and were cheerful and accommodating.<\/p>\n
Not anymore.<\/p>\n
Same owners–but their ATTITUDE toward hikers has totally changed.\u00a0 And that’s because of two things:\u00a0 the unbelievable hordes of people now hiking the PCT, and most of all, the rotten ATTITUDES of many of those hikers.\u00a0 Instead of cheerful store owners at Echo Lake, we found them morphed into angry, growly and not accommodating at all.\u00a0 We had to sit and wait over 2 hours before we could drop off our Rim Trail supply box, and then when we’d hiked around the lake and had arrived to pick up the box, we had to wait over three hours before they would let us have it.\u00a0 And we had to endure them growling and snarling at us.\u00a0 But under all the snarls and growls, we heard loud and clear their total frustration with the hikers.\u00a0 Seems that an awful lot of people were coming in off the trail and proceeding to get drunk and disorderly and were leaving messes and annoying regular customers and in general being very obnoxious.<\/p>\n
Attitude.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s seriously important when you thruhike.<\/p>\n
For one thing, there is no way you are going to finish a 2,000 plus mile hike unless you have the right attitude.\u00a0 Francis Tapon (one awesome hiker!) did a survey\/study to figure out “What’s the key factor that determines whether a hiker will be able to finish the PCT\/CDT\/AT?”\u00a0\u00a0 Is it being younger?\u00a0 No–lots of old guys finish.\u00a0 Is it being fit & healthy?\u00a0 No–people with medical issues do finish.\u00a0 Is it having new gear?\u00a0\u00a0 No–people finish with all kinds of gear.\u00a0 Is it better food?\u00a0 No, people finish even eating junk, and whatever they can scrounge from hiker boxes.\u00a0 Is it having plenty of money?\u00a0 No, people finish\u00a0who have very little\u00a0money.\u00a0 What it turned out is that being able to finish is all about your ATTITUDE and determination to finish.<\/p>\n
Fixit and I think this is funny, sort of.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s how we see it:\u00a0\u00a0 Starting the PCT\/CDT\/AT, you have to be a little bit unusual.\u00a0 To keep going, you have to become a bit crazy.\u00a0 And to finish, you\u00a0have to be a bit insane!\u00a0 You have to be able to laugh at things that would normally make you cry.\u00a0 Add to your vocabulary the phrase, “Are we having fun yet?\u00a0 Yeah!”\u00a0\u00a0 so you can yell it whenever things get really tough.<\/p>\n
And attitude becomes REALLY important when you get into a resupply.\u00a0 Every hiker in a way represents the entire hiker community.\u00a0 We\u00a0try to represent it well, and that means\u00a0having a cheerful, friendly, respectful attitude when\u00a0we are in town, and not leaving messes and getting drunk & disorderly and obnoxious.\u00a0 \u00a0We want those little mountain towns and resorts to be GLAD the hikers are coming through, not resentful and defensive.<\/p>\n
From what we hear of the CDT, it is a real test for attitude–lots harder than the PCT.\u00a0\u00a0 Hopefully, we will pass the test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last summer Fixit and I did the whole Tahoe Rim Trail by starting at Mt. Rose Summit, and resupplied at the halfway point, which was the Echo Lake resort post office.\u00a0 We’d resupplied there both times we did the PCT, and had found the owners to be very friendly and helpful.\u00a0 They even let us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preparation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}