Thursday, May 31, 2018 – 13.7 miles
The day dawned cool and cloudy, which was nice after the recent heat. Lots of forest walking today, not much to say about the scenery. I met two more thru-hikers heading SOBO from Dunsmuir and warned them to watch out for the poison oak. The guy said ‘oh, so there’s some?’. Let me rephrase: Watch out for the plants that aren’t poison oak, so that you can lean into them to avoid the poison oak.
I was wearing my rainjacket and he noted that they have the same one. Gear on the PCT seems pretty standard so far: Exos and ULA backpacks, Sawyer Squeeze filters, Ghost Whisperer jackets. I met a section hiker with the old version of the Exos, which I loved. I had mine replaced by Osprey last year, and I dislike how they removed the long side pockets and added a secondary lid in case you don’t want to use the normal one (the brain). Sure, have a secondary lid, but make it detachable so that there’s not a pointless piece of fabric there if you want to use the brain.
An intermittent drizzle fell throughout the afternoon. I wanted to camp at a place labelled in eTrails as ‘Ridge camp’, which supposedly has views of Shasta and Shastina, but missed it and ended up camping in a creepy place further along the trail. It’s dark and silent, with no insects even.
