Today’s Miles: 7
PCT Miles Hiked: 358/2660
The four-legged enemy has apparently spent the night planning an all-out assault in the morning. They are waiting in hordes on the outside of my tent, knowing the inevitable must come. I must emerge outside at some point. I do, and as rapidly as possibly, I disable and put away my tent. In the midst of the chaos, I feel a tent pole snapping in my hand. No time to get caught up on this, must keep moving.
Max-Heap and I get to White Pass around 8 am. We are resupplying at a spot called the White Pass Kracker Barrell. It’s not an actual Kracker Barrel, but a gas station that features a convenience store section. It’s actually pretty good with hiker-friendly food selection and a couple of cold/hot food options. Upon arriving, I do the reasonable thing and order a green salad with two hard boiled eggs in it. I also get an iced-latte to go with it.
There’s a little cafe section inside and the handful of other hikers around flock to the tables, using every outlet in the store. Some of the others are northbound thru-hikers and others are section hikers. I’m having a jolly good time talking to everyone when I get some not great news. The lady working the register told me she spent the last 10 minutes looking for my resupply box and it’s not here. Sigh.
I spend the rest of day sitting, eating, talking, and scrolling on my phone. Also, I attempt a tent pole repair and a host of others hikers take a look at the problem with me. It’s the thread that runs inside the tent pole that snapped, not a pole itself. It’s not the worse news, the tent will still pitch, just the pole itself doesn’t break down conveniently. But I still have a functioning shelter.
In the evening, Victor, Grace, Black Dog, Max-Heap, and myself head across the highway to the tiny pizza store that serves as the one restaurant in a 15 mile radius. The pizza is actually really good and cooked in a wood-burning oven. Black Dog brings along a 6-pack and the pizza workers tell us we can stealth drink them out on the picnic tables. Victor orders, and fully consumes, two pizzas for dinner along with the one he had for lunch. I’d say the pizza sizes are a healthy 4 slices each. For all you math wizards out there, Victor has consumed 12 slices of pizza today.
As we eat dinner, we talk about the closure in Northern Oregon. Due to fire damage from last year, 18 miles of PCT trail is officially closed. It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal but the 18 miles is in a very remote section and is impossible to hitch. So reasonably, you need to skip something like 80 miles of trail and even that requires some tricky hitching. Word is, some people are doing the closure section anyways. Black Dog says the move in this case is our group pretends to be a trail crew working on the burned section. There’s elaborate planning to make us look as legit as possible, with chainsaws, hard hats, and everything. It’s pretty funny for a while.
I walk back to my tent which is pitched behind the Kracker Barrell store. It was a good recovery day. Still, my resupply box looms heavy on my mind. I don’t want to be stuck here another full day, or anything past that, waiting for it. Tomorrow, we shall see what fate awaits.
