June 17, 2016 Mile 430.5-444.3 I may have been overdoing the miles. I found it difficult to sleep last night because of aching in my hips, and my plantar fasciitis is acting up again. Not to mention my many blisters. The Acton KOA is only 15 miles away, and I badly need to do laundry and take a shower. I could wait until tomorrow, when I get to Hiker Heaven, but I can be in Acton by this afternoon, and I need the rest. The day starts with a downhill—actually, I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading downhill all day. I wind through oaky brush, some of which I recognize as poison oak. But the trail is better maintained here, and it’s easy to avoid. It’s incredibly hot by 9am. Around 10:30, I arrive at North Fork Ranger Station. Someone has put out a water dispenser with several 5-gallon bottles sitting nearby. The Ranger Station sometimes sells cokes and candy, but it seems to be closed today. I am the only person around. I refill my water and rest in the shade for a bit. I am split: I’m anxious to get to Acton, but I’m also loathe to go back into the sun. I can see much of the next section of trail from here. It looks like the next several miles will be shadeless and dry. Finally I muster the energy to move on. I’m rolling in sweat before I’ve gotten around the first turn. The foothills here are heavily eroded, and the trail is clearly visible below, winding endlessly in the white dirt. After I come around the first turn, I can see the Acton KOA, as well as a few other lonely businesses along the road. One looks like a warehouse of sorts, with a few tractor-trailers parked outside. It looks like there are trees in the KOA, and trees mean shade. They look so close, but I still have miles to hike to get down this mountain. All the way down, I guzzle water, but it never seems to do anything. My throat is parched from the moment the water passes through it. I can’t tell if my chrome-dome umbrella is blocking the sun or just trapping hot air. I can feel the heat of the trail through the soles of my shoes as I wind around foothills and ravines.
Finally, it seems like hours later, I reach the road. A billboard welcomes PCT hikers to the KOA, and I walk the road to the entrance. I pay for a site at a small convenience store. An ice-cold gatorade and a bag of Doritos hit the spot. I need to charge my phone and battery pack, so the lady at the counter shows me a lounge, where I sit alone and read my book for two hours while I wait for them to charge. Maintenance workers walk through and discuss maintenance problems with a glance at me as they go, but they quickly dismiss me. It’s likely that they’ve seen hikers all summer, and I’m just another one, but I start to wonder whether I look homeless. After my phone is charged I walk down to the backpackers’ sites. I pass the pool, which is crawling with families—it appears there are four kids to every parent—, and several large campsites which look like they are revving up for a party. When I get to the backpackers' area, it’s obviously the worst-kept area of the campground, but I’m glad that it’s so far away from the noise. There is only one other tent around, belonging to a hiker named Mark who comes up to tell me there’s a place to charge my phone next to the bathrooms. Conversation is stilted—I think we’ve both grown overly used to silence and our own thoughts. He retreats to his tent, and I set up mine and go to the laundry room and showers. I start with laundry. Thru-hiking means lightweight backpacking, and lightweight backpacking means I have no extra clothes. For an hour and a half, I sit in a plastic chair in my plastic rain pants, melting in the heat. When my laundry is done, I take a shower. Lightweight backpacking also means that I don’t bring a towel. Luckily, I have a handkerchief. It is saturated before I’ve dried my face, so I end up just smearing water from one part of my body to the next until I give up and get dressed. I quickly transition from wet to sweaty, but still, it’s nice to be clean for a bit. I read for a couple more hours before dinner and bed. As I drift off to sleep, I can hear reveling campers in the main campground above.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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