17 Apr Day 21 – Variable Winds
Hiked 12.6 miles today. At mile 369.3
At Pines Cabins in Wrightwood. Resupply and hiking day.
I think it is funny when the weather forecast is variable winds. What is that supposed to mean? Should I go outside? Today on the PCT, varible winds varied from the two-step-sidestep to the “gravity defying, hey look at me, I can walk on a wall!”
Here is a link to a YouTube video of the wind I experienced. Video opens in a new tab.
In town resupplying and sharing a room with Nuts. Nuts actually got pretty chilled up on the windy trail. I called Carol the trail angel and she arrived in her pickup truck. After being blasted by cold wind all day we were a little surprised when she said that we would need to ride in the back. At that point we would have considered riding on the hood if it got USB’s into a warm town room. After the wind we had already endured, the pickup ride didn’t seem bad at all.
Nuts is interesting because he uses a blue tarp for shelter. He’s 24 years old and already seen much of the world. Two things we have in common is that we both use tarps and that we both worked at Copper Mountain Ski Resort. We went out to $1.50 taco night and a big PCT thru-hiker crowd was there. They were all getting into town with their wind stories to tell. U-turn sat at our table.
U-turn is a young guy from Belgium who got his name by hiking down the wrong trail for 5 miles before correcting his mistake by doing a U-turn to hike back to the PCT. As he pulls out an assortment of coins to spend on another taco, He tells me that he learned about the PCT from the movie Wild. He has Euro coins along with dimes and nickels. I joked that he was carrying some unnecessary weight there and that maybe he could get the guy to take a Euro for a taco. He asks me how much of a dollar is his dime and asks the same about his nickle. He finds it strange that a nickel is worth less than a dime even though it is a bigger coin. Before the PCT, he had never hiked or camped a day in his life, yet here he is in a strange country and at mile 369.
Here are the few photos of the day.
