August 2nd, 2021
Mile Marker: 1748.4
Miles Hiked Today: 29
This morning we woke up around 6:30 as we had a ride set for us with a trail angel around 8 am. I can’t get over how nice it is to have a ride set up to take us back to trail than having to hitch.
Stephanie (Big Momma) was our trail angel and she was quite the hoot. You could tell she absolutely loved helping thru hikers and felt like all of us were her kids.
She went around asking where everyone was from and told me that she grew up in Wichita and goes back every 3 months to visit her parents! What a small world. She also exclaimed how much she didn’t like Kansas and how she “got out of there quickly”. She said she enjoys her active lifestyle out in the mountains. I pondered the idea for a little bit. What would it be like if I did live near mountains?
I started today hiking with Planner and catching up fully on the past week and a half. It’s crazy how a week can feel like a month worth of living on trail. So much happens every single day.
I can’t explain how nice it was to talk again. We both had not expected to be apart for so long but the days slipped away and that was how the cookie crumbled.
There was 5 of us who headed out together; Planner, Conrad, Journey, Haiku, and I. Joe and Goldie and a couple others were heading out with another trail angel shortly behind us.
However, we all knew that seeing each other was going to be slim since the 5 of us wanted to do 30s through Oregon and the others weren’t interested.
There is supposedly an “Oregon Challenge” which means hiking 32 miles every day and completing Oregon in 2 weeks. The terrain is known to be easier and flat which is exciting. We have found ourselves wanting to do this challenge but tweak it with off days in between. Which we did in Ashland and may do again in Bend.
Today’s terrain was so mellow that I didn’t even realize how much I was hiking. Starting the day at 9 am and we were still able to get a full 29 miles in, how crazy is that?
After about 8 miles in we ran across an epic view of the north side of Mount Shasta. This side looked so much better as it actually had snow on it!
We had some smoke roll through again which is always eerie but it seems like the norm now.
Once again it made for quite a unique sunset shining through.
We are told that this is the year from hell for PCT hikers as the weather is in the 100s and all the wildfires that are occurring.
We were lucky a majority of the trail was in the trees today. We didn’t make it the full 32 miles but we are satisfied with 29 by 9 pm.
Not too shabby!
I’m ready for some good sleep and am so excited to see what Oregon has to offer us!
Iz and Oz
Izzy + Ozzy 