His latest journal entry:
77.4 miles of desert from the Mexican Border and I've made it to Julian, CA. I had about 5000 words written, though those are lost now somewhere in facebook's servers. I'll try and re-write as best I can, though the spark is gone. Life out in the desert is a matter of constant organization and time-management. My day begins at 4am, the only sane time to wake and beat the harsh heat. After a quick breakfast and a half-swallowed cliff-bar or two, I try to be on the trail by 5am. 5am to 7:30am is when the fastest hiking can be done I've found, as anytime after that the heat is a significant factor to be dealt with. In the heat, which peaks at about 90 degrees, the essentials of life are water, sunscreen, and electrolytes. Water must be drank at a minimum of 1 liter an hour, and sunscreen every 30 minutes. Hiking from 12-4pm is absolute madness, the heat sucks any energy right out of the muscles. I found this is a good time for self-care, cooking a big meal (though it seems to hot to eat hot food at anytime), and a siesta in those rare oasis' of shade. From 4 to dusk I hike on, though the temperatures only really become bearable again around 7:30pm. When I stop in the evenings im usually too drained of energy to do much prep-work or organizing, though there's always lots to be done. A quick dinner of whatever seems do-able or easy enough to make and I try to be asleep by 9pm (Hiker midnight as it's called). While this schedule describes an ideal day, it doesn't always work out this way. My second night out I camped in a meadow with about 12 other-thru hikers, and got into my bag at the ideal 9pm. The wind began to pick up as we were on an elevated ridge, and it made sleeping difficult. A glance at my watch at 11pm and I realized I had not yet got any shut-eye. In and out of sleep as the wind howled at 60mph (according to a ranger we met the next day), I stirred at 1:30 am and had to venture out into the dust-storm to replace my tent-stakes which had been ripped out. Thus began my battle with the wind, and I got about 3 hours of sleep that night. The next morning began another 20 mile assault through the desert, a pace that's hard for my body to quite get used to. The third night I chose not to continue my tent's battle with the desert wind, instead cowboy-camping beside Oriflame River (hardly a creek). Wrapped only in my sleeping bag, as I fell asleep with the others beside the river Pepe Loco (Paul is his real name, he's named for the Chevy's sombrero he hikes in) alerted us that we were invading on a white scorpion's home (he said it was rather poisonous, we were all too tired to think much). Waking up with my bag covered in morning-frost, I decided to take an easier day across the desert, stopping at mid-day in some rare-shade for a nap and a meal, which allowed me to escape the heat for the climb up to my next-night's roost. Water is a commodity in the desert, and that cannot be stressed enough. Tomorrow I begin a long stetch with no guaranteed water for 30 miles, though there are sporadic trail-angels )(PCT volunteers, god bless them) that refill occasional water cache's with 100's of gallon bottles of water, we couldn't survive without them. On the animal side of things I've seen about 7 rattlesnakes (had lunch with one by accident on day one), hundreds of horned lizards and similar, and millions of bugs (all of which don't look inviting). One of my buddy's was unfortunate enough to have a rattler crawl into his tent through an opening in the zipper, luckily he notced before calling it a night. Tonight I'll cowboy camp out at Scissor's Crossing, beside Hwy 78, where a bunch of young student trail-crew workers stopped with a trailer full of water, music, and enough junk-food to give a small town diabetes. In town I'll eat terribly, I burn 9000 calories a day and can only really eat about 2,000 , the weight is shedding off me that I can't lose (6 foot 2 and 150 lbs is not good out here). Apparently there's a lot of coyote's in tonight's area, I hope to see or at least heae one. 77.4 miles in, 2630 miles to go to Canada. My biggest concerns are blisters (I have lots), water (never enough here),
and calories.
Yours on the trail, Rory (haven't garnered a trail-name yet).
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