Trip date: Aug, 2010 Pacific crest trail goes from all the way from Mexico passing through California,
Oregon, Washington and ends in Canada. Me and my friend David met did this trip just before bears goes into hibernation and so the mountains are lush with flowers and plants.Strangely I met David online through Yahoo financial portal and were discussing investing in Apple stock. From there slowly we build connection and became one of my best friends. It was my first backpacking trip for about 11 days hiking in the mountains. The hike we did was from Snoqualmie pass to Stevenson pass which is around 75 miles.
Supplies: Each one of us carried around 50lbs of weight carrying packaged food, fuel, small stove, water, water purifier, tents, coffee, sleeping bags and solar panel for battery recharge. Most of the items we purchased from REI and Costco as we can buy them in bulk and good quality material. Make sure that you carry rain/wind coat because it will rain at some parts. One important lesson learned in this trip is that we carried lot more items than required for the trip. This unfortunately weighed down on us as we could not walk as fast as others. Other hikers were carrying very few items and few just got sleeping bag, packaged protein bars and water.
Start of the trip was bit slow because it was first time and my friend was 60 years old at that time. And another problem we had was David stomach can hold only small amounts of food so he has to eat more frequently. The hills are pretty greenery and few places lot of flowers. There are lot of lakes as part of the hike in this path.
Animals: We could see some marmots on the way, wild goats, small snakes and deers. Marmots apparently emits different frequency sounds for each different type of animal to communicate among themselves. It was bit scary when we hear these sounds getting louder :).
Couple of deers were near our tent to check on us. We have not noticed any bears on our way.
Experience: This was the camp at the middle of our trip. The forest from here was closed because of the forest fire. We met interesting people at this junction. One french guy ran all the way from where we started to here in 4 hours and it took us 3 days to get here. Also met another guy who came to fish and apparently he came here with his grandfather last time.
Smoking weed on the top of the hill is great experience which is unforgettable. I felt like floating on the mountains and even a small noise of the leaves were amplifying in my mind.
While hiking we could see the phase where we transition from below the clouds to above the them. It was surreal experience as this was my first time.
Funny part of the trip is that how much we walk seems to appear the same all through the day as we are just waking around the mountains.
By the end of the trip we were dirty as we never took any bath or went for swimming in the ponds however, we were very strong. We sat near a store and people thought we were homeless people and try to help us, that was pretty funny :).
