Category: General

Hey from town.

I have some wood.

I have some water.

I have some food.

It’s snowing.

It’s time to go  to my cabin and not come out again to spring.

I have been actively embracing the Buddhist phrase, “Only by doing nothing can we ever hope to accomplish all that needs to be done.”

I have no wood in.  I have no water stock piled even though the spring doesn’t appear to be running and the guy who usually gets it running is dead.    It should be an interesting winter.

I do, however have enough oatmeal, nuts, raisins, brown sugar, soy protein powder and some various supplements to last me all winter.

I don’t eat from after noon to 6am the following day.   Most days I have a large bowl of super oats in the morning and then nothing again until the following morning.   I makes me feel buzzy, full of energy, and a little high.

I do yoga and  some mediation everyday.

Not getting the phone, Internet and Netflicks  turned on has been a good move.  I highly recommend turning off and tuning in.

I’ve been pulled out of my sweet cabin life and into a house sitting stint for my sister.      Her house looks exactly like a happy Sim with the wealth aspiration.    If you have never played the Sims game before, let me tell you, the Sims with the wealth aspirations are the easiest Sims to make happy—all they need in life is to make or spend money.

You know what I want to do now? Hike the Grand Enchantment Trail. However, I sold my November for a ride home from Manning Park and also, I should get up to my cabin in BC to check on things up there so it may be spring before I hit that trail.

Maybe while I wait for my passport to get renewed, I’ll head over to my Washington cabin and read a book. No sense getting the phone turned on until I figure out what I’m doing this winter.

I miss trail life–it should never have to end.

Hey, I’m back from my hike.  There was 150 miles missed because of fire closures and another 112 miles in Oregon missed because of the “MUST HAVE CRAMPONS!” sign but I think I’m done with the trail for this year.  I’m sure I will be back another year. 

My sister and brother-in-law came and picked us up at Manning Park.   At the border crossing in Osoyoos, I handed the border guard my passport and my “permission to enter Canada through the PCT” papers.  

 He said, “Where did you cross at?” 

I said, “Monument 78”

Then he said, “That is not a legal crossing and do you realize, ma’am, that we could arrest you because you didn’t have permission to leave the country?”  

He took all of our passports and made us pull over to the side and come in.   Then after he couldn’t get any of the other people excited about it.  He said, “We have copies of all of your passports and the vehicle information, right here.”  

He said, “I’m not sure about the rules here but I’m going to look into this.   My name is Sutton if you want to find out what I find out.”

Do you see why I just want to hike and live in remote places away from the Suttons of the world?

The hiker that was missing came into Stehekin.   He was tired and had a wet bag but was fine.   He had a story of taking some wrong turns but ended up at trail workers camp.   It was a tale similar to “Goldie Locks and the three bears” except it was “Silver Locks and the Three Trail workers.”   It was great to see him alive and well.

It is supposed to be unseasonably cold the next week, maybe even snow.   I should have known that before I sent my shoes on and committed to walking the rest of the trail in sandals.

Probably should have taken my stove out of my bounce box as well.  Hot beverages would have been nice.  That down vest that was in there might be missed this week, also.

My son and I head out soon.

Hey from I don’t know where.   I left Stehekin on the boat and am camp out in a small hotel room with my son in some small town.   Tomorrow we take the boat back to Stehekin and start hiking the last 90 miles together.

I’m worried for a PCT thru-hiker that has failed to show up.   His hiking partner has not seen him since Tuesday morning and as of Saturday at 11:00am he was 48 hours late arriving in Stehekin.  His wife has not heard from him in a week and a half.   Search and rescue has been notified.

Okay, it’s morning and I should be back on the trail.   Instead, I’m sitting in the apartment, drinking coffee, and reading stuff on the Internet.

It’s cloudy and cool out.  If it starts to rain it will be very hard to get moving.

I went shopping for a new backpack and almost bought an Osprey44. It weighs 2lbs 7 oz.   I put 35lbs in it and it carried it pretty decently.

For now though I think I will revert to my repaired Mountainsmith Ghost  and my son can use the duct taped Mountainsmith CDT when he joins me in Stehkin.

I went shopping for new shoes because my running shoes are like hiking in slippers when I hit snow… But I’m having trouble parting with a 100 dollars to try out a new pair of shoes that may or may not work for me.

Maybe I will just buy a pair of lightweight instep crampons.   I had a pair in the Sierras that weighed 6oz, but I lost them on one of the passes.

I still have to resupply–I guess there is a store around here somewhere in this maze.

After pulling myself out of the comfort of the motel in Sisters, I successfully hitched backed to the trail.   Just as I was passing the trail to the parking area, a guy introduces himself to me and says he is doing trail magic and asks if I need anything.  I say, “No, I have lots of everything.”   Then he says, “Did you see the sign warning about conditions ahead?”  I follow him down to the parking lot and there is a laminated sign that says something like,

“ATTENTION HIKERS–the trail past Santiam Pass is treacherous and should not be attempted without crampons! PCT thru-hikers should hitch to Lolo Pass.”

There was no date, no phone and no indication of who posted the sign

Just then a section hiker who was finishing up his hike appears and says, “I’m going that way.  I can take you to Lolo Pass if you want.”      So, I took the ride and skipped 100 some miles of trail.

Back on the trail at Lolo Pass I meet other hikers who hiked through and they said it was snowy but definitely doable.   I felt duped.

Skipping took the fire out of my hike.  Which isn’t a totally bad thing..there may have been a little to much fire in my hike any way.    After I got back to the trail, I just hiked a little bit and then sat down and watched Mt. Hood and ate away at my now overly supplied food bag.

The next day I slept in till 10:30 am   I took long breaks during the day,  laying in the woods looking at the sun shine through the vine maples for hours.

Now, I’m in Portland hanging out at my son’s and future daughter-in-laws place.   They live in a swanky downtown apartment building that serves free good coffee all day long in the lobby.   I met a guy in the elevator with a carbon fiber bike that says it is so light they had to put weights on it.

There is a North Face shop in the building and an REI a few blocks away.  Might check out some gear while I’m here.   My Mountainsmith Ghost got here yesterday and is now repaired.  I’m going to see if REI sewers can repair my Mountainsmith CDT.

Be back on the trail soon.

If you are waiting to learn to spell as a form of protest until English spelling makes sense, instead of the random use of letters and sounds that require a person to clutter up their mind with memorizing each word, I applaud your noble cause. 

If between now and that glorious day when the letter “C” will be stricken from the alphabet (because if you have a “k” and a “s” you do not need a letter “c”) and when we have a  phonic based language, you might find a spell checker handy. 

I have Tiny Spell on my computer.   It runs constantly in the background, beeping everytime I misspell a word in any application, and does an excellent job of guessing what word I’m trying to spell.   It’s a free down-loadable program and is one of the handiest programs on my computer. 

I have packed up, cleaned up, drained my generator and chainsaw of gas, and picked a bouquet of sage and sunflowers for the cabin guarding spirits. This show is moving to the big city.

Through no fault of my own, I am acquiring a free blackberry phone, via my son’s account. And since hiking doesn’t pay and I have had more than enough Internet in my life lately, I don’t think I’ll be spending the 30 bucks to turn the data plan on. Rather, I’m thinking of doing a Trail Twitter with the free unlimited text messaging feature. This phone also comes with a built in spell checker.

Tom of “Two-Heeled drive” is big on this Twitter thing; that’s where I heard about it.

Might be stupid, might not be. Word press will post a blog entry once a day from them. The direct link to my twitter is http://twitter.com/sistercrow

I found a national forest that I can walk to from my cabin. So, now my training hikes are a 19.5 mile loop that includes lunch and a nap in the forest. I carry all my gear, a bunch of water and some random cans of food for added weight. I was carrying a big 55 lb load that included two packs, firewood, a bear canister filled with canned food, and some water jugs. But I like having my gear with me, because I can imagine just continuing on forever and carrying a 55lb pack isn’t that much fun.

I believe the Pacific Crest Trail goes through this forest. Even though I see the Cascades looming in the distance every day on my walks, the trail seems like a long way away.

There are these signs up that say it is an old growth forest. It’s not a very impressive forest, I have much bigger trees on my property, which I think might be their point–that if you don’t thin, the trees stay small and crowded. I think it may be fire suppression that causes the crowded forest but maybe it’s the way it’s supposed to look.

One day, on my hike, I passed by a man’s house. He said, “You look like a traveler. Can I offer you some water.” I had to tell him I was only a pretend traveler, right now, and that thanks, but my load held lots of water. He looked confused. I’m excited to begin my travels for real and stop being a pretend traveler.

Your well-intentioned handouts could do more harm than good. Some hikers quickly become dependent on outside help, leaving them vulnerable when help isn’t there.

Long distance hikers need to be developing skills, attitudes, and techniques that are necessary when you won’t be around. By reliably supplying bailouts, water, rides, shelter and other hand-holding, you deny hikers the opportunities to learn self-reliance and the skills they may need to complete a long trail.