Aggressive Rat-bros and Baby Spiders - PCT Section P Part 1 (Castle Crags to Porcupine Lake)

Pacific Crest Trail Section P Part 1: Castle Crags to Porcupine Lake - May 26th - 28th 2015

Castle Crags/Castella, CA to Porcupine Lake, CA
Note: Stats below are totals for Section P
Distance: (One Way)  98.5 mi.
Total Elevation Gain: 17,594 ft.
Total Elevation Loss: 13,770 ft
Highest Elevation: 7,300 ft.
Dogs: Allowed, but logistically difficult
Difficulty: Moderate

When we got to Castle Crags State Park that afternoon it was probably 4 o'clock and we still had town chores to do. We decided that by the time we went and got our supply box from Ammirati's, got snacks and dealt with paying for the campsite it was going to be too late for a shower or laundry. We hobbled around the park getting our chores done. Gloria's package had arrived and our food for the next section weighed a ton, we were going to go 11 days without resupplying. It was our longest section and we were probably carrying 13-14lbs of food a piece. Our decision to go straight to bed was solidified when we returned from those chores, we were exhausted and there was absolutely no sign of the rain and thunder letting up.

That night, as we were pigging out on junk food naked in our tent (we are so classy), we listened to the storm moving closer and closer to us. By about 8pm the thunder was right on top of us, there was maybe a 2-3 second delay between lighting and thunder and the booms echoed around the valley and seemed to last forever. Our rainfly was leaking again and we resolved to try the emergency blanket next time. Around this time we heard a voice asking "Can I camp next to you guys?" we replied of course and told the stranger to just shove our stuff in the bear box over so he could put his gear in. He tried to start a conversation, but we weren't feeling very social so we told him we'd talk in the morning and went to sleep.

That night I had nightmares about Chris abandoning me on the trail, telling me he wanted nothing to do with somebody as selfish as me (definitely no issues there!).

I woke to the sound of a siren, not an ambulance or a fire truck, but a deep wailing siren. The kind that signal for kids in the 50's to dive under their desks so they could survive a Russian nuclear attack. It sounded like Silent Hill and made both Chris and I shudder. It couldn't have been a drill it was so late, we still are not sure what it was.

That morning the weather had cleared. Chris got up early to go to the bathroom, between the thunder, siren and nightmares I was wanting a little comfort so I zipped our bags together and waited for Chris to come back and snuggle with me. I waited. And waited. AND WAITED. No Chris. I'll admit, I was not in the best frame of mind and may or may not have decided that he was either dead on the toilet or cheating on me with the 50-60 year old woman in the campsite next to us (I HAVE NO ISSUES, STOP JUDGING ME). Finally I decided I was being a little crazy just sitting there, so I got up. Chris was standing nearby chatting with the older woman.... and another guy (whew, dodged a bullet on that one). I pretended to socialize with them in order to lure Chris back to the tent. Chris had told the woman about my work and that I was a graduate student, so I answered a few questions and then I said I wanted to go back to bed while I stared at Chris, willing him to come with me.

After snuggling we got up and chatted a bit more with our fellow campers. They both seemed very nice, and we especially hit it off with the guy, whose name was Travis. He had hiked from Ashland to Canada the previous summer and was on his way south to do the other 2/3rds. We chatted with him a bit about the trail, I asked him if he had seen any rattlesnakes, he said no and that he was 99% certain we wouldn't either. The only people he had ever heard of who had run into rattlesnakes had been sticking their arms, legs or faces somewhere they shouldn't have been. Apparently Travis had never heard of hiker jinxes, more on that later.

CASTLE CRAGS

The woman (whose name I will not mention) on the other hand seemed to mutate from the reasonable, kind lady into some kind of obsessive freak. Stones and glass houses sinking ships and that, but still... She started off reasonable enough. She asked us if we had seen the movie Wild, there was sort of a weird intensity in her eyes, and we told her that we had and hadn't particularly liked it. I think she must have assumed that we were kindred spirits at this point, because she then proceeded to rant for the next 20 minutes or so about how much Wild sucked, how it made everybody assume she was damaged goods, how Cheryl Strayed had no redeeming qualities, and SHE MURDERED THAT POOR HORSE!! It was weird. I tried to have a conversation about it: I didn't read the book, she seemed really unprepared, that's too bad, everybody has some redeeming quality (even Hitler could paint a mean tree), and I actually thought her killing the horse was one of the few moments where I really felt for her. She just sort of ignored me and kept going though. Finally Chris and I excused ourselves by saying we wanted to get rolling, we had chores etc. Chris and I normally don't engage in shit talking, but as we walked towards showers and doing sink laundry we couldn't help ourselves.

We cleaned up and spent about 45 minutes washing out our muddy clothes in the sink, using an incredible amount of Dr. Bronners soap. We went back up to the campsite to hang dry everything now that the sun had come out. Travis teased us about the amount of clothing we had (he wasn't wrong, I ended up mailing two pairs of shorts and a t-shirt back at the Washington border). We also discovered, after calling our family, that the SPOT didn't seem to be working. We weren't sure why, but couldn't help wondering if there was an emergency, would it save us? We decided that it was probably that we weren't allowing enough time between pressing the check in button and turning it off.

Our clothes took about a year to dry, during this time Chris probably ate 10 lbs of Jolly Ranchers that he had found, abandoned by some other hiker, in the bear box. We said goodbye to Travis who was going into town. We packed up too and started up out of the park on the fire road.

OUR PACKS WERE REALLY GODDAMNED HEAVY.

I'M AN ALIEN!

We had decided we were going to take a short day, there are two fairly large ascents coming out of the campground (one up to the trail and one 7 miles later) and we wanted to break them up. There were also no listed campsites after the one we were planning on stopping at, and we couldn't get much in the way of information on camping from Travis who had been trying to escape the rain and hadn't really noticed.

Our campsite was by a small stream and was very pretty. We had checked the forecast and they were predicting rain, so we put the emergency blanket between the rainfly and the top of the tent. As luck would have it, it didn't rain that night, but the emergency blanket definitely warmed up the tent. We filed that information away should we end up in snow, we did get snowed on one time, but had discovered that the emergency blanket trick made a lot of noise if there was any wind at all. We had dinner (of which I still ate very little), I read out loud to Chris and set an alarm for the next morning so that we could get the ascent taken care of before the mid-day heat. We were very happy that we did, that next day was a doozy.

ALLISON AT A VERY COLD CREEK

For anybody hiking through this area, there are PLENTY of campsites between Castle Crags and the uphill and some of them are very nice. Chris was having a hard time that morning, but I felt great as we headed the five miles toward the uphill. And oh the uphill  It was brutal, we hit it around 10:30 in the morning and didn't finish it till about 2:30-3:00 that afternoon. We listened to N'Sync as we climbed and it was glorious, about half way through Chris started feeling better. By the time we finished my muscles were so tired, that when I stood up from peeing I nearly fell over.

CASTLE CRAGS

Chris was done by the time we stopped at the top for "lunch" he asked if we could shave two miles off our day and I agreed. The last 2-3 miles of our day were brutal and by the time we got to our campsite I was very glad we weren't going further. We set up camp in a depression surrounded by manzanita scrub, We were on the side of a ridge and the view of Castle Crags and the expansive sky were beautiful. The ground seemed soft, although by about 11 that night I decided that was not the case.

MT. SHASTA

ALLISON PASSES OUT
LOOKING AT THE MAPS

That night I finally had an appetite. Meal of choice was our version of Taco Bell. Now, there are some things you eat on the trail that taste amazing because you are so damn hungry, later if you ate them you would be less impressed. This is one of those meals. It's still better than Taco Bell, but that's not a high bar. But oh god, that night I DEVOURED it.   

That morning we started the climb up to the top of the ridge. There were incredible views of Castle Crags and Mt. Shasta. There were also rattlesnakes. I nearly stepped on a juvenile, said "whoa that's a big snake" bent down to get a closer look and Chris realized it was a rattlesnake and we took off. A couple hours later we ran across another, this one started rattling when we were about 6 feet away, we threw small rocks and sticks at it till it moved far enough off the trail that we could get around it.

We walked through a patch of trees and suddenly we were on the top of a ridge. It finally felt like we were really on the PCT we had imagined. Incredible expansive views, lakes that looked like small puddles hundreds of feet below us, eagles soaring. It was perfect.

PORCUPINE LAKE

It was also a very long day, I was wearing shorts and discovered the wonders of petroleum jelly (on my legs, perverts) for chafe. We both were running short on water by the time we got to Porcupine Lake, our destination for the night. We threw down our stuff and went down to the lakeside to pump water. All of a sudden we heard shouting. There was something about being alone in the woods that made Chris and I loathe running into other people. These were baby Bros one of them was using a life straw and they had been climbing around the lake. They quieted down once they saw us and were really excited to talk to us about the PCT and seemed like nice enough boys, though a bit obnoxious.

While we were chatting with them we discovered that the lake was completely covered in tiny baby spiders. Which made me a little nauseous, but I coped, I held it together as long as I could and then sprinted back up to the campsite where it was a little better. There were chipmunks investigating our gear when I got back. We set up the tent, made dinner and went to bed.

That night Chris woke me up.

Chris (whispering loudly): Baby, baaaby! are you awake? Baby? Baby!
Me: mrphflw

Chris: I think the chipmunks are back and they are messing with our stuff!
Me: Chipmunks aren't nocturnal. Go to sleep.

5 minutes later.

Chris: Baby! It's happening again.
Me: What do you want me to do about it? Get my headlamp and look?

Chris grabbed the headlamp and shined it on his backpack. Sitting on top, bold as brass, was the most enormous black rat. The rat looked at Chris with his headlamp, with an expression that seemed to say "What?! Come at me bro!"

This post was getting too long so we decided to split it into two.  Does the bold and insatiable rat eat Chris alive?  Find out next time in the sequel post: Pacific Crest Trail - Section P Part 2: Porcupine Lake to Etna Summit.