don't just follow the Cascadias!

Day 61 ~ miles 977.7 - 993.5

Slept late.  Again.  It wasn't even that cold out, but I reckon our body's alarm clocks have reset themselves to 7:00.  We felt strong hiking this morning, and were having a really great day.  We ate lunch by a small cascade, rested there for a while, swatting at mosquitos and rinsing out some dirty clothes.

We hit the trail, still feeling great post-lunch, and began another ascent.  Weird, I thought, as I didn't think we had to do anymore climbing today.  Oh well, I saw the tell-tale Cascadia tracks on the trail, so all was right.  Brooks Cascadias are extremely popular shoes amongst thru-hikers, and they also have a very distinct and easily recognizable tread.  We always joke that when we're not sure if we're on the trail or not, just look for the Cascadia prints.  Most of the time, this works. 

We were hiking along, when we saw a familiar face approaching. It was Bess, a hiker's girlfriend who had just come out to hike with him for a few weeks.  Her boyfriend and his brother were nowhere to be seen.  She had hiked ahead of them, and had somehow gotten off trail.  Lucky for her, we got off trail at the same junction.  Lucky for us, we ran into her; otherwise we wouldn't have even realized we were not on the PCT, we were just following the Cascadias.  In total, we walked a little more than 2 non-PCT miles, but poor Bess had done more.  We walked with her back to the PCT and hiked ahead.

Mosquito hell would be an accurate descripton of our afternoon hiking.  We wore our mosquito headnets for the first time, as mosquitos blanketed us if we paused for more than a second.  We are camped with a new face, and were happy to have a fire to keep the mosquitos away.