hiking – Page 2 – Jen and Jake Hike the PCT

Olympic National Park – Wilderness Coast – PCT Warm up/Shake down

Once I got to Seattle I was glad to hang out with a good friend there I know from Mexico City for a few hours. He hooked me up with a place to crash as I got in so late. We visited REI the next morning and got some great biscuits and gravy at Five Points Cafe. After a stroll down 3rd that made the Denver addicts look like amateurs, I said cheerio to Grant and headed off to Amtrak to meet Jen and her mum on their way back from Portland.

Once we got to Samish Island, we spent the evening eating, catching up chatting planning and packing before our short night’s sleep. The next morning we took a ferry to Port Townsend. It was a short trip across the water but we could see the mountains of the Olympic National Park across the way and suddenly everything felt quite real. This adventure was actually going to happen!

View from the ferry to the Olympic Peninsular
Arriving at the WIC, PA

We spent the next several hours traveling bus to bus along the northern Olympic coast, stopping via the Wilderness Information Center and got our passes and information from ranger Brenden.

As soon as we arrived in Neah Bay, a guy from the Makah Reservation stopped in his pickup and offered us a lift without us even sticking out our thumbs. We jumped in the back and he drove down the dusty road that diverted us around a small forest fire, stopping at key spots so we could take shots of the beaches an stacks from his pickup. He dropped us off at the Shi Shi beach trailhead (pronounced Shy Shy) seemingly pretty excited about the fact that I was English shouting to some other hikers “He’s English!” and in return the Russians shouted less enthusiastically that they were Russian.

Our first hitch this summer from the pickup

We set up our tent on Shi Shi beach and we contemplated our coastal adventure of about 50 miles ahead, struggling to cook efficiently, being disorganized with our gear and feeling a bit untested in the outdoors. That’s what this trip was for though – let’s fudge this up and learn from it for the PCT.

We settled down as a misty haze rolled in and the sun turned it a dark yellow during sunset. The next day we woke up to an overcast sky that burnt off in a couple of hours and glorious sunshine and beautiful views across the beaches came through. The forecast was basically the same for the next five days: glorious and hot. We looked at our maps and studied the tidetables for the 14th time and decided we had a nice relaxing 8 miles to our next campsite North of Ozette.

We headed off down Shi Shi and hit our first headland with ropes up the side of slopes way too dangerous to climb without this helping hand. We ascended and descended about three of these immense challenges on the first day. The last being the steepest and craziest, jumping off into a new environment. We settled down, feet and body sore and realized this wasn’t going to be a cake walk in the sun we had naively figured.

The pattern of challenging but really enjoyable and fun days continued with gorgeous sunshine, making this normally wet and grey coast into something that could easily rival Mexico for beach beauty. Each part of the coast is distinct from the last: hard climbs over headlands using ropes, ups and downs to rival any part of the Appalachian Trail, hopping from seaweed covered rock to seaweed covered rock, soft gravel beaches where each step felt like three and easy hard yellow sand where you had to find the sweet spot of give and sink – just above the peak reach of the last wave.

The northern coast Wilderness Trail was hard, really hard at times. We successfully spent 24 days on vacation of beer and food and sightseeing and now my arse was getting kicked by the trail. My swollen Achilles kept badgering me but I was getting it under control with stretches and clearly I didn’t bring enough snacks.

We took it slow, getting used to the daily routine and doing each step slowly. Walking to get water and filtering it at a painfully slow rate. Washing up and not quite hitting the mark, doing it again. Trying to light a fire and having to start again. Each time things got a little easier and we laughed at our amateurish selves just hours before. Each day got more comfortable and our mileage increased a little. We started at around 8 miles a day and that increased steadily.

Maps and tidetables
Camping on Caribbeanesque sands

The Wilderness Coast is wild and has zero development. I hiked alongside a deer for a while, thousands of crabs dart away as we progressed, an otter came to see us at a water source before diving in two yards away, seals played in the waves next to the shore and we saw at least 50 eagles perching atop of trees and fishing in the ocean. There was even, unfortunately, a washed up and very bloated stinky whale on one beach that looked like it might explode. We had planned on camping right there, so carried on down wind not quite enjoying the aroma.

Further down the coast, we picked up a hitch from the very lovely Maureen and Kate who took us to a store and waited patiently for us before taking us to our trail head. Eventually reaching the end of our line at the Hoh Indian Reservation, after a grey and rainy day before, we were very ready for our motel room and cheeseburgers in Forks.

The next day, resupplied and laundered, we headed back to the trail, this time to the valleys and rainforests of the centre of the park.

Valle de Bravo overnighter

Jen went ahead to stay with her family and spend some time with her nephews in Portland, Oregon as I stayed on in el defetuoso (Mexico City – a play on words meaning it doesn’t work well) for another week. I didn’t have much planned apart from seeing people and ridding myself of possessions. Feels really good to go down to just two backpacks full of stuff, one of which is in the UK now; I can literally carry all of my things at once and that is pretty liberating. It was time to take it further though and give away or donate the rest of my stuff. My goal was to only have carry on luggage on my flight outta here.

A highlight of this week was paying a visit to a good friend of mine out of town. Engeli’s a friend and ex-colleague of mine from South Africa originally and has been in Mexico for even longer than I have. She was based in Mexico City for most of that time but relocated to the pueblo magico Valle de Bravo in the mountains a couple of years back and, wow, what a choice.

She has the bottom half of a tradionally Mexican house, tiled and wooded as you’d expect with a large garden and a westward facing balcony running its whole length, overlooking a now greening valley from the seasonal rains on the edge town. The valley is private land but she has access and hikes and bikes to the top of the hill each morning to a majestic view of town and its huge lake. The three times we’ve visited her we’ve really enjoyed this pre-breakfast hike to blow out the cobwebs.

Engeli lives with the regal Chaman the Great Dane, Toffee the smiling, butt-wiggling ex-street dog done good and her now blind cat. It’s always a hive of activity even though life moves slowly in the countryside. The dogs run in and out to bark at other barks while the cat bumps along walls and gets stuck on window ledges, then they scratch at the door once the garden has bored them and Engeli opens the door.

She’s got the cooking skills of your grandmother but with the speed of not your grandmother. In the space of five hours we had eaten three times, including an amazing paneer curry. We caught up on her changing plans and my select tales from Jen’s and my holiday. Later her neighbour and friend popped down and we sipped beer and talked the evening away on the balcony while the earth span backwards from the sun.

The next morning we woke and hiked the usual route with Toffee and three of Eugenia’s dogs running alongside us, scaling inclines at the speed of Andrew Skurka circa 2007. Once we returned to the house, we ate cheesy eggs, packed our packs with gear, food and water (and tetrapack wine, naturally for an overnighter). Engeli has a lot of my gear from my Appalachian Trail thru hike to ensure she converts into a thru hiker one day. Chuckle. I was decidedly lacking gear, most of which was totally inappropriate for a backpacking trip, but what the hell, most of my nice new gear is in the US awaiting my arrival on Samish Island, WA.

We set out across town to the state park Monte de Alto which has numerous interlocking trails. However, since a huge forest fire last year, there have been new blazes placed generously all over the park forming four main circular routes on each of the hills, most of which boast amazing views. We were really crushing miles and ended up completing a little over 16 of them before setting up camp at the top of one of the hills as the drizzle came over and thunder rumbled in the distance. We pushed it a little too hard that day; I didn’t do enough stretching or have enough breaks. I need to learn from that lesson especially as the diet didn’t exactly work well this year.

As we tended to a very high maintenance campfire, the wood damp from the deluge the day before, we cooked up some ramen and mixed in Engeli’s homemade peanut sauce. The cheap wine went down well after a big day and we slurped up our ramen as we listened to tall pines crashing through the forest on the neighboring hill as lumberjacks felled those too badly burnt to remain.

I slept incredibly badly, my old sleeping pad now leaking much faster than before and I ended up on the stony ground several times. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on my new pad and quilt that I’ll be using in the Olympic National Park and on the Pacific Crest Trail for the remainder of this year. Hopefully I selected well.

In the morning, strangely for Mexico it was still raining. Ee packed up our soggy tents and headed our way back to the house, thankful we’d driven to the trailhead as the rank outhouses didn’t look particularly appealing after a night of little sleep.

An hour or two later I said goodbye to Engeli and the animals and boarded a bus bound for el defetuoso, knowing Jen and I will surely meet up with her in the next couple of years for a long hike in British Colombia or Washington some summer week or two.

We are on a podcast!

Pretty crazy but we appeared on a podcast today and we have two episodes with the wonderful Erin of HikingThru Podcast. It was a blast having the conversation and my first experience like that.

Have a listen!

Episode 1

Episode 2

Chiapas, Mexico

After quitting our jobs we have a little more than three weeks to say goodbye to Mexico by visiting some of our favourite places as well as some new spots along the way. We flew south from Mexico City to the state of Chiapas.

I came to Chiapas before, just shy of ten years ago by myself at the end of a chilly December. My main memory is getting more rain in that week than I got on the entire Appalachian Trail. So everything was more or less mine alone for the taking as long as I put on my road worker yellow mac and sucked the weather up. I have a hazy memory of fog and slipping n tripping over cobblestones in this town, San Cristobal. While I appreciated the beauty of the place, I didn’t imagine returning especially as Oaxaca sits so much closer to where I lived the last eleven years, Mexico City.

Jen had never visited before and so it was the perfect time to come back with fewer worries of time and money, plus the weather is a whole lot nicer in May. We got a little house on the outskirts of San Cristobal, a big town of 200 thousand nestled in the mountains. Two bedrooms, a living room with pallet and crate sofas, tables, chairs and bookshelves, a simple but perfect kitchen and a dark but wonderful shower house painted in Shrewsbury Town blue and amber. All of these are built around a large terrace with one of the best views in town. We overlook a small valley of farmland tended to by locals. Seems they’re farming cabbages from the pickups that skirt past us when we’re walking into town.

We spent most of our time cooking and resting, drinking wine and not doing too much in the way of preparation for the trail – at least me (Jake) anyway, Jen runs a lot. Just a few short hikes and some vague preparation of gear lists and brainstorming of ideas. We used the pressure cooker to rustle up some really delicious healthy meals, picking up all the ingredients at the end of the street, a three corner crossing with a beer store, a grocery corner and a fruit n veg stand. Perfect to pick up our ingredients.

We cooked a whole load of beans and lentils and had some meat free days which got me thinking of at least becoming a flexitarian at times. Too many mouths to feed on this planet to be eating other things with mouths. The terrace where we often ate has humming birds buzzing around the herb and flower garden as the neighbours play banda a little too loud.

Just outside the house is a pretty scabby alleyway, inhabited by the occasional Pox addict (a local booze made on the cheap), the alley’s 200ft high all the way up to the church at the top of the hill at the end of Real de Guadalupe Avenue. A good workout for the mountain climbing muscles that will be all important soon.

The main avenue has plenty of restaurants, wine bars and the like. Once a day we’d pop out and burn away a couple of hours people watching while sipping cheap wine. We were slightly worried that we had set aside too much time to be in San Cristobal: 8 nights in total. This was far from our worries though as we really enjoyed just chilling out and slow eating basically all day.

We took a couple of day trips. One to the local canyon de sumidero on a speed boat, shooting past crocs and spider monkeys followed by cooling pozol de cacao. Another day we went to the spectacular El Chiflon and hiked high into the hills to see a series of several increasingly large and more isolated waterfalls in ever increasing heat as we climbed out of the jungle. A spectacular day. We felt ready to move on to the jungle after that.