Day 105

"Uphill," the man said, "It (the PCT) always goes uphill."

Another hiker said that to me earlier today as I was standing at a split in the trail and trying to figure out the right way to go. One trail went up and one went down. He was right...the PCT continued to climb as it usually does. Appropriately, the word that could be used to describe today would be "uphill". And I'm not talking a little uphill, I'm talking a LOT of uphill. I started out at 1370' in Seiad Valley at 5 am. It was pitch black too so I was hiking by headlamp. I didn't care though because I knew what was ahead of me and I didn't want to mess with it during any other time than the coolest part of the day.

The climb out of Seiad Valley is not for the faint of heart. In 8 miles, you gain about 4500'. If you try to hike it during the heat of the day, you could find yourself in trouble. So I decided to tackle it at the earliest possible time so that I wouldn't bake. I made it to the top at around 8:30 this morning. I had to stop a couple of times on the trail on the way up--once to catch my breath and once to eat something because I was shaky from hunger. (I had eaten plenty already, but the climb took it out of me.)

When I got to the top I enjoyed a nice, cold RC Cola (the store didn't carry Coke) to celebrate my successful climb.

Despite my early start, I didn't have my best of mornings in terms of distance. However, I was able to do 15 miles by lunch, which was good.

I was so tired from the morning's climb and the heat that I was pretty sluggish this afternoon. Even after all my ascending, there were two more big (relative term) climbs that I had to do to get to the campsite where I wanted to stay for the night. My estimate is that I logged somewhere between 7000 and 8000 vertical feet today. I big day is usually 4000 vertical feet. So you probably won't be shocked to read that I'm having trouble staying awake enough to type this.

The great news is that I'm only 8.8 miles away from Oregon!