PCT Day 118 – The Gopher and the Beehive

Little Hyatt Reservoir Outlet (mile 1741) to South Brown Mountain Shelter (mile 1763)

One of the nice things about heading northbound again is that we are seeing other hikers for more than just a minute at a time. After being just the two of us for weeks, falling into consistent patters it has been an interesting David Attenborough-ish experience to see how other folks function on trail.

Gopher is a Londoner who is on the trail earlier than anybody we’ve seen, and is simultaneously the hiker who has the most leisure time. I think the only reason we’ve seen him more than a few times is because he spends a couple hours each afternoon just relaxing. Shoes and socks off, perched stop his sleeping pad reading a book while drinking his protein shake. He is a man who appears to delight in the preparation of things. In the evenings he sits in the front of his tent with his shirt off doing all the little chores of the evening with great care and little hurry. Then he sits inside his tent and eats dinner. He has a relaxed precision that is so uncommon on the trail. Tall with blonde hair and a surprisingly dark beard he’s easy to spot with his sleeveless shirt and lolloping gait.

Beehive is a Midwesterner skinny white guy with blonde dreds who tells me he has “semi nomadic” for the last three years. He carries one of the smallest backpacks on the trail and smokes copious amounts of weed during the day. Over dinner he tells me that he’s started to keep his bong in his fanny pack so that he can light up while he’s walking. He plans the days between towns by how much food he has, not the other way around, and is taking it slow this section because he had extra due to skipping around the fire closure. However “once I get to Crater Lake I’m probably going to have to go fast again because I don’t think there’s enough food in the box I sent there.” Or maybe he’ll get off in Bend, find a job, and move there. He hasn’t decided yet.