Me 2007-05-09 The Lure of a Town
May 9th, 2007
Sleeping outdoors has its benefits. This morning on the hill top I got the sun on my face while still in my sleeping bag. Paul had used his mylar emergency blanket due to the cold but I hadn’t even used my bag liner which bodes well for the Sierras and further north.
Lucky Joe, Potential 178 and I got going well after 7 with intentions of stopping before the road and hitching in to Big Bear City in the morning. But at lunch time the talk turned to soft-serve ice-cream and all-you-can-eat buffets. So when the four of us left Arrastre Trail Camp (where the piped water is cool and clean) it was to complete the next 10 miles in time for a town dinner. I made it in 3 hours, a personal record while carrying this pack. Nature’s Inn was full so we made it to Motel 6 this evening and ran into a whole host of other hikers and went to to a Chinese BBQ buffet with a few. Thanks to a girl I met while on my O.E. I was able to thank the waitress in mandarin (“CheChe”) and I guess that the response meant “you’re welcome” but it was too quick for me to learn.
More photos of this day’s journey can be found at Idyllwild to Wrightwood
May 14th, 2007 at 2:22 am
The response was probably “Bu ke che” which means “you’re welcome” or, more literally, “no need for thanks/no thanks”.
Now, with words like ’saddle’, ’switchback’, and terms like ‘breaking camp’ I think that you will need to start providing a dictionary for us non-hikers (or ignorant people like me who don’t know these hiking terms)!
BTW: is ‘breaking camp’ anything like ‘breaking wind’??
May 14th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
lol
Breaking is the opposite of pitching, and just means taking down the tent and packing up etc (or for Craig, sometimes it just means rolling up his sleeping bag!).
Saddle: a crest of a hill between two higher points, generally a local high point on a track but the easiest way over (shaped like the middle of a horse’s saddle, hence the name – the track would go from metaphorical stirrup to the stirrup on the other side, avoiding the high points at the ‘front’ and ‘back’).
Switchback: a zigzag on a trail, used when a hill is too steep just to walk straight up or down (or too unstable to maintain a track on that gradient).
These are probably explained better (I’m notoriously wordy) on
May 14th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
whoops told you I was wordy!
http://www.hike-nh.com/faq/glossary/
May 14th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Thank you for that Rachael. I was wondering whether I should add a link to a hiking glossary!
I’ll just add that the PCT is particularly known for its extensive switchbacks. The trail is supposed to be graded for pack-horse traffic so that tends to rule out big steps or scrambling up steep banks. The long zig zags are sometimes cursed by walkers for requiring a very long walk to lose just 10 or 20 feet of elevation. The Fuller Ridge is a particular example. Some US trail have signs specifically forbidding the taking of shortcuts between the meanders because it can erode the supporting banks that trail crews have worked hard to build.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Wow! I have just discovered the photos go way back!
I had a look through the previous posts, when they were first added, but I only looked at the ones on that page. I didn’t realise they were on all of the previous entries too.
Nice work Denis!
May 15th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Yes, I think this is going to be the pattern. First the text, a few days at a time when Craig can get to use a phone. Then the photos will be added later, maybe every week or more when he gets to use an actual computer. At about the same time as photos I hope to receive a GPS log file to add to the trail display in Google Earth (follow links from map page)
If you click on the photo icon on any blog page you’ll get back all the pages that have photos.
May 16th, 2007 at 2:23 am
Cheers Rachel and Denis for your translation and information! A glossary wouldn’t be such a bad idea as I can imagine his use of hikers terms is only going to get more frequent with his travels considering he surrounds himself with hikers day in and day out at the moment!