Alright - some highlights from the 2nd half

Well - Blogger doesn't seem to be cooperating too well, so I will see what I can do. Here are some photos!

Ugly and Sideshow at the top of Pinchot Pass, where they hit 500 miles walked!

The view from Forrester Pass - over 13,000 ft. above sea level!

Look Ma, I climbed Mt. Whitney! Last night on the JMT, camped by Guitar Lake


Our crew at the top of Mt. Whitney. 14,505 ft above sea level - nothing taller in the lower 48!

After much adventuring, the intrepid duo arrive back in Portland. Time for a makeover!

Bam!!

Here we go!

Holy cow!

Hello Portland!

After much further adventures, we made it safe and sound, back to Ugly's hometown of Portland, OR. As these adventures lead to our somewhat late arrival after a series of fairly long days, this post will be very brief.

Stay tuned for any or all of the following:
Exciting pics! Adventurous tales! Drastic hairdo reductions (complete with graphic play-by-play action)! Book signings! Promotional tours!

gnite. Love,
Sideshow

WHOAHOA!

Hello everyone! Ugly and I have just arrived in Lone Pine, CA!

We hiked up and over Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48, two days ago. After some much needed rest, we're getting ready to hit the road again. We'll be heading up to Bishop to visit Sam's friend for a night or two, and then further North!

Overall, the trip was fantastic. When we got down to Yosemite to start the John Muir Trail (0a 220+ mile section of the PCT from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney), we began to meet all kinds of wonderful hikers - weekend hikers, fellow JMT hikers, PCT thru-hikers. This made the second half of our trip much more social, something we both enjoyed immensely after a long time alone on the trail.

The section of the Sierra that the JMT goes through - Yosemite, Ansel Adam's Wilderness, John Muir Wilderness, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks - was some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen, anywhere. Besides the most persistant and overwhelming mosquitos anywhere, this was an amazing trail to be on. Hopefully once we get settled down back in Oregon in about a week, I'll post some pictures for y'all to see.

Overall, I think we are both very glad to be done hiking, but it's hard to know what to do with ourselves now! I think we are both planning our next big trips in our heads, and it is very sad to be down off the mountains. I don't know if I'm quite ready for civilization again!

Love,
Sideshow

Done! We summited Mt Whitney this morning and finished the jmt this afternoon. We are in lone pine CA staying at a hostel and enjoying real beds and showers!

We are doing a short loop today and tomorrow while we wait for the bear cans to arrive. We will start back on the PCT as soon as they come.

Have had a great few days in Yosemite so far. Absolutely beautiful. Hung out with a bunch of thru hikers. Bear cans still not arrived.

Good News, Bad News and Thanks!

Hello all - Sideshow here, checking in from Sierra City, CA. It's a small old mining town at the north end of the Sierra Mountains. If you want a view of the scenery, get out the Google and point it towards Sierra Buttes - we hiked around them in order to get down to the town yesterday. Ugly pointed out that it looks like Mt. Doom, from Lord of the Rings, so of course the hobbit comparisons started up.

So far the trail has been good, if a bit snow covered. The good news - we've been making it through alright and on schedule, despite the 10-20ft snow cover in places. It's been absolutely beautiful, but unfortunately I can't upload any pictures here, so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

Part of the reason we've been doing so well is all the packages and mail we keep getting when we stop into town! Wow! Thank you all so much for all the food and kind words you've sent. Ugly and I have enjoyed every bit of it!

Well, we've met Ugly's mom, Stephanie and little brother, Daniel here, and it's been great hanging out with them. We have a beautiful campsite right out of town on a nice creek. It's good they're here, because.... The bad news:

Ugly and I are tired of snow. It's been a very late year, so the amount of snow on the trail has been way more than expected. At this point, without the desire or equipment to battle the snow that we know is waiting for us as we get higher into the Sierras, we are taking a (short) break.

We'll be driving up more north for a couple more days of rest with Ugly's family, before getting on the train again and heading down further south, to Yosemite, to hike the John Muir Trail. We planned to get there in two weeks anyway, but we are choosing to wait a bit for more snow to melt, and to cut off a portion of the snowier bits. Ultimately, our mileage total will be a bit less (500+ instead of the original 760 miles), but one thing that both Ugly and I realized on this last section, was that we aren't mileage hikers. Maybe that means I'll never thru-hike the whole PCT, but I'm okay with that. One added bonus of our taking this break - we'll be giving ourselves a whole 3-3.5 weeks to complete the 200 miles of the JMT, instead of the original 2, giving us the chance to slow down, enjoy the scenery more, and (hopefully) go swimming in every accessible body of water we pass.

Short anecdotes from the previous section:

-Saw a mountain lion! Skulking around our tent in the evening! Whoa!

-Met more hikers - including our first thru-hiker: The Conductor.

-Saw two rattlesnakes! They rattled at us, but immediately moved off the trail away from us.

Well - Ugly or I might post again before we get on the trail again, but we'll see what happens down the road. Right now we are healthy and happy, and hope you are as well!

love,

Sideshow.

Woke up on snow at 7000 ft yesterday. Got to belden to find an electronica festival going on. They let us in for free. Strange but fun. We hit trail tomorrow.

Taking a rest day in Belden. Lots of snow so far on the trail which has made navigation tough. 5. GPS has been essential at times.

In Old Station, CA!

Sideshow checking out our route down from Grizzly Peak. MMMM Snow!

Sideshow's pinky toe blister, last night, pre-lancing

Ugly says:
So we're nine hiking days into the trip and we're crashing for the night in Old Station, CA! We've hiked approximately 130 miles so far. We had a rest day in Burney Falls State Park around three days ago after passing through one of the most challenging sections of trail I have ever encountered. The first two days were plagued by incredible downfall across the trail. Full grown firs had been snapped clean in half over the course of the winter and it seemed every single one of them landed on the trail. And while we were climbing over and crawling under hundreds of these trees, it was pouring rain. All in all the first two days of the trip were pretty rough. On the third day (June 5, I think) we got a slight reprieve. The rain stopped, we passed through the last of the downfall and and got a chance to dry out a little bit. Then we put in the longest day of the trip so far. We hiked around 18 miles, nearly 15 of them over snow, before finding a snowy spot to camp well after dark. The goods new from all that is we have had ample opportunity to test out all of or rain gear and warm layers and so far so good. We hear more snow lying in wait for us as we head south toward the Sierras, We have had sunny, warm weather for the past five days and we hope it will stick around as we make our way down the trail!

Sideshow Says:
We're staying right now at Firefly and Firewalker's house in Old Station. They are two trail angels, who we already benefited from up on a dry stretch of trail above town - they maintain a water cache for hikers, with shade and camp chairs to take a break at. Now, we ran into them in town, and we're spending the night with them. They have an amazing trail camp at their house. They host tons of hikers - there was already one guy here when we got here, and they are expecting 11 or 12 more tonite! Holy cow!
Well, my feet are tired, but I'm doing great, especially now that we're here. We've got a long way to go, but it's been great so far!

On the train to Mt Shasta! We arrive in an hour and a half. We'll pick up the trail tomorrow morning!

The penultimate post!

So if you guys are sick of hearing about us planning and packing for the trip, I promise, we're about a hundred times sicker of planning and packing for the trip. But here's our second to last post before we hit the trail (tomorrow you can expect photos of us sporting our trail haircuts and photos of our completely packed packs!

We took all of our boxes off to the Post Office today. We shipped off 11 boxes in total. We shipped the box to our first pick up point last Friday to be sure it would get there on time. We have yet to ship our buckets to Muir Ranch because we haven't gotten a big enough bucket yet. They charge $50 a bucket no matter what size, so my awesome parents are going to get us a big old 10 gallon bucket to put all of our stuff in.

We also have our packs packed and ready to go. The packs seem to have gotten heavier, as they are apt to do. We're both weighing in at around 23 lbs before food and water, and around 35lbs with 6 days worth of food and 2 liters of water. Still pretty manageable and I expect the few comfort items we are carrying along will be much appreciated along the way.

We catch our train to Dunsmuir, Ca at around 2:30pm tomorrow afternoon and arrive at around midnight. We will find our way to the trail the next morning and then the fun begins!

We're up on SPOT!

Alright, here's the link you all have been waiting for! We're up on Google Maps! You will be able to follow our progress as we head down the trail. If you want to see the topography click on the "terrain" button in the upper right hand corner.

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/gogl.jsp?glId=0D29GqVexYCqK01Fp7tntdo7vb5FlDg4b

Almost there... plus 760 miles

It might sound hard to believe, but after all this planning, I'm actually looking forward to hiking as the easy part. We'll see what I say after a few weeks of 15 mile days.

So here's the rundown of things we have left to do: Our resupply boxes are almost complete. We have around 6 USPS flatrate boxes, 2 Bearvault BV500 canisters, and a 5 gallon bucket all being sent to various locations along the way. We have already packed our food, fuel, batteries, and toiletries that we will need along the way. We printed our maps (over 100 pages of them) on Rite in the Rain waterproof paper and they are currently at Kinkos getting spiral bound. We will be adding them to the various corresponding resupply boxes when we get them back tomorrow. From there we have to tape all those boxes up and truck them over to the Post Office.

We are approaching this trip with a "light" mentality. Not ultralight--we're not leaving the tent and hiking boots at home-- but we're not going "traditional" either. Our base back weight (before food and water) are each around 17lbs. With 9 days of food and the bear vaults, they will be between 35-40lbs. We will only have one section of 9 days (between Echo Lake and Tualomne Meadows) so we should be averaging around 30 lbs for most of the trip.

Oh yeah, and here are some photos of us with our fully packed bear vaults!

Back from the test hike

Ugly and I headed up the Columbia River Gorge to hike a bit and work out the kinks in our system before hitting the big trail.

First day had over 5000 feet of uphill, with the first 3700 coming in the first 4 miles. WHOOO. Thankfully, that'll be pretty much the craziest climbing we'll do on the trip (or so says Ugly). The day was slightly chilly, with plenty of mist/drizzle and clouds

But alltogether beautiful, with some great views when the clouds parted. Not too chilly either, if you didn't stop for long.

We camped after about 11 miles, at Watum Lake. AHH SNOW! But not too much.



We discovered many things we had forgotten, making us glad we took this trip. List included: SPOONS! and Sideshow's breakfast.

But mostly things went very well. Including our new sleeping bags! So warm!


NOW WITH ARMHOLES!!! SO AWESOME!

The hike today was beautiful. 15 miles back to the trailhead, through some absolutely gorgeous terrain, down through the Eagle Creek Gorge. A long, but very fun day.

Story time: As I was heeding a call of nature, with a beautiful view down a wooded hillside, (also there was a salamander by my feet!), I heard a harsh "KREE KREE KREE," and a gigantic bird came flying straight at me, pulling up 10 feet in front of my head and perching above me, continuing to call. Obviously very annoyed with my presence there. It even perched directly above my head, so I was afraid I was about to be call-of-natured on even as I was finishing mine. I left quickly, but it was very exciting! After looking it up at Ugly's house: a Northern Goshawk. Very beautiful bird.

Here we are at Tunnel Falls in the gorge:


Well, we've got about 2.5 days before we head south for the trail, enough time to fix everything and do some last minute shopping. We are fairly sore, but very happy - we managed to keep up a good pace - good news for the PCT.

Stay tuned for a map update!

Love,
Sideshow

Resupply Addresses and Dates!

Hey all,

Ugly here with my introductory post on the blog!

First off, some readers might be confused as to who's who and what's what regarding our nicknames. Well, Sideshow is Alex and Ugly is Sam. Usually hikers on the PCT assume a trail name while hiking the trail. Both Sideshow and I have had our respective nicknames for a few years and it seemed silly to come up with new names when we had these perfectly good nicknames already. So there ya go.

Currently we're in the process of dividing, measuring, weighing, and organizing the nearly 330 meals that Sideshow and I will be consuming over the next two months. Tomorrow it's off to REI to pick up a few more items and the post office to get the flat rate shipping boxes we'll need to send all this food to our various resupply stops along the way.

That, conveniently, bring me to the topic of this post: resupply addresses and dates! We're giving you this information so that if you want, you can send us letters, post cards, non-perishable baked products, or yourself, if you want to meet us along the way! Please keep in mind that we will not be in an location for more than one day so if you do decide to send something, make sure you send it with enough time that it gets there before we do!

6-08-10:

Sam Whalen and Alex Seidel

McArthur Burney Falls State Park
Route 1, Box 1240
Burney, CA 96013

6-12-10:

Sam Whalen and Alex Seidel

C/O General Delivery

Post Office
Old Station, CA 96071
(530) 335-7191

6-19-10:

Sam Whalen and Alex Seidel

C/O General Delivery

Post Office
Belden, CA 95915

6-26-10

Sam Whalen and Alex Seidel

C/O General Delivery

Post Office
Sierra City, CA 96125

7-3-10

Sam Whalen and Alex Seidel

C/O General Delivery

Post Office

Echo Lake Resort, CA 95721

7-13-10

Sam Whalen and Alex Seidel

C/O General Delivery

Tuolumne Meadows Station
Yosemite National Park, CA 95389

We will be carrying a SPOT locator with us and once we get things set up, you will be able to follow our progress on Google Maps!

FIRST POST!!!!111!!!!

Hello! I'm up here in Portland, hanging out with Ugly as we get ready to go hike about 1/3 of the PCT. Becca Sonday is currently here with us as well. WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

Ugly and I are planning to do a test hike in the Columbia River Gorge this weekend, to make sure we've got everything under control. Then, we'll be hopping a train on June 2nd, and be hiking the 3rd!

Obviously, don't expect too many (if any) after we get on the trail, but do stay tuned beforehand for:
1. link to a map to follow our progress online!!!
2. Maildrop addresses, if you want to send letters!

love,
Sideshow