Day 9 - Killen Creek

7:55 am - Bucket Spring. This isn't the name of this spring, I'm just calling it that.

 See the bucket?

The water is gushing out of rocks below so the bucket needs to be lowered into the water and pulled back up. Great water!

7:00 pm now and I am nestled inside my tent with hungry hords of blood sucking skeeters right outside my door. I decided to hang my food tonight for the first time. Mostly because there are good branches to hang from and I don't want to worry about bears trying to get my food from inside my tent, with me in it! I haven't seen any recent sign of the bruins...no tree claw marks, scat or foot prints, still and all. Time to hang. 

The first day out from a layover is always hard for me. I'm slow, sluggish and can't seem to make good time. Even though I made my 15 miles I was a snail about it. I kept getting out my maps to see how far I'd come, looking at my watch, etc. then I realized part of the reason is that I'm carrying more weight. Five days of food and 2+ liters of water to start with because I wasn't exactly clear which water sources were going to be running. In a word, all of them were.  Early in the season I guess. 

I did have one experience today that scared the bejesus out of me. I had to ford Lewis River and let me say it was scary. Did I say scary? Super scary is more like it. It took me 45 minutes to decide where I wanted to ford then I retreated to try again another place. It is actually braided so there were two branches to cross. Holy frijole I was scared. On the last section I was in the water up to mid thigh and it was fast. Really fast. But the thing is you just have to move slow and keep three points of contact at all times, only moving one foot or pole at a time. I was a tad shaky after that one. And just to add to the excitement, when I was midway across the second part I heard thunder and it started to sprinkle. There I was, thigh deep in water with aluminum poles. The potential situation I was in didn't escape me. 

It doesn't look so bad in this image. Take my word for it...my legs and feet were numb when I got across. 

I met this gentleman in Trout Lake - the town, and he is hiking the PCT. He lives in Japan and come to the US to hike every year. He was to finish the PCT this summer but I saw him this morning and he was heading back to town. Something seriously wrong with his knee. Who would guess he is 75! Amazing. 

His name is Toyo, but "not Toyo-ta" he says. He worked for Misubishi for 40 years :-)

I got my first look at you-know-who this morning.