Day 99 : Halfway!

28th July 2013
Mile 1309 to mile 1332 : Cold Springs to Soldier Creek
Mileage : 23

As of today I have hiked halfway from Mexico to Canada, a total of 1330 miles!

I was the last out of camp this morning, which i like as i prefer hiking at the back of groups where i don't keep looking round every time I want to stop to take a picture or whatever. I filled up my water to capacity and started off in the early morning cool to get as many of the 23 waterless miles done as possible before it got too hot. Although it doesn't happen very often, the halfmile maps on this occasion were wrong and didn't list 2 springs along this section cutting the waterless length down to 12 miles, which i would do later that afternoon. I decided to lunch earlier than usual and so stopped at the last spring before the actual 12 mile waterless stretch. As yesterday, my current hiking group were following the same plan and we all stopped in some shade at the top of the day to rehydrate before tackling the days climb in the hot, hot sun. Again most of hikers left in front of me and i spent the rest of the afternoon catching them up so we could all celebrate at the halfway marker together. At about 4pm i reached the PCT halfway marker at mile 1326.5. I had hiked halfway from Mexico to Canada! It was actually a little anticlimactic, i don't know why, but it did. I think mostly because the two main groups of people with whom I have made friends, PRT and the Wolfpack, weren't there, and it felt a bit strange celebrating with people i didn't really know. I don't have anything negative to say about the present group with whom i am hiking, but they just weren't my group. Nevertheless, 2 of the group, Fireball and Busted, had each brought with them a bottle of sparkling wine, which we all used to good effect in front of the the monument. Interestingly, the PCT halfway marker isn't halfway along the PCT. The length of the PCT changes over time as detours are added and then removed, for a whole host of reasons, and this year the trail is 2660 miles long meaning the mid point was at mile 1330, and not 1326.6 where the monument is located, but who's counting? After a long time collectively patting ourselves on our backs we all carried on down the trail towards water and that night's camping spot. I was in two minds as to whether to stop at the water, or continue to the road and try to hitch to Chester, 7 miles eat from where the trail crosses the nearest highway at mile 2335. In the end i decided it was getting late and my chances of hitching in the dark were close to zero, so i decided to cover the last miles to the road early in the morning and get to bed early that night, so along with most people, except Dr Slosh and Smiles, who had turned up out of the blue at the monument and then had disappeared back into the blue immediately after on their way to Chester that night, i camped at Soldier Springs. My main reward to myself for getting this far has been the low mileage of the last couple days, I know that this is going to change in a big way from here on out, but that night i drifted off to sleep content that i was well on my way to fulfilling a long desired goal of hiking from Mexico to Canada along the PCT.

Halfway through!

Clockwise from the champagne : Fireball, Lady X, Solstice, Golden Boy and Busted