PCT:Day 214: Slack packing

Day: 214

Direction: Southbound 

Trail location: 1470

Cumulative miles hiked: 2189

Miles hiked today: 11.8

Elevation: 6000

High/low temp humidity:

Spinning on the turntable: Richard K. Morgan: Altered Carbon

Today I had expectations that I would fly up and down the hills since I was slack packing. That wasn’t the case. Today I moved at a glacier pace. My legs felt like they were filled with concrete. Why?

I can understand struggling up big hills when I have a full backpack, but I can’t really understand my woes when I have a nearly empty backpack. I ate well last night, I slept for nine hours, I’m hydrated. I don’t understand. Today the voice in my head is insistent. “You can’t do this.”

I went off trail for about 30 minutes this afternoon to collect water from a spring. It was a marshy spring area. The water was cool’ish, but not cold. I sat in the shade for about thirty minutes trying to deconstruct what’s happening today. All I can come up with is that I’m exhausted from a solid week of backpacking every day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

2 Comments

  1. Takeshi Kovacs’ dog Sparky

    I loved Altered Carbon, and read the rest as well. Morgan is a good author.

    The Netflix show bit it, though.

    Reply
    • mcgarveysan

      I found it was almost too complicated for me to listen to while walking. I’ll need to read it. If my mind wandered for a few moments I was sometimes confused and needed to stop and “rewind”. (Do we even call it rewind anymore?)

      Reply

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