Getting Ready in Boulder

We have been in Boulder for about a week now and time is flying by. Our friends Devin and Laura are putting us up in their new roomy place.

Today we hit Costco, buying large amounts of bulk nuts, bars, jerky, and cereal. This food is for our first 2 resupply boxes on the trail as well as the initial few days until Mt Laguna around mile 45.

The big PCT Kickoff party is this weekend and we are missing out on it. The bulk of this year's hikers are starting the trail as I am typing this. Honestly I am a bit sad not to be there. The kickoff is a huge tradeoff. You get ~100 people all starting the trail at once and having a huge party beforehand. I am sure that the camaraderie and excitement cannot be beaten, but the trail is extremely crowded for days afterward. My heart goes out to all hikers starting now. Especially our friend Erin. Check out her blog here: erinspctjournal.blogspot.com

Boulder is fantastic for getting ready. The weather is much nicer than Portland, even though it has snowed flurries a few times since we have arrived. A few days ago we had weather in the 70s. Today we are lucky to get above the low 40s. Thursday we carried full 30lb packs up 3000 feet to the top of 8500' Bear Peak. A slow and steady pace was all we needed. Along with the obvious benefits of training, it also serves to boost your mental confidence by telling you that you are ready to begin the journey.

And ready we are. Well except for all of the minute details that we still need to take care of. Our gear is still not fully assembled. Some stuff will be waiting at my Mom's place in Santa Fe. Other stuff is being sent to Laura in Prescott, our final destination before the start of the trail. I finally figured out my 'trail outfit'. Each of us has to live up to our team name of course! Zm has a fantastic trail dress that looks great. I needed shorts and a t-shirt that would look just as cool. The look is pretty much similar to last time, grey shorts plus a bright orange tee.

As I type this, Zm is cranking away on the sewing machine, and Devin is practicing jazz piano. Later tonight I will eat Korean food and play some Tichu.

Tuesday we leave Boulder and head South to Christine's (my mom) place in Santa Fe. The final round of logistics will be taken care of there.

Sun on the Scalp

At The Boulder Dushambe Teahouse with my father!

Atop Mt. Sanitas

Off With Her Locks!

Before

During

After

800 Miles

Today marked 9 years of togetherness for Goodness and I... we marked this by spending ALLLLLLLL day in the car travelling from Cle Elum,Washington to Evanston,Wyoming. :-)  What a relief to be back out on the open road and moving forward. 

Also, there were these great rainbows!

On our way once again

As of now, we are preparing to leave Cle Elum where we have been staying for the last few days.The car has a new radiator and has survived a test drive on the highway. We will have spent a total of 4 nights at the Chalet Motel, which we more or less have moved in to.

On Sunday, we took a big walk on the 'Mine Trail' which connects Cle Elum with the nearby historic communities of Ronald and Roslyn. The trail was nice, flat and came with lots of good scenery. It is nice to be in pine forest after so much Western OR fir.

The weather has been cold, reminding us of the excess snow in the mountains. We are considering pushing our PCT start date back by about a week to May 15 to account for it. Here, though, the wind is coming straight down from the mountains. The days have been sunny, but the temperatures have rarely gotten above 50.

Our days have been spent with lots of internet time and gaming as well. We have two computers between us and the motel has internet. Last night we turned the TV on for the first time to watch Conan. Today I decided that I would tune into daytime television for the first time since the last PCT trip. I think things have gotten worse in the last five years. I got to see a remarkable episode of 'Dog the Bounty Hunter', one of the most bizarre things I have seen in a while.

The manager of the motel has taken a liking to us. He has fed us dinner for the last two nights. After dinner we end up talking for quite a while. He is the first Fox News watching person that I have had the patience to speak with in a while. It has been interesting finding common ground with him. Truthfully, there is a fair amount of common ground to be had.

Unfortunately this big delay has cost us a visit to my friend Patrick in Montana. We need to make a line straight to Boulder at this point to meet Zm's dad who is flying in tomorrow (Wednesday). Look for our next update in Boulder!

Love is Rachel Parker

Today I finished setting up this blog and made the previous posts... here is a picture from the Coal Mines Trail we hiked yesterday that shows the remains of the Coal Washer:

Later, Rachel sent this lovely poem for adventurers by LeGuin:

Please bring strange things.

Please come bringing new things.

Let very old things come into your hands.

Let what you do not know come into your eyes.

Let desert sand harden your feet.

Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.

Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps

and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.

Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing

and your outbreath be the shining of ice.

May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.

May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.

May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.

May your soul be at home where there are no houses.

Walk carefully, well loved one,

Walk mindfully, well loved one,

Walk fearlessly, well loved one.

Return with us, return to us,

be always coming home.

-Ursula K. LeGuin

The Heart of the Cascades

A new day with ACTUAL blue sky as we rolled out of Auburn - Goodness asked me if I wanted to go see Snoqualmie Falls but I decided that it would be wise to skip it (despite my affection for Twin Peaks) and not tack anymore time on what looked to be a long long day of driving already. As we got to the top of Snoqualmie Pass, we exited to see the point where the Pacific Crest Trail(PCT) passes through. As we pulled into the Chevron parking lot, billows of steam began rising from our hood! Popping it revealed much coolant had escaped and we began to both adapt to that first wave of adrenaline. We went in to purchase more coolant and it was a first for me to see a post office & post office boxes inside a gas station convienince store! There was a sign on the door that I will read again in a few months which read: "PCT Hikers Pick Up Your Packages Here." That made me smile deeply and forget about the car for a minute. It was cold up there at the pass and this is a photo of the amount of snow next to me. Yes, that pile really is up to the Chevron price sign!

After funneling in the coolant, we continued with quite the sense of alarm. We hadn't gone more than a few miles when the car began to overheat - we pulled over and poured our two bottles of drinking water into the radiator.

Continuing on just a bit further we came to Keechelus Lake at the side of the road and Goodness jumped down over the edge of the highway and filled the bottles in the lake twice to fill the radiator to the top. I watched the gauge like a hawk on the way down the mountain but it held steadily at a normal level, about 20 minutes later we arrived in Cle Elum, WA. We checked to see if the car would take anymore water and it did, which meant it was indeed leaking..

Yuck. Being a Saturday, our chances of finding an open repair shop were slim yet just on the way limping through the town I spotted a wide open garage door! Sam's Shop! Goodness pulled a U-turn and we met two great and honest men, Sam and Mike. They had us pull the car in to check things out and told us of a way to hike up just behind the shop to catch a view of the surroundings. Turns out this place's nickname is The Heart of the Cascades. It was surreal to be out of the car and hiking up up up as I had prepared my mind to be seated in the car for umpteen hours. This place is absolutely gorgeous though and I'd gotten over that by the time we'd reached the top and pulled out a picnic. Goodness decided to digest by climbing into a tree..

When we returned to Sam's Shop, he and Mike showed us the gigantic crack in the radiator. Sam told us that a new one would ship overnight except that wouldn't be able to happen until Monday which leaves us in Cle Elum until at least Tuesday afternoon. We took this news in stride and Sam even offered us a place to sleep in a trailer he had on the property. He also pointed out this motel across the street and we decided to walk on over to check it out.

In walked a kind Italian man also named Mike. We told him of our state and he spoke with us for a good hour and a half before setting us up with a discounted room. He is one of those people that you like straight away if you are one who picks up on persons with open hearts. We rested and went out to a restaurant to celebrate how in our own way, we had made it. Less than 24 hours prior we had closed our home in Oregon and now here we are - resting, charging up for the next leg, and being thankful that we are safe.

Goodbye Portland, Hello Washington

Hello! This is the first post of the Adventures of Team Colour! Goodness and Zm are our trail names for traversing the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.

Yesterday we held a House Cooling Open House and had many of our friends come by to send us off - this is the opposite of a House Warming and a fantastic way to empty one's cupboards and refrigerator!

Our dear friend Kirk came by to hang out and assist us with a whirlwind cleaning of the apartment today. It took us four more hours than we had anticipated to get out of town, but after taking that last load to storage, we stopped by for farewells with our neighbors downstairs. This photograph is the last one taken of us in Portland and I am holding Atlas, one of the best friends I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I waved and waved to her as we drove away in our new home, our car.

The drive to Washington was very pleasant, we missed all the traffic and even got to see some fireworks exploding over the Puyallup Fairgrounds to mark the first day of the Spring Fair. This made me so happy - felt like we were exactly on target. We arrived up in Auburn and had a short but full visit with Goodness' Dad, his wife, Grace, and her daughter, Holly. Looking to get up early for a 13 hour drive to Montana to Patrick and Lynn's place.