August 7, 2017

Day 79 – Pancakes were a bad choice…

Originally published on Mason Hikes the PCT 2017.

Mileage: 27 with 8500′ of elevation gain

This morning, I wanted to get breakfast at the cafe as early as possible and then get out of town as quickly as I could. I have nothing against Seiad Valley, but I wanted to get the massive climb out of the way before it got too hot. As such, I had packed up all my things and was sitting outside the cafe ready to go by 7 when they opened.

The cafe has standard breakfast fare, but it is infamous on the trail for the “pancake challenge”, which is to eat a 5-stack of pancakes in two hours. If you succeed, your meal is paid for. That would be hard enough with regular pancakes, but these ones are “challenge pancakes”, 1-pound behemoths that make the challenge all but impossible. None of the other hikers thought they could do it and neither did I, but I took one for the team and ordered the challenge so that we could all revel in the glory of five pounds of pancakes and see what everyone else was missing.

A ton of hikers had come into the cafe as soon as it opened like me, so we had a hiker room in the cafe, with about 12 hikers in close quarters. I sat at a table with 2-can and Dusty Roads (or another less appropriate name), and they had both finished their food by the time my pancakes were ready. I can understand why, because the waitress came out with five of the biggest pancakes I’d ever seen! Ahhhh! 😮🥞

I obviously wasn’t going to finish them, but I got the rule schpiel anyway:

• You have two hours to finish the pancakes.

• You may have them to go or share them with anyone who is currently at your table if you give up.

• You throw up, you clean up.

Okay! Time to start eating! This might be a good time to explain that I don’t really even like pancakes very much. They’re fine, but I would pretty much never order them at a breakfast place.

I got through the first pancake without any problems, but I could already tell that no mere mortal could possibly finish all five. The syrup and butter was nice for making them taste good, but it added so many calories and I didn’t have any room to spare! As I approached the second half of pancake number 2, I hit a wall. No matter how I disguised them in butter and syrup, I struggled with every single bite. Surely I could finish two, right!? It wasn’t looking good.

I eventually forced down the rest of pancake two, but my body was not happy about it. I wasn’t uncomfortably full, but I had a mass of pancakes in my belly nonetheless, so I sat and stared as my table mates grabbed my leftovers and helped me out. As a table, we finished four of five pancakes, but it was a painful process and we were all excited to leave. I didn’t get my meal paid for because I only ate two pancakes, but that was certainly enough for me for the next few months… 🤢

Since I had eaten my breakfast, it was finally time to begin the climb. I knew it was going to be bad, I knew it was going to be hot, and I knew that the two pounds of pancakes sitting in my stomach were a bad choice, but I had to do what I could to get to Oregon. How bad could it be?

Answer: really bad.

But also pretty!

The climb was fairly standard and it wasn’t abnormally hot yet, but boy oh boy did my stomach feel like death. By the time I got halfway up the climb, I was struggling, and by the time I made it to what I thought was the top, I could not hike anymore. I was either going to sit down and wait, or I was going to lose my breakfast. A free breakfast, sure, but remember: I paid for those pancakes. I needed those calories. As such, I sat for a while as my stomach settled before getting up again and feeling like a brand new man. Whew. That was almost bad!

Bye, Seiad Valley!

The climb really wasn’t anything special, though there was a distinct lack of water towards the top, so I pushed on further than I wanted and eventually found a side trail to a spring. The spring was fantastic and had tons of freezing cold water, so I sat and ate for a bit before returning to the trail.

As I did, I saw a car coming up a dirt road and as they parked, six hikers hopped out and thanked them for the ride. Apparently these hikers had just left Seiad Valley a little while before and had hitched a ride up instead of hiking. Jealous! It’s okay, I enjoyed my pain too. 😊

Some other hikers approached on the trail and started talking about the climb, and one of the car hikers was saying, “Oh yeah, that WAS tough!” Despite having known that I watched him get out of the car, he was talking to the other hikers and eventually told them he had hiked it! I definitely don’t care if you hitchike to skip undesirable sections of the trail, but I do think lying about it is bizarre. You’ve hiked hundreds and hundreds of miles! Admitting that you skipped a few isn’t the end of the world!

Having gotten my fill of water and snacks, I wanted to press on even further uphill to have the trail to myself before this big group of hikers followed.

There were a few rain clouds hanging out above the mountains in the distance, but the faster I walked towards them, the faster they ran away. Rain seemed like it would be nice on a hot day like today, but I couldn’t catch up. I ran into some hikers coming south that had been poured on by the very clouds I was chasing, but I only saw the evidence that it HAD rained, none that it WAS raining. 😥

I finally got up to some flat(ter) ground and enjoyed a nice hike through the hills as the afternoon wore on. The views were smoky, but it’s still so beautiful out here so I really can’t complain!

Based on how I was feeling this morning when I was essentially made of pancakes, I didn’t think I could do a lot of mileage today. It didn’t help that I got a late start and it was a huge climb, so I really wasn’t expecting a lot. I just kept walking and daydreaming about what Oregon would be like, and before I knew it, I had walked pretty far! I picked out a campsite at some water a few miles from the border and was determined to make it before the sun went down.

The hike was still uphill to get to my campsite, but after surviving this morning, I was pretty sure I could handle anything. I was also finally starting to realize how close I was to Oregon and the end of my journey (for now!), so I was appreciating everything the trail was throwing at me. I finally made it up to the spring, set up my tent, and set off to find the water.

There were a lot of competing claims on Guthooks about where the water was, so I tried one, found puddles, tried another, no spring, and then finally tried the “official” trail and immediately found an amazing spring. I have no idea why everyone wrote down different directions, but don’t believe everything you read on the internet, kids!

Nice view from the spring

The spring was flowing well but was very shallow, so I had to get creative with some leaves acting as a funnel. It worked like a charm and I quickly filled all of my bottles in preparation for cooking my dinner. With all the water I needed for the night and the morning, I left the lovely spring and climbed back up to the trail to make some dinner and hit the hay.

As I made dinner dinner, I internally debated what tomorrow should look like since it could potentially be my last day on trail. I was tempted to take an easy day and sleep in the wilderness for another night, but it was only 36 miles to Ashland, so it was perfectly doable in a day and would give me one last day hanging out with all the other hikers. It would mean getting off trail a day earlier, but realistically, I will appreciate a little extra time before going back to work next week. That’s going to be interesting… 😬