Lazy Legs, Heavy Pack

10:03 AM

Heh, finally I’m allowed to continue. You get bored quickly when you’re not doing anything, but today I managed to get some work done: fixed a mail outage, upgraded servers, and replied to emails. I also did some Q3 bookkeeping on my iPhone mini—tiny fiddly work, but now I’m caught up.

Had breakfast in a café and then went to the post office to send a package with unused or broken gear back to the Netherlands. The cheapest shipping option was 350 euros! Absurd—like it’s being sent by private jet. Not doing that.

Luckily I have a PO box in Portland where packages can sit for three months. For 20 euros I can send it there and decide later whether to take it as checked luggage.

Now to arrange an Uber to get back to the trailhead and continue—climbing from 690 meters up to 2,200 meters into the mountains.

12:44 PM

The climbing is going painfully slowly 🥵. I notice that over the past four days I’ve been eating a lot to put some weight back on. Now I feel like a walking sandbag with legs that are too short. This is heavy again.

The backpack, on the other hand, is great 🥰. Very happy with it. It has a large, removable hip belt, a one-liter bottle up front, and two-liter bottles on the sides. Load lifters keep the pack close to my back so it doesn’t sag. Yes, a really nice pack—though it’s a shame that a nearly one-kilo canister has to go inside.

2:45 PM

3:49 PM

🥳 At the top there’s a cooler with cola and chairs to catch your breath for a bit. You couldn’t wish for better timing 🤣.

4:02 PM

7:03 PM

What am I going to do? Walk another 8 km or build up slowly again? After barely walking for four days, you get lazy pretty quickly ☹️. Better take it easy, otherwise it’ll get late again 🤔.

First, eat something and try to cram everything into the canister. And of course—it doesn’t fit! Took too much food again, yes! 🙂‍↕️

Because I sent the UrSack back, I have to put the remaining food in a CF bag and hang it as high as possible in a tree, at least 60 meters away from me. But yeah… I’m not doing that. If a bear wants the bag, it’ll get it anyway. At least now I can still chase it away. The canister is easier; it’s supposed to be at least 15 meters away, upside down between rocks or trees. Well, I’ll just put it 2 meters behind my tent. The main thing is that the mice can’t get to it.

Total: 26.20 km in 9:18 hours
1,015 m up · 495 m down