Day 104 – 8/4/13 – 24.2 mi (1849.6)

We got walking by 7:30, but had to either rewalk the 2 miles we walked yesterday or hitch them. We decided to just rewalk since it’s fun to see all the geysers. So of course this went a bit slowly. We met a “geyser gazer”, an older gentlemen we saw at the same geyser yesterday. He just sits there all day waiting for it to erupt. He tries to get to the park 3-4 weeks a year just to watch geysers. I should also note that ever since encountering British southbounder Simon a few days back, we’ve adopted his pronunciation of geyser, “geezer”. This makes the term “geyser gazer” all the more fun.

The trail quickly turned to crap once we were off the tourist path. We walked up to Summit Lake for lunch. The next water was 16 miles away, so we filled up and decided to push to get to the water to camp.

Just after leaving lunch, we ran into yet more fellow 2011 PCT friends, Pyrite and Chinchilla who are southbounding. I love talking to other thrus. They’re an instant extension of your hiker family and you get updates on all the trail conditions and gossip. The only “real world” news I’ve heard this summer is that Kate Middleton had a boy, but I’ve heard 3 accounts of Portrait and Castle’s Subway incident in Sawtelle.

In the late afternoon, we finished our third state, Wyoming, and entered Idaho. We will be going back and forth between Idaho and Montana for quite a while as we follow the border west. I started recording a short video clip as we crossed the border, asking the others how they were feeling. All shared one sentiment: they had to pee.

We split off the official CDT and bushwhacked over to an old roadbed, heavily bermed and filled with 40 year old saplings. We were all very ready to be done when we got to the spring.