It was hard to leave Trout Lake. Huckleberry muffins and two cups of coffee helped fuel me up to reach escape velocity, though.
Running some errands in the morning, I chatted with a younger PCT hiker who told me about another brother and sister hiking the trail together, about 2 days ahead of us.
“They’re named Smokey and Brother,” he said.
“Not Smokey and the Bandit?” I asked.
“No, I haven’t met them,” he said, “there’s another Smokey this year?”
Clearly, I’m old.
Soon enough, a trail angel had driven us to the trailhead. Where, as it happened, Coppertone awaited. We sat and chatted about the upcoming trail, Coppertone’s project to summit the highest thing in each county the PCT passes through, and huckleberries.
Apparently, some hikers had noticed the sign by the Trout Lake restaurant that said the restaurant would buy huckleberries. They had a gallon of them, and wanted to defray the cost of their town visit — huckleberries can be up to $75/gal.
Unfortunately, it seems you need a license to sell huckleberries in Trout Lake, and the restaurant wouldn’t buy them. They wouldn’t even barter for food.
So, a warning for PCT hikers: You can’t sell huckleberries without a license.
We didn’t get on the trail until after 10:30 this morning, but we soon entered the Mt. Adams Wilderness, a part of the trail with many mountain views.
There were other trailside attractions, too.
It got cold late in the day. Summer is clearly over. We set up camp with three other hikers, and went to sleep.
It occurred to me, we only have about 400 miles left. At a 25 mile pace, that’s only about 16 days. That’s not a lot of days.
