PCT Room Day 46 – A swollen leg

Day 46

Home: Tentsite Mile 784.6

End: stealthy, mile 809.7

Walked miles: 25.1 miles

I went on yesterday’s walk, so I slept in a adolescence bit and left the camp at 7:20 am the morning was still and calm. In my mind today it was the long walk to my next source of water. When I looked Faraout this morning, I realized that I had 13.5 miles to the next water and I only had approximately 1 liter in me to get so far. Oh. But it was tomorrow and still great, so I thought I could do it there in one way or another.

Today it would reach the highest point of the PCT in Washington and Oregon at 7573 feet. What a milestone! While walking to that point, lost in thought, I felt that a drop of water hit the back of my leg. I turned to look, confirming that in fact it was water, probably from my water bottle hose. When I started walking again, I suddenly felt a sharp pinch inside my thigh. While looking down, I could see a wasp just a few centimeters from my foot. I had been bitten again!

The acute pain continued for a few minutes while limping on the path, trying to breathe deeply and ignore persistent pain. Looking at the sting, I could see exactly where the wasp had achieved and see the swelling that grew before my eyes. I just expected not to get so bad.

Finally, the pain disappeared and continued up the gradual path to the highest point and the area of ​​Mount Thielsen. I don’t know what I expected at the highest point, but it was a bit anti -annual. A solitary sign was on the sandy floor between tree patches that said «Or/Wa High Pt. 7560 ‘». And that was all. Without view or anything, just a signal. Hey.

I had not yet reached my first source of water for the day, so when I realized that I only had 5 miles, I was ecstatic! My leg, however, was not so happy. The swelling had worsened in the last hours, and now it hurt and it was hot to touch. Even so, there was not much I could do about it, except to move on.

When I arrived at the stream, I pressed some ice water to my leg to relieve pain, which helped a little. I filled my bottles and lunch while trying to ignore the pain of my leg. My bees bites generally improve for day 3, so I still had a time to withstand pain.

After lunch, Mount Thielsen finally appeared while crossing a couple of rocky outcrops. Some people like «Peak-Bag» for fun and climbing the mountains that the path passes as a kind of additional credit. Mount Thielsen is one of the popular secondary missions that people take and heard that it is great. But today it was going to happen.

My goal for today was to enter the Crater Lake National Park. I had never visited the park before, so I was excited to see what Crater Lake had to offer. But first I had to get there. Below I descended from the Mount Thielsen area, my leg hurt with each step. I felt that I could barely walk. I moved much more slowly than usual due to how painful swelling was. It wasn’t just my thigh; The inflammation had reached my knee, so now my knee hurt. I didn’t have Benadryl, so I took a claritin, plus a pain ibuprofen. And it helped a little.

When I got to the water cache on the road at the bottom of the descent, I was walking almost normally again. A good group of nobos congregated in the cache. After stirring the elegant, I filled out of the water and took a break. My leg looked so bad, but I knew I had to get worse before it would improve.

However, when I got up to make my last miles, I couldn’t put weight on my leg. The blood ran through my leg as I was sitting, so I felt as if I was chopped again. But, after breeding for a few steps, I could walk again.

Fortunately, the path to the Crater Lake National Park was super flat. I signed the record at the entrance and continued moving. I wanted to get as much as possible to have a brief walk to the edge tomorrow. I stopped for dinner to be able to do it a few more miles, but when I got up, that plan went out the window.

He could walk, but the ibuprofen had begun to disappear. After just one mile, I was ready to call it one day. I only had about 14 miles to Crater Lake Lodge, so I thought they would be enough miles to allow me to enjoy most of the day in the park.

With that, I found a place in the forest to disperse the camps away from the path and quickly went to sleep.

And that is a day in the life of a PCT Sobo hiker!

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