Day 74:

Date: June 14, 2015

Progress: 25.4 miles - Marble Valley (mi 1630.1) to Grider Creek Camp (mi 1655.5)

Before the PCT, I never thought I'd walk 25 miles on my 21st birthday. Still though, here I am. I woke up and Impala and Chewie had taken off early (as they both like to do). Backtrack and a section hiker named Rich wished me a happy birthday.

I packed up my stuff and then went down to the stream to fill up for the first part of the day, and to grab the beer that I'd packed out of town from the stream. It was nicely chilled from sitting in the water overnight. Thank you to Jess and Jake for supplying me with my first legal beer!

I posed as Backtrack took a couple photos of me with my obligatory birthday sign. (My mother has had me hold a sign with my age on it each year. It will be cool to eventually look back on the progression.)

Today's hike was quite pretty, with a lot of variation in the terrain and environment. A lot of it was through an area that got burned very badly by a wildfire that happened last year. We also dropped thousands of feet of elevation as we descended through the second half of the day. 

This afternoon another hiker named Magic caught up with us. He and Impala are the first two that we've met who have made it all the way through without skipping any. It's been nice to spend some time with them before they surge ahead of us. They're both very fast hikers and it's humbling to be around them. 

When Backtrack and I rolled into camp around 8:00, Impala and Chewie were there to sing happy birthday to me.

Tomorrow we'll walk into Seiad Valley in the morning. 

It's difficult to tell from the photo how high above the creek this log was. Let's just say that falling would have been really bad.