Tag: ziggy-bear

Ziggy and The Bear
2015.07.11
Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail
And off I go, leaving my adopted grandparents and the sweetest Pacific Crest Trail trail angels ever behind for the year. Ziggy and The Bear! They took incredible care of me and about 1500 PCT 2015 hikers this year. I’ll miss them so much. And it’s possible that due to the Lake Fire, many more future hikers will miss them, too. Look at a map, think about it. You can retrospectively support these guys by paypal’ing funds to whitewatertrailhouse@gmail.com. They’ve done tons for PCT hikers over the past 15 years and deserve big thanks (and help paying for those porta-potties!) Also, if you haven’t picked up your box there, get in touch. One of them smells really bad. 😜

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Braidley
Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail
Pacific Crest Trail sweetheart Bradley and I now have an arrangement: I braid his hair and he rubs my back. I braided it in Mt Laguna and he says he not only got tons of compliments but it lasted 10 days. This morning I got a nice back rub. Now I’m sending him to Deep Creek Hot Springs with a throw down style… The MEGA braid. And a new trail name: BRAIDLEY. It goes well with his sensational fake Australian accent. What’s your name? “Braidley.

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Yoga at Ziggy’s
2015.05.12
Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail
There’s nothing like talk of backpacking gear and filthy hikers doing yoga together in the morning. (This is the first time I’ve seen organized yoga at Ziggy and The Bear’s.) I’m getting a bit burned out in the PCT-hiker-all-day-everyday thing and antsy to strike out on my own hike. Day after day I’ve watched other people strike out on adventure dreams, and I haven’t been exactly living mine. What with a little nagging MTB injury, I’ve had a couple days where it was hard to stay my usual chipper self. I don’t like that. In a week I’ll be in Yosemite, and I think I might take the High Route for a bit. That should get me out of the crowd.

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Mr. Bill
2015.05.06
Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail
OH MY GAWD I LOVE THIS GUY! Mr Bill usually sleeps under the table, so when I saw hikers in his spot he countered “I’ll just sleep in my car.” No way, he gets a bed tonight. Mr Bill has been trail angel-ing since 1997 but more interestingly he’s been collecting data from trail registers and log books that long. He’s a trail historian with an uncanny knack for remembering names and dates. He knows if you’ve been bad or good and he knows if you’ve thru-hiked. He also has the most *incredible* sense of humor and infectious laugh.

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Windy Whitewater
2015.05.04
Latergram, My VW Westfalia, Pacific Crest Trail
Scenes from Ziggy and The Bear’s place on the Pacific Crest Trail, featuring Chief Pete, wind, Honey Badger, Billy Goat and Dutch Claire cleaning up the trash bin, and a bunch of hikers siesta-ing. May 1 we were 230 hikers over the 5/1/2014 hiker count, but yesterday we were only 120 hikers over the 5/1/2014 count. There is either a vortex south of here or the dropout rate is astounding this year. Wouldn’t be surprising given the drought, heat , and last weekend’s storm.

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My Portraits of the Pacific Crest Trail
2014.12.07
Pacific Crest Trail
I was super excited to find this excellent photo gallery of PCT hiker photos over at Outside Online today (thanks Pacific Crest Trail Association for the link). How cool is it that an unwitting trail angel became a documenter of some of the 2014 personalities? I met a few of those hikers (Justin, Blanco, Far Out, Sarah!, Namaste) , and maybe met a few others before they got their trail names, and got teary-eyed looking at their beautiful portraits. But it made me remember that I took some 2014 PCT portraits myself, and still haven’t shared them beyond the ephemeral Instagram base. So here you go: Hiker Apache. Now I’m partial to this guy because I hiked a few miles with him in 2013, and he’s just […]

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