The Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick Off (ADZPCTKO) party was two days of organized chaos geared towards the orientation of new PCT hikers about to start their journey. Consisting of presentions, slideshows, small lightweight gear vendors, and of course partying, it's a lot to take in at once. Needless to say, there's also a couple hundred past and present thru hikers running around over the place.
Fragrant is not the word I would choose for our crowd.
There's also not an hour of the day where beer's not being consumed.
Rations, I think they call it.
It's hard to remember that most people here you could consider endurance athletes. New and old hippies run abound. Some people here are engineers and some have no job; what you were before the trail hardly matters.
We're up late at night around fires, drinking and watching people go off to bed one by one. Joe and Dan and I feel somewhat like veterans, with our 376 mile headstart on the pack. Word is, they issued 700+ permits this year, a record. The majority of them start in late April to May. We were out here easing into it in March, with the trail all to ourselves.
One cool thing about the weekend is my Dad decided to stay. We got to have some pretty good conversation by the lake about things we rarely talk about. Him and I have connected a lot more while I've been on this trip. The second night he stayed up with me and Dan by the fire and entertained us with crazy stories while we drank cheap beer. That was a pretty good night. I was glad he came.
Two highlights of the Kickoff that I found really interesting, that stood out:
1. 'One Pan Wonders' by Dicentra, two books on trail cooking that really expand your options for meals using what's available to you.
2. Six Million Steps: A Journey Inward, an interesting documentary about the PCT.
It felt good to be packing up and on the way back to the trail in my dad's car. I was excited to hit the trail again. We hit up a Denny's and I ordered as much food as I could eat. You know, the usual. Eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and of course biscuits and gravy. There might have even been some French toast in there somewhere.
Below are some pictures of Joe holding normal size objects for scale.
Maybe it can help shine light on why he has been named Yeti.
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