Davis - Pacific Crest Trail Journal - 2008

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Starting to see some hills

gushing blood!!!

My (Kim's) stupid, snotty cold perseveres. It's a good thing that it doesn't really bother me too much while I'm hiking proper. It's just as soon as I stop moving that it tries to kill me.

Last night, I was so proud of myself, because we'd kept up with (and sometimes even led!) Samantha (she's the one we started with, who had already hiked the Appalachian Trail). We got to a campsite first, so when she came walking by, we invited her to share it. She agreed, settled in for the night, and disappeared into her tent. Brent and I went to bed, but then my cold kicked into overdrive, and I was hacking and coughing and snarkling and making various disgusting (and not conducive to sleep!) noises. And then I got a nosebleed. Laying under the tarp, I felt something trickling down my cheek, looked at my fingers, and it was blood! Bleah! I haven't gotten a nosebleed in years! I'm under the tarp, catching my drips in my hand, I've got blood all over my face, and I can't get to the tissue, because I don't want to get blood all over the tarp. Eventually, the bleeding stopped, and Brent helped me clean up. It was kind of a gross evening. Blood is really sticky when it dries, and it does that almost immediately in the desert. Anyway, we tried to go back to sleep, and when I looked over at around 3am, Samantha was gone. She insists that she just wanted to head for water early, but I know she was driven away by my coughing and bleeding chaos.

- Kim

By the way, this was a gorgeous campsite. We'd hiked through the desert for all of the day - it was really, really hot, but there was all sorts of interesting life close up - we camped at the top of a ridge, could see across the desert in all directions, and the moon was nearly full. Nice!

- Brent

Entry 6 of 134
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