CDT Day 80 (8/6/23)

Miles 1929.9 (Red line 2191.6)- 1961.8 (Redline 2223.5) (31.9 miles)

Verbatim

Tough day. Really tough day. I don’t have enough calories and the calories I do have area all sugar. I had a headache, and do now as well, from my breakfast of two Three Musketeers bars and 720 calories of gummy bears. Yuck. Fruit snacks will always be superior to gummy anything.

The math is easy to do with today’s numbers. It’s day 80 and I’m averaging 24.5 miles a day. That’s great, all things considered. Four zeros. Nights up to 11pm with Mosquitoes. Carrying all my waste. A hard trail. We’re doing well. It’s good to do a thirty day. There was so much climbing… And I’d hardly done ten miles by noon. An effective afternoon, then.

I met several people who asked about my trash today. Having shoes hanging off your pack is a real conversation starter. One of the people was Gunner, who has spent time himself counting all the plastic he uses on such trips. His friend, Extra, described Gunnar as counting wrappers on a hotel bed. They traveled with Cash Money, who I met half a mile later. The three all had orange hats.

I walked well today. The timing of storms was perfect. One after lunch on a forested descent. No problem. The storms really bring out the smells. And it smelled great! Like the fall in Maine. The other storm, the 4pm storm, occurred just in front of me and high up on the ridge. I was rained on a bit and it was REAL windy. But no wet no problem. By the time I reached the ridge walk it was sunny and windy and warm. I am camped on some wet dirt tonight amidst lots of wet and smelly cow patties. A storm passed through here earlier as well I suppose.

There is one rather detrimental factor that’s emerging because of this storm. Or maybe it’s because of my shoes. Or perhaps my lack of fresh socks. Or all three! My feet, specifically my toes, are beginning to rash. These Oboz shoes do not dry out well at all. They’ve been wet for four days now. Not having dry, and clean, socks to change has made things worse. My feet, I fear, are at risk of fungus. Because I missed the big storms today my feet are as dry as they’ve been. I’m hopefully to buy socks in Leadore tomorrow. Maybe shoes as well if I’m lucky…

I have thirteen miles into town and a 1.5k elevation gain mountain to climb. Apparently it’s a tough hitch. I will be hungry.

Post Note

Hike and Bike shoes, the kind of shoe you’ll find at a store in Colorado or hip outdoorsy store someplace downtown, are completely different than Camp and Fish shoes, the sort of shoe you’ll find in Montana or Idaho in a place like Ennis. The hunt and fish culture is just different. It demands a shoe meant to be rugged through the biome and its elements rather than quick and light atop of it. With a hunt and fish shoe you’ll want a shoe you can be warm in while standing still. With a bike and bike shoe you’ll want one breathable enough to be warm while moving. That’s how I think of it at least. I have no experience with hunting or fishing.

The Oboz shoes I had were the lightest option. They supplied just one extra layer of insulation over the hike shoes I’d been used to. Rather than the simple plastic weave of some ultra-advanced-breathable-micro-fiber-5000, the Oboz shoe had an outer weave, a felt liner, and then another inner weave. That one felt layer made all the difference. The shoes were less flexible. They were hot. They did not vent water easily at all. These Oboz would have been good on a dry fall day, or wet one where I could return to my shoe drying rack back at camp at the day’s conclusion. They were not good for being rained on. No waterproof shoe is good for being rained on. There’s a hole in the top of every shoe with which your ankle or leg does a poor job of making a watertight seal. So they get wet. Then the shoes’ “watertightness” keeps rain inside and fresh ventilating and drying air outside. My shoes got wet. And then they didn’t dry. Later on they would begin to fray. It took longer than normal, on account of such a resilient three layered design, but eventually holes did begin to form by the outsides of the crease of the shoe by my pinky and big toes. I got excited about it! Holes in the shoes meant they would finally start leaking water and whooshing in fresh ventilating air with the compression and release of each step. That was worth the price of gravel under my toes wearing my socks and skin away.

Eventually your shoes break down in a sort of fashion which seems to completely change the shoe. They morph, widen, flatten, leech color under the hot sun and cool water, stretch the laces, break down around the cuff, cut your ankles with the now exposed heel plastic, and a host of other things. Most thruhikers exchange shoes every 500-700 miles. If you’ve pushed a shoe 700 miles you’re thought to have done a pretty dang good job. That’s really only a good idea when you’re traveling through dry and well groomed trail. The natural flexing of the shoe by walking is enough to tear a shoe apart over that distance. But if the shoe is constantly getting wet, or its weave is being pulled at by rocks, briars, grasses, and brush, or the shoe is consistently scraping up against the crystalline slush of Spring snow, the shoe will break down much faster. Hikers love to highlight the degradation of their used up shoes by taking a side by side photograph of the shoes being left behind (thrown away) and the new shoes just purchased to replace them. In one hand are some old rags. In the new hand is a bright and shiny pair of runners. Above is usually a big smile.

Mind you, these Oboz were only my third pair of shoes. And it was mile 1900 or so when I bought them. That’s close to a thousand miles on each pair of shoes I’d used. I was anxious to use as few shoes as possible because I didn’t want the weight or, what’s worse I found, the annoyance of a pair of shoes flipping around on the back of your backpack. I had a constant butt massager/water bottle kicker running while I walked. When I started this hike I’d intended not to restrict my plastic use in any way. But restricting my use, even for something as necessary as shoes, became paramount and subconscious once I started to intuitively understand that the cost of plastic use was real.

I didn’t want to change out my shoes. By my previous pair of Brooks Cascadias had no grip left underneath. I only changed them out when I started slipping on the logs I’d be climbing over on blowdown sections. It only takes one or two moments of “I almost just gutted myself on this branch” to motivate you into making smarter choices. So I had nice shoes on day 80. But eventually these shoes too would go the way of conforming to my feet like a well fitted glove, of becoming so smooth underneath it could have killed me, of losing color and taking up the distinct smell of trail. But day 80 was long before my new shoes would begin to fray. And on day 80 I looked down and saw and felt little red painful dots on the knuckles of several of my toes. I thought they were pimples. They were the perfect size, shape, and whiteness of a pimple. But popping them hurt much much more. They were blisters. Given to me by my new shoes, still too tight and having contracted further in the wetness of trail.

And then I remember that I didn’t really have any food left when dinner came around. I remember wanting to save a few yummier foods for the twelve or so miles into town the next day. So I sat for dinner on a treeless ridge in the wind with my back to the sun. I tried to eat a couple little hostess doughnuts; the same doughnuts which had filled me with disgust even while sitting in the motel back in Lima. I ate maybe two. I almost threw up. Lack of food made me tired and nauseous. Eating straight processed sugar made me more nauseous. I just sat for a while. Then I ate something I should have left until the next day. Then I got up and walked some more. I needed to walk until the next water. I was almost out. And any miles I didn’t walk now I’d be walking later when I was more hungry. That’s thruhiking.