I’ve made the difficult decision to close my hiker oasis permanently, effective June 15, 2023. After June 14, there will not be water or other hiker amenities available on my property abutting the PCT at mile 145.4. The PCTA, FarOut, and PCTwater have been informed of this upcoming closure.

A PCT thru hiker from Australia was rescued by ambulance from my hiker oasis this afternoon. A snake had bitten her, with fang marks and some swelling visible, but she wasn’t sure whether it was a rattlesnake or, if so, whether the bite was envenomated. She’s now on her way to the ER.

I ran into two riders yesterday doing sections of the PCT. They are part of a group riding the trail this year in support of veterans.

UPDATE: 5/19/23 I now have more info on the group sponsoring these riders. They are part of the Sky Soldiers Ride to Recovery 2023. More info about the group and ways to contribute is available on their Facebook page and the flyer below.

There was a hiker ambulance/medivac rescue of a PCT hiker suffering from heat-related illness 1.5 miles south of my place. I have no updates yet on the status of the rescued hiker.

I ran into this couple with baby doing a two-day section pack with llamas. In my fourteen years “covering” this section of the PCT, this is a first.

View from the south at PCT mile 147

I was alerted via email by a hiker that something weird was going on at my hiker oasis. SoBo hikers who arrived October 14 found the tank with the faucet on and the water draining onto the ground. Another hiker who arrived on October 15 found the tank nearly empty and tipped forward to drain the last bit of water out. My security cameras showed a vehicle driving up my driveway in the wee hours of 10/14-15. A friend who went to check on things on October 15 found the big 550 gallon tank gone, along with a very large number of other, non-hiker-related things on the property. — Total replacement cost of the stolen items is around $15,000. — Ouch!

Here’s the platform where the 550 gallon tank used to be.

With SoBo thru hiker season in full swing, I needed some type of tank to supply water, so I brought a small (65-gallon) tank over and filled it.

The sign requests hikers to post to FarOut on the amount of water left, so the friend who is supplying the water while I’m away can monitor it and knows when to come over with more water.

At this point, I don’t know what the future of my hiker oasis will be. It’s very likely I’ll sell the property and try to put this sad event behind me. It’s hard for me to imagine that now, since I’ve been providing water to PCT hikers and equestrians from this corner of my property for over ten years, but I suspect that is what my final decision will be. In that case, hopefully someone in the area will step up and resuscitate the long-standing seasonal cache that existed at PCT mile 143, until it was laid down in 2020.

The prickly pear cactus along the trail are in bloom, and the bees are lovin’ it.

The white sage is at its most aromatic this time of year. The outdoors smells like a giant smudge stick. … I wonder whether PCT hikers have any clue what they are smelling. Perhaps, they’re not even smelling it at all, with their heads down, grimacing, grinding out the miles.