[pct-l] First North Bounders Reaching Canada - "Hello" to Steel-Eye - Scott Williamson - Seven Bears

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good afternoon, Keith,

Thanks for passing on the greeting from Swami; his site is interesting and
I hope he’s successful in his 12K effort.  If attitude counts, he should be
well positioned to finish.

While looking through the ’07 photos recently I found one I had taken of
Swami the morning after we swapped the sunglasses and stocking hat.  It was
taken early when we were packing to hit the trail for the day.  He’s
wearing the stocking hat in the photo.

I don’t have a good place to post photos so I stuck it in the photo list at:
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?trailname=8835

Thanks again, and enjoy your hiking season,

Steel-Eye

-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/


On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Keith Kurko <kwkurko at comcast.net> wrote:

> While on a short PCT section hike southbound between Rainy Pass and
> Stehekin
> last Saturday, I first ran into Swami (Cam Honan, a friendly Australian)
> followed a couple hours later by Wayne (chewing a Stehekin Bakery pastry as
> he walked) and Mouse.  Swami said that he started hiking from Mexico on May
> 9th, and Wayne and Mouse started on May 6th.  Cam seems to be almost a
> professional full-time, year-round hiker and he told me about his blog, The
> Hiking Life http://www.thehikinglife.com/.  Pretty amazing stuff on it.
>
>
> All three expected to be in Manning Park, B.C. in a few days (and have
> probably finished up by now).  They remarked on this year's relative lack
> of
> snow in California and the relative abundance of snow in Oregon and
> Washington.
>
>
> When I told Swami that I followed the PCT e-mail list, he got a big smile
> on
> his face and told me a funny story about his 2007 PCT hike.  During it, he
> met Steel-Eye (Chuck Chelin) on the trail, and then coincidentally later
> found and returned Steel-Eye's lost glasses.  At the same time and again by
> sheer coincidence, Steel-Eye had found a hat on the trail that turned out
> to
> be Swami's lost hat!  In fond memory, Swami asked me to give Chuck a big
> "Hello!" for him.
>
>
> All three hikers mentioned running into Scott Williamson in the Stehekin
> area, who is apparently preparing for another record-testing southbound
> hike.  I talked with the Postmaster in the Stehekin Post Office, and he
> mentioned that Scott had been in that morning and was planning to cache a
> food drop in a bear storage food locker in one of the North Cascades
> National Park's PCT campsites.
>
>
> Speaking of bears, I saw seven of them on the trail between Rainy Pass and
> Stehekin, and all of them were within a 100 feet of me when I first saw
> them!  There were three sows with four cubs.  Only two of the seven bears
> were at a campsite; the others were just grazing along the trail.  On two
> separate occasions, my first awareness of their presence was when bear cubs
> scampered up nearby trees screeching at me!  On one of those two occasions,
> Mama snorted menacingly about 70 feet away from me in the brush, and on the
> other occasion the big female just seemed to glare at me.  I moved
> down-trail with great alacrity both times!
>
>
> Lastly, I saw a U.S. Forest Service sign posted on the southbound PCT near
> the High Bridge campground notifying hikers that due to a collapsed foot
> log
> across Agnes Creek there was a several mile detour in place to get around
> the collapsed foot log.  The Forest Service sign had a crude map attached
> to
> it.  This detour was news to me.
>
>
> Keith in Seattle
>
>
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