[pct-l] 4th ADZPCTKO Report

[Bighummel@aol.com (Bighummel@aol.com)]

Here's the preliminary report on the 4th ADZPCTKO for all of you not able to 
attend and not out there hiking:

It rained most of the day on Friday as many people began arriving.  About 50 
people arrived Thursday night.  We had more people there Friday night, 
estimated 140, than we had Saturday night of the 3rd ADZ!

Around 5:00 Friday evening, Bob, the food and his RV arrived and was 
immediately mobbed by hungry helping hands.  In no time at all, the food, 
stoves and fixings were unloaded, prepared and cooking began.  Dinner was 
served to a hungry crowd under Bob Riess's RV canopy and a self standing 
canopy over the serving tables.  

It rained all Friday night testing many of the ultra light tarp-tent systems 
and giving many people new to the equipment a good early experience with a 
serious rain storm.   We organized this with the Great Backpacker In The Sky 
as an unannounced event of this ADZ! ;-)

The rain didn't bother Marion and Ray Davison's llamas who bedded down right 
next to the trail.  They attracted the curious all weekend long.

Late Friday night a small crowd of four persistant 2002 hopefuls could be 
seen still posing question after question at the highly regarded Flying Brian 
Robinson as he prepared to bed down. 
 
The rain continued into Saturday morning and began breaking up (as arranged) 
just in time for the events to start around mid-day.  It warmed up, tents and 
rain jackets began to dry, layers began to come off and shorts appeared as 
the skies cleared and sun shined.

"The Rogue" Reynolds gave a spirited demonstration of his methods for 
efficiently packing a bear canister and showed several examples of old and 
new, heavy and light canisters.  Upon filling one, he marched it over to the 
dry creek bed and tossed it in and exclaimed "I'm done!".

A few minutes later, after the crowd had wandered away, Mad Monte came 
charging out in bear costume.  Now, I have to describe the costume because I 
had a bit of a different idea of what it would look like than what it turned 
out to be.  The head of the costume was large and had a goofy, cartoon-like 
face on it.  Think "Yogi" not grizzly.

The "bear" retreived the canister and began to stomp on it, throw it down, 
tried to bite it, couldn't get his teeth around it and couldn't rip it apart 
due to no opposing thumbs!  The bear didn't seem to be affected in any way by 
the crowd, jeering, yelling and a cigarette butt shot by a slingshot!

Clearly frustrated, the bear gave up and disappeared into the sage.

Next email, "The 2nd Annual Great Pacific Long Distance Hiking Gear and 
Invention Review (AGPLDHG&IR)"

Strider