[pct-l] Ollalie lake

[ukstoveman at hotmail.com (David Toms)]

We met a few people on the trail this year who'd had problems with boxes at 
Ollalie, so I called the owner in advance to find out what the sitaution was 
- I was concerned (correctly it turned out) that the hiker box would have 
been cleared out by SOBOs and if our box wasn't there, we'd be stuffed.

What I heard from him, repeated by staff at the store, was as follows:

The USFS hold the boxes for Ollalie lake at some place 30miles away. They 
used to deliver these on a weekly basis. In 05, they stopped delivering. It 
was several weeks before the guys at Ollalie realised they weren't 
delivering (hikers kept turning up looking for boxes) and had time to drive 
their truck to the USFS station and fill it with boxes; they weren't 
expecting an early hiker wave as happened with the SOBOs. As a result, some 
people didn't get their boxes and had to resupply from the hiker box, store, 
and generosity of an ex-thruhiker who was working there. Fortunately for us, 
by the time NOBOs started arriving, Ollalie had collected the boxes - the 
shed was crammed full of them when we got ours.

Whilst the situation was a PITA for a bunch of hikers, the box holding 
service was free, the staff were friendly, and they had ice cream.

Dave

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