The first 20 miles today just somehow happened. For most of the time we stayed in the forest again which was nicely shaded.
And the we entered the first obvious lava field. The naked volcanic rocks alternated with thick forest. I wonder how that happened?
We were still in the forest until here and then we got some views.
And yes, definitely volcanic!
After a almost 2.5h lunch break and a nap we continued. We bumped into a little group and found out that one of the guys was the famous “Halfmile”‘ who provides a lot of infos about the PCT as one of the apps, maps and more. That was a nice surprise. We pushed on for another 10 but once we crossed HW140 I don’t know who and why opened the gates to Mordor but the mosquitoes were outrages. Hundreds who followed us and even attacked us while we were walking. The repellent didn’t help at all. We basically ran to the lake we wanted to get to, pitched the tents in our rain gear, then jumped in the lake and rescued ourselves back in the tent. The theme of the entire evening was fighting the mosquitoes. Every time we opened the tent we had to kill 10-15 which made it in. Also cooking, hanging the food and everything else became a challenge – an unpleasant one! We need our blood for hiking you idiots!
I hope this is not what we have to endure the next three weeks even though I have heard horror-stories about it. 🙈
