If you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbFj6ET3f8E0HwQu57wOhtg), then you’ve already seen this video.
For 2021, in order to reduce computer time and maximize trail time, I am going to only post videos to the YouTube channel until after we get back from hiking. So, if you’d like to follow along as we go, please go and subscribe there. The YouTube channel is currently titled “PCT Trekking and Kedging – ‘Kedger’ and ‘Top Rock'”
Here’s the teaser:
Love getting emails finally on your new posts! And although I did see your 1st TEASER months ago, no way was I going to miss “May Teaser” although similar/same as you mentioned… still exhausts me to travel with you up the moving route line ….. thinking of all the places you have been… and the ones to come! Went into ‘You Tube’ (which I hate to admit, is the 1st time I deliberately typed in the link… just watch UTubes that are sent me or I accidentally come across). But was pleasantly surprised I found ‘PCT Trekking and Kedging’ so easily- so this will be fun in a few weeks to start traveling with you again… via UTube.
Save me time: Can you remind me what your code names mean to you and why you picked them (CBS & Top Rock)? Or is this not for public viewing!?! *-)
Hi Sharon,
Thank you for coming along. Hopefully you’ll get “just the right amount” of exhaustion as you travel along with us!
Regarding the trail names, long distance hiking is a very liberating activity. Many hikers enhance their liberation by taking on a new name. They can be funny, silly, or serious. Generally they are bestowed upon a hiker by fellow hikers. And the name usually has some connection to a hiking experience or the hiker’s life. (I heard of one hiker named “Gotta go” after, in her urgent need for some relief she failed to wander sufficiently far away from the trail. While completing her business, a fellow hiker happen by, noticed her and said, “When you’ve got to go, you gotta go.” From that moment on, she was “Gotta go.”) Usually the name has to be embraced by the hiker for it to stick as when on trail you often introduce yourself only by your trail name.
Ken was giving the name ‘Top Rock’ because someone observed that every time he got to a peak he sought out the highest object and stood on top of it. On trail, that’s usually a rock.
I was given the name ‘CBS’ by a group of hikers gathered around a camp fire. They’d been on trail for a while during unusual weather, a local earthquake (some had seen significant rock slides very close to them as they walked), and other world events. I’d been off trail and had just returned. I shared weather reports and forecasts, details about the earthquake, and other events when someone said, “You should be called CBS, because you bring the news!” I stuck with it for 2019.
However, for 2021, I’m reverting to ‘Kedger’. That’s the name by which we were hailed when sailing. And, more importantly, that’s what we’re doing out here. Kedging. Using a kedge (in this case the PCT) to pull us from where we are (sitting on our couch growing into a blob) to where we want to be (outside, physically fit, and highly mobile).
Fair winds