[pct-l] Section O drying out

[greg mushial]

Section O water sources, at least at the beginning, are drying up. I had 
planned on doing section O over 6 days, taking my time - ended up coming 
home the 2nd day. [If I had water carriers for more than 2 qts, the drying 
sources wouldn't have been a problem, ie, I'd probably still be walking - 
though it would have been more of a trip of off trail excusions to find 
water than a PCT walk I'm afraid.] My plan is to try section O again, next 
June, just after the snow leaves and there is still plenty of water sources.

Water at Rock Creek is not a problem (mile 1429 [ref HalfMile's maps]) - the 
creek is several feet wide and a foot deep (and turned out to be my only 
good water source for what I did). Any of the other trail crossing streams 
from there until Peavine creek are dry. On HalfMile's maps WA1425 is marked. 
If this is suppose to be the upper reaches of Screwdriver Crk where the PCT 
crosses it at 1434.6: it's dry. If this is a reference to the 0.1 mile trail 
down (left and south of the PCT) - that's going quickly - I had to dig a 
hole in the mud deep enough to get my water bottle into (1 qt gatorade 
bottle) in order to get the mouth below "water" (mud) level, and then had to 
wait some time for the little flow to clean out the hole, before I could 
(1/2) fill the bottle. Peavine Crk still has a flow (a gallon / min??) but 
is starting to grow over with algea (this is on the downstream side of the 
culvert where the PCT crosses it) - I didn't check the upstream side - maybe 
there was a better, clean filling spot there. I ended up walking the half 
mile or so, down to Rock Crk where there was plenty of flow.

Part of the reason I post this is: I essentially got caught "with my pants 
down", ie, I had spoken to a section hiker on the 27th when they reached 
Castle Crags (having just done O), where they said that there was plenty of 
water (in O), more water sources than the maps showed. When I asked: how 
many water bottles they were carrying, the reply was 2 qts, and that was 
plenty, if not too much. I walked the same route on the 7th (of Aug), and 
the water situation was entirely changed. [and yes, I believe I was given 
honest information, which I'm still grateful for, ie, not sandbagged].

As an aside: given that I was planning on 12-15 mile days, and only had 2 
qts, was looking forward to the next section being 20+ miles known without 
water, and given what I had just run into, with maybe even with less water 
than expected forward - I bailed and walked back out on 37N30 (which follows 
RockCrk, ie, pleeenty of water), back to Rock Crk Falls and 37N02 back ot 
the lake. [I'll post more on this route - which is not a bad escape route... 
but has a couple route finding gotchas.]

put one foot ahead of the other, repeat until done,
TheDuck