In the distance, a lone figure trots forward. Nothing special, we are on a popular hiking trail after all. ‘Who’d walk without hiking poles?’ Coyote wonders, after we see the woman is empty handed. We come closer. Suddenly, realization hits. ‘Tenderfoot!’ both of us cheer. We hadn’t expected to see her again, as she herself stated: ‘I can’t keep up with 2 young bucks like you.’ (even though she’s only 4 years older than coyote). At the water resupply we spend some time together, Tenderfoot berating us that we always sneak into camp after dark. She’s different in a couple of ways. First of all she gave the name Tenderfoot to herself, while usually someone else has to give you your trailname. Not that it’s a bad name, from her stories I could tell she’s had a lot of problems with her feet. As Coyote remarked, it has something of a Native American name. Secondly, she doesnt use FarOut, the number one navigation app for this trail (‘if I wanted to look at a phone all day I could have stayed in my office!’ as per her words). Thirdly, she doesnt have a pct permit. I’ll leave it in the middle whether that’s a good or bad thing.
Eventually, our roads split, she had to go into town, while we continued on the path. For Coyote, it’s almost certainly the last time he’ll see her. I still hold out hope our paths cross again. I’ll miss her though. Goodbye Tenderfoot, take care of those feet.
Ar our campsite that night, we met Calves again, his injuries are healed and he’s crushing 30 miles a day, which is how he caught up with us. And he couldn’t stop bragging about his miles. I liked him a lot more when he was sniffing trees at the Idyllwild campsite. We shared camp with Russell and Pieter, another Belgian guy. Wish some of our old friends were here, feels like an eternity since we left them. I even start to miss Gopher. Very tired today, it will be a cold night.
