On the PCT, and many long thru hikes, people get “trail names”, which are given to them by people on the trail. The etiquette is usually that the hiker has to accept the name, but in some cases the name just sticks. For example, when we stayed at the trail angels, Scout and Frodo’s place (aside: a trail angel is someone who helps hikers out - sometimes they give rides to and from places, other times they open up their houses for accommodation, and sometimes they distribute “trail magic”, and sometimes all of those things) - now Scout and Frodo aren’t their real names, those are their trail names, the stories for theirs I won’t tell now.
But Scout told us a story about a fellow who got his trail name, by starting a sentence with “wouldn’t a terrible trail name be ‘cuddles’” - so you can guess what his trail name became, “cuddles”
Anyway, I’ve had a few trail names that have been thrown my way over the past few weeks. But they haven’t really stuck, so here are the proposed ones so far:
- Patches (because a lot of my clothing has different colours)
- Blaze (because my bag at the start of the trail was a bright orange colour)
- Taste the rainbow (again because I wear many colours)
- Skittles (because taste the rainbow is the slogan of skittles)
- Orange (some random dude tried to give this to me)
- Ranga (some random dude tried to give this to me)
- Parachute (because I am wearing lots of bright colours and the 90s had lots of bright colours and parachutes are often bright colours and the 90s had parachute pants)
So far nothing has stuck but people are trying hard to pin one one me. We shall see.
