Category: General

WA PCT completion: delayed.

In the days leading up to hitting the trail on August 28th, I kept an eye on the wildfire reports and kept thinking how lucky we were that this years fire season hadn’t yet affected the Pacific Crest Trail in WA. We didn’t know that lightning had ignited the Wildcat Fire on August 25th. On August 30th (Day 2), the fire took off. We awoke on Day 5 and smoke had drifted in overnight and filled the area. We kept hiking North for 1-1/2 days to White Pass and bailed off the trail.

The Back Story

The 512 miles and 110,000′ of elevation gain of the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington are divided into 5 sections:

SecStartEndMilesElev. gain
HColumbia RiverWhite Pass14828,000
IWhite PassSnoqualmie Pass9917,771
JSnoqualmie PassStevens Pass7516,000
KStevens PassRainy Pass12326,351
LRainy PassCanadian border6015,300

For years I’d been hiking along the PCT, mostly on Section I. The annual backcountry ski Patrol Race I’ve raced in (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025) is the northernmost 20 miles of Section I. My gradual expansion along the PCT accelerated in June 2023 when Maud and I backpacked Section J. We loved it. The strenuous evelation gain yielded stunning views. The distance and remoteness were challenging, but it also meant our trail companions were similarly fit and inclined to expend serious effort on their fun. It whetted our appetites.

In mid-August 2023 we hiked Section K. The adjectives and superlatives others use to describe it all fit: wild, rugged, stunning, soaring peaks, magnificent, strenuous, grueling, intense, world-class. It consistently ranks atop the favorite sections of every PCT hiker we surveyed. Section K and Goat Rocks are so good one hiker said, “Instead of hiking the entire PCT, I should have just hiked WA three times.”

In July ’24 we hiked section L. Rather than doing a 120-mile out-and-back trip, we left from Canyon Creek Trailhead and intersected with the PCT on the way North. Then we returned exclusively on the PCT. In May of this year, after plans to hike some of the PCT near Bend Oregon were cancelled due to 4′ of snow still on the trail, we instead hiked the first 25 miles of Section H. That left us with 172 miles of the PCT in WA left to complete.

Section H Trip Journal

Composed by Maud, edited by Matt.

Aug 28, Day 0. Drove with Bev to Pyramid Pass and dropped off the Tesla. Drove the Little Naches Road down to WA-410 and on thru Yakima where we visited Jean, Keith’s mom. Cacti and succulents. Grapes. Bev dropped us off at the Trout Creek trailhead. Lots of PCT thru hikers camping at Trout Creek. A trail angel left “trail magic” (apples, fresh fruit) along the trail.

Trout Creek bridge

Aug 29, Day 1: 19 miles. 6AM start, first light, 59ºF. Green trail. Oaks. Views of Mt Hood. Humid. Hot. Last of the huckleberries (at low altitude) and thimbleberries. Turkey vulture. No slugs. No mosquitoes. Heavy packs (10 days food). Sore shoulders. Napped midday in hammocks. Only 2 kissing bridges. 10 miles between water sources. View of Adams. Low snow level on South side. Camp site near lava rocks. Piped water from a spring 1-2 miles before Crest Camp trailhead. Met Zigzag (trail name). She started as a thru hiker but fell and hurt her head in the Sierra’s. Got helicoptered out. Has a zigzag scar. Her questions: “What’s your favorite trail food? What’s your biggest trail food mistake? Mine is rehydrated humus. I’m so over ramen.”

Southern WA, featuring Mt Hood
Southern WA, featuring Mt Hood

Aug 30, Day 2: 16 miles. 7:30 start. Loads of big black huckleberries. Met Baby Yoda at Crest Camp trailhead. Chatted with her about daily mileage for thru hikers. Views of Hood, Adams, Saint Helens. Light haze / clouded over. Not as warm. Several lakes. Swam in one. Indian Heaven wilderness. Had to camel up with water at last lake. 10 miles until next water. Hiked 3 more miles until 4:30. Saw a pack Llama on trail. Camped along trail just South of Sawtooth Mountain.

A pack Llama on the PCT

Aug 31, Day 3: 18 miles. Left Indian Heaven wilderness. One sneak peek of Adams. Forest hiking. Some very impressive beautiful trees. Mushrooms. Boletes, Lions mane, few other edibles. Hawk perched on a dead tree (speckled). Deer at camp site. Grey jays. Meadows. Crossed road to Trout Lake, a nearby resupply village where trail angels provide enhanced hiker services. Ditched garbage. Ran out of water in hot climb. Camped near a creek with a bunch of thru hikers.

Hericium coralloides (Coral tooth) mushroom

Sep 1, Day 4 (Labor Day). 20 miles. 6:40 start. Nearly the last to leave camp. Climbed to 6,000 ft through burn site. Views of Adams. Met Stealth from Houston and two ladies at a creek. Chatted. Next stop was a creek with a stunning view of the Adams glaciers. Lots of hikers loitering. Spent most of the day skirting the mountain. Beautiful views. Reminiscent of the Wonderland trail around Rainier, but a bit further from the mountain. Pressed on to the next water source at Lava Springs. Lots of big black huckleberries. Crossed several glacial rivers (milky). Matt saw a black bear.

Adams Glacier on Mt Adams, from the Pacific Crest Trail

Sep 2, Day 5: 19 miles. 7:00 start. Very hot day. Left Adams wilderness and entered Goat Rocks wilderness. Some views of Adams and Rainier. More mushrooms and berries. Ended at beautiful Sheep Lake. Swam. Laundry.  Nice sunset. Garter snake swimming in the lake. Dragonflies. Excellent dinner, MH Chicken Fajita Bowl and Stowaway Gourmet Lamb Bourguinon. Both very hungry after previous nights mild stomach upsets. Heard that fire has closed Section I from White Pass to Chinook Pass. Will arrive tomorrow. How do we get back to our car?

Sunset on Sheep Lake in the Cascades at 5,700′

Sep 3, Day 6: 18 miles. 6:30 start. Slept in separate hammocks all night for first time. Matt in 2-person with underquilt but no sleeping bag. Maud with Frogg Toggs and sleeping bag. Didn’t sleep great but it was a good combo. Awoke to very distinct smoke smell. Quickly entered the Goat Rocks. Beautiful meadowy valley with waterfalls. Smoke visible everywhere in the distance. Heavy smoky smell. We fabricated masks from socks and string. Glad I had a clean pair. The crest trail was spectacular. There was still a snowfield (former Packwood Glacier) leading up to the fork between Old Snowy and the PCT. Views of the McCall glacier. Very hot. Scree, loose slippery rocks.

Goat Rocks in the foreground, the pyrocumulous cloud of the 2025 Wildcat Fire in the distance

Talked to “long legs Australia.” She enjoyed CA desert the most. On her 5th pair of Hoka shoes, hikes about 30 miles per day. “Oregon was flat and relatively boring.” Got some cell phone signal. The Wildcat Fire doubled overnight. Our car is still safe. Saw a baby marmot. Left Goat Rocks and back into forest hiking. Very tired. Camped at Hidden Spring. Dinner in the meadow. Mountain House Kung Pao Chicken (3.75) and Stowaway Gourmet Thai Curry with Shrimp (4.5). We were very hungry. Smoke not so bad at camp site.

Sep 4, Day 7. 8 miles. Hiked to White Pass. In the parking lot, a guy offered us a ride in 3 hours, after hiking with his dog. Started hitchhiking East on US-12. Got picked up soon by Bonney and Albert in their 1-ton Chevy truck with 5th wheel trailer. On their way to float the Yakima River. Chatted about hunting and New Zealand. She works for WA OSHA and he has his own earthworks company. They gave us each a Corona. Got dropped off at intersection with WA-410.

After a half hour, a young lad stopped and offered us a ride after his shift ended at 2:30 (in 2 hours) if we hadn’t been picked up yet. Got picked up 5 minutes later by a 65 year old Mexican and his 22 year old daughter Sylvia. On their way to Tacoma to visit his son. 1980s panel van. Loud rap music. When Sylvia opened the back door, junk rained out. TV screen and stuff got moved to make room for us. Asked him how old his son was. He said “which one”? He has 8 sons and 5 daughters. One daughter died a month ago from an overdose.

Hit a squirrel and almost immediately the van started making noises. He said he had just bought the van. Engine overheating. Water boiling and spraying. He filled with more water and said he was going to turn around so he left us there. Awkward spot for hitchhiking. Walked half a mile further when a volunteer fire fighter picked us up and took us to Whistlin Jack’s Outpost. He was a retired DOE sniper at Hanford.

We didn’t even get up our thumbs up at Whistlin Jack’s before getting offered a ride. Don, a 77 year old retiree was looking for entertainment. Used to write code for airplane part manufacturing, then network maintenance. Opinionated. Wife has sled dogs. Sings in Yakima light opera. Couldn’t pronounce French. He gave a ride to a French hiker and took him home so wife could learn to pronounce the words. Used to do trail maintenance for forest service with his horses. Son lives next door, also has dogs (dog trainer). Quote of the day: “I knew I was smarter than you the moment I saw you. You’re walking down a highway in 92º degrees and smoke. I’m driving a truck”.

EVs Are on the Road to Mass Adoption

“Adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is gaining serious momentum around the world. Multiple countries, including the United States, have already passed a passenger EV tipping point— when sales reach critical mass…” — RMI

“In one year, the world extracts 40 percent more oil than the total weight of all the ore needed to electrify the world’s entire transportation system.” — RMI

I post these references for myself, to reference the next time someone says, “but what about all the minerals needed to make the EVs…”

Ski report: Mt. Rainier, camp Muir

Because I’ve been asked enough times about our June 7th ski trip and have it already composed:

There’s [barely] continuous snow from the Paradise parking lot to camp Muir, but one needs to be careful to stay to climber’s right of the main route, else you’ll be booting a half mile. We left the Paradise parking lot (~5,400′) around 6:30AM on slightly firm snow and arrived at Muir (10,200′) around 11AM.

The top 500′ of snow immediately below Muir was still firm and moderately sun cupped. It’s skiable, but it’s not fun and don’t expect to look pretty doing it. Once we got below the sun cups, the snow was mashed potatoes the rest of the way down. Starting at 6:30 was too late, we should have planned to arrive at Muir by 10AM.

Ivanpah falls victim to Swanson’s Law

Ivanpah, the largest Concentrated Solar Power plant in the USA has announced they are closing in early 2026. That followed PG&E announcing they plan to terminate their Ivanpah PPA contracts. The reasoning is simple: the PPA price from Ivanpah is estimated at $0.135/kWh. The PPA price on building a new solar PV plant is about $0.05. Ivanpah finds itself in a similar position as existing coal and nuclear power plants, where continuing to operate them is decreasingly economic.

The demise of Ivanpah is a harbinger for the remaining CSP plants. The first seven phases of SEGS were decommissioned by 2021 and replaced with PV, leaving 2 CSP phases remaining. Crescent Dunes went bankrupt in 2019, was reopened in 2021, and now discharges only at night.

The history of CSP builds in the USA is short:

BuiltOperatingCapacityStorage MWhCapacity Factor
Solar One19811982-19867 MW0
SEGS1983-19901984-2021160 MW019%
Solar Two19951995-199910 MW0
Nevada Solar One20062007-72 MW018%
Ivanpah20102014-2026377 MW024%
Genesis20102014-250 MW028%
Solana20102013-250 MW1,50034%
Mojave20112014-250 MW026%
Crescent Dunes20112016-2019
2021-		110 MW1,10020%
Concentrated Solar Power plant history

There’s a few fun facts to notice in the table:

  1. Our CSP plants were all built before 2011.
  2. Only Solana and Crescent Dunes are paired with storage.
  3. The capacity factor of CSP, ranging from 18-34% is comparable (not better) than PV solar.

The thing that changed around 2010 that caused the death of new CSP plants was Swanson’s Law. Swanson’s law is the observation that the price of solar photovoltaic modules tends to drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume. By 2010, the cost to deploy new PV versus new CSP had tipped firmly towards PV:

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By 2020, the cost to deploy utility scale CSP was 5 times higher than PV, which nearly guarantees no more CSP will be built. To remain competitive, existing CSP plants need an edge in the marketplace. Solana and Crescent Dunes have storage, so they can sell their electrons at night when the cheaper solar PV is offline. Solana is further East in Arizona where it sells exclusively to APS where they’re still competitive. From out here in the cheap seats, it’s hard to see a long runway for Genesis, Mojave, SEGS 8&9, and NSO.

Nevada Solar One is an interesting case. They have a 20-year PPA that started in 2007 and so expires in 2027. From the NREL project page, their 2023 LCOE of $0.20/kWh isn’t very competitive, especially against their PPA sell price of $0.14. Using their production numbers I was able to calculate their total project revenue of $313M. That repays the $266M in construction costs but will fall short of also covering all their operating costs. I’ve read they have a 40-year lease on the land. The smart money is to raze the site and deploy PV–which has a much lower LCOE, doesn’t consume natural gas, and isn’t a water pig.

WiFi 6 and WiFi 7 speed

Empirical speed tests (Mbps):

  • Device | Download | Upload
  • U6-Lite | 284 | 170
  • U6-Pro | 447 | 439
  • U7-Pro | 933 | 845
  • Ethernet | 1000 | 1000

TLDR;

The backbone of my home LAN has been 1 Gbps wired Ethernet for decades. The wired backbone is the fastest part of the network while the WAN and WiFi have typically been a fraction the LAN speed. Because the wired network is fastest, I run wires to each Access Point, getting the wireless traffic onto the wires ASAP for the best performance.

WiFi versions 5, 6, and 7 were released in 2013, 2021, and 2024 respectively. When WiFi 6 arrived, I upgraded the (3) APs with the U6-Lite model for a nice speed bump. WiFi 6 was finally “fast enough” that I can’t recall carrying a computer to the wired connection since.

On February 19th, I cross-graded my fiber internet from CenturyLink to Quantum’s. Improvements include shedding the need for PPPoE and getting two public IPs. That timing coincided with WiFi 7 hardware availability so I also picked up a U7-Pro.

To capitalize on the new WAN and WiFi speed, my aged USG-3P router was the slow link so I also upgraded it. Now when I plug into the wired Ethernet, my speedtest results are consistently within a couple percent of the 940 Mbps service cap. Today I carried my M3 laptop around the house to measure the speed of each AP and was surprised to see that WiFi 7 can nearly saturate my WAN connection…when I’m sitting near the AP with no obstructions.

Feb-26: first solar plus day

February 26th was the first day of 2025 that I produced more energy than I consumed.

I typically start producing surpluses in late March, but an unseasonably warm (55°F) sunny day combined with the new panels moved the timeline forward.

Update (March 23rd): despite every day of the past week being mostly overcast, I have still produced 8% more electrons that we consumed over the past week.

Screenshot

Empirical data meets theoretical

Over the years I’ve read enough citations that I’ve accepted it on faith that solar panel performance degrades about 2% in the first year and then 1% every year thereafter. Today I had a chance to test that.

Yesterday afternoon I hauled 6 new solar panels up onto my roof and wired them up. Today they’re producing so I spot checked against the production of my existing 290W panels from 2016. The rule of thumb above plus math suggests that those 8 year old panels have degraded about 9% and likely produce about 290W * 91% = 264W. The new panels are rated at 405W so I’d expect each old panel to produce 65% as much as a new one.

Today is an overcast day, which may affect production differently on the new versus old panels, but when I average the production of 10 old panels to 210W and divide that by the average of the 6 new ones at 320W, I get 65.6%. I find it very satisfying when reality matches theory so closely.

What is Net Metering?

A question I’m often asked about my solar is, “how exactly does Net Metering work?” Here in the state of Washington, the rules for Net Metering are enshrined in RCW 80.60.030. Go forth and read, if you’re the nerdy type. For everyone else…

Every year on March 31, my Net Metering kWh balance resets to zero. When the sun shines I harvest kWh. I also run the heat pumps, toaster oven, and charge my phone and car, all of which consume kWh. If I consume more than I produce, I pay my utility (Seattle City Light) for the kWh they provide, just as everyone else does. If I produce more kWh than my house and car consume, then SCL adds those surplus kWh to my Net Metering balance.

In practice, each year in April I produce as much energy as I consume. From May to September I generate surpluses and build up kWh credits. As winter progresses my solar production falls off and I start depleting the kWh credits. In most years, I exhaust my credits by January and have to start buying kWh.

On March 31st, if there’s any kWh credit balance, it gets wiped away as a free gift to SCL. Therefore, under net metering it rarely makes economic sense to produce any more kWh than one consumes.

My average consumption for the past couple years has been about 2,000 kWh more than I produce, resulting in bills of about $400 per year. That is why I just spent $900 on 6 new 405W solar panels to grow my array. With a rated capacity of 2,400 kWh, I expect them to produce about 2,000 kWh per year, getting me very very close to my target of Net Zero energy.

A new roof and an SPD in every panel

In the summer of ’24 I replaced my North roof (project info). A complication was that the roof was under my solar array. The following graph explains another complication, the cause of my desire to add more solar panels:

The blue bar is my household energy (all electric) consumption and green is electricity to power our electric vehicles. In most years, I produce enough solar (yellow) to nearly power the house. In the last two years the house power consumption has been less and that extra solar was car fuel. I’ve calculated my Levelized Cost Of Electricity at $0.05/kWh. That’s a substantial discount from grid power so it’s advantageous to buy more panels and produce more fuel for the cars.

As part of the roofing project, I removed and rebuilt my solar array (details here) and upgraded two of my subpanels. What I didn’t know when I did the work in the summer of 2024, was that the soon-to-be-adopted 2023 electrical code requires that all electrical panels have a SPD (Surge Protective Device). By the time I scheduled my final inspection, the newer code was in force and that was the only correction Inspector Friendly required of me.

Despite not being required (grandfathering), I had already installed a SPD in the main panel, since it seemed to me like really cheap insurance. I had also installed a Midnight Solar (MNSPD-300-AC) SPD in my PV combiner box, so now I have 4 SPDs. It feels a tiny bit excessive, until I think about how much it would cost to replace a panel full of AFCI/GFCI combo breakers.

PSA: crypto & pig butchering

First they befriend you online. They provide an extraordinary level of online attention and [usually] romantic interest. They casually “let slip” how much money they’re making from their crypto “investments.” They encourage you to also make money investing in crypto. After investing a little bit to test the waters, you earn unbelievably good returns. They have fattened up your confidence with time, a romantic relationship, and investment gains. After you invest more, they ghost you and both your money and relationship is gone.

The “pig” in this story is the victim and the butcher is a Chinese captive working in a forced labor camp in Myanmar or Cambodia. These scams particularly target the elderly, so do your part and raise awareness with those you love.