Note: Read no further if you are squeamish about vomit, poop, anal chaffing, etc.

Yesterday night I was sick at my campsite on the trail. I am still analyzing what happened to insure it won’t happen again. I was camping in an area where the mosquitos were particularly bad. About midnight my stomach churning woke me up. This is not normal for me. As the hours passed it got worse and worse. Finally at about 3 AM I unzipped my net door and crawled out of my tent. I wasn’t fully out when I vomited on the ground. I got all the way out and walked ten feet from my tent. I leaned over and vomited again. I dropped my pants and defecated diarrhea next. I was sweating profusely. I climbed carefully into my tent and got out toilet paper to clean myself and just left the dirties on the ground (I would wait for it to get light out to clean up the mess). In a few minutes I was feeling much better. Then I climbed back in my tent and zipped up. However since the net door had been opened the mosquitos had gotten in so I slept with my head net on. It was only about a hour and a half until dawn which always wakes me. So I got up after losing many hours of sleep. I felt OK. I cleaned up my various messes. Packed up and headed out without eating breakfast. After a hour of hiking I felt fine and had a Clif bar and some water. Both of which I kept down. After two hours I stopped and had my breakfast cereal without incident. The rest of the day was also fine.

I really am at a loss as to why this happened. For the past two days I have been filtering my water so I don’t think that’s it. I’ve had some anal chaffing so I cleaned and lubricated myself and I tried to clean my hands afterwards so that might be it. Also for lunch I ate some old sausage sticks from several weeks ago so again that could be it. Regardless of the cause I’m now fine but it scared me. Being sick is no fun and having it happen miles from civilization is even less so.

Update: During the afternoon before this all happened I met a speed-record hiker named String Bean who later completed (with a support crew) the entire PCT in 53 days whereas it’ll take me about 144 days. Way to go String Bean!