My Trail Name: Hiker 816

The journal entries for my PCT hike describe how I got this trail name, but I will give a short version of the story now. I was hiking with a woman named Veronica and a guy with the trail name Beaker, when we resupplied at Echo Lake. On my package was written the date that I was expected to arrive—8/6. The “/” looked more like a “1”, however, and Veronica asked “Why does it say ‘hiker 816’?”. Beaker walked up about 30 seconds later, looked at my box, and said “hiker 816?”. A day hiker that Veronica had met about an hour earlier then came up and sat down and said “Hiker 816? What does that mean?”. From that instant forward Beaker started calling me Hiker 816. When I sat down by a stream to get water he would say “Hiker 816 obtaining H2O,” etc. The name stuck. Unfortunately I lost touch with Beaker (his real name is Robert Bannerman in case anyone reading this knows him and how I can get in touch with him) and he will not be hiking the CDT with us as we would have liked.