Well that was an interesting night for the boys. They slept side by side with Bryan who was snoring up a storm. Bryan also has this super thick sleeping pad with rails on the side that he inflates with a separate airbag. This pad is also very light, which means it makes a load of noise when Bryan moves around….which he does quite abit.

The snoring started instantly. Bryan was worn out. Anthony wakes him up, Bryan apologizes, shifts around noisily, then starts snoring 5 minutes later.  I hear Anthony and Storm talking and sighing.  The process repeats several times (at least until I fall asleep). Those guys got zero sleep. Me…slept like a rock. I’m laying on a shelf 15 feet away from all the mayhem. Nice to not be “that guy” for once.

Anyway, first guy out is StormTrooper. He is packed before 6 and is like “hey man, I just gonna go, see you at the water cache” and he bolts. I head out shortly after followed by Bryan and Anthony. We all make the 3rd gate water cache and hang out for a bit eating and chatting. Storm and I are the first to leave. It is a nice hike. Mostly low rolling hills so I can keep a decent pace.

Next stop is Barrel Springs at 1 ish. There are a ton of hikers hanging out. 35 is there with Billy, Endless, QB (his wife), Vincent, and a few rando’s that I don’t know. We all sit around for a few hours to wait out the heat. Part of the fun is watchng Bryan taking a bath in the water trough. He is washing his feet, socks, and other parts. The water trough is filled by a trickle coming from a pipe fed further up hill. Most of us fill up our water from that pipe, but Endless, he is having none of that. Instead he fills up his bottles from trough full of Bryan’s foot wash. God, I wanted to gag. He’s like “hey the filter will clear that out”. I don’t know if those filters are designed to filter out ball sweat. Barf.

Some PhD type shows up while we are laying there. He’s a total daisy. He starts going on about climate change and how the US is completely responsible. Bryan and him are debating the causes and solutions. I keep quite but make one comment about controlling the world population which lights Bryan up. He’s making an argument about technology growth being ahead of population, after which he draws an diagram in the sand about the exponential growth of technology being ahead of linear population growth. Man.

There are flaws in his argument and he knows it. PhD has flaws in his argument but he doesn’t know it. Meanwhile Bryan is trying to draw me in. I look over at StormTrooper and give him the “Let get the f&*k out of here” look. We both pack up while nodding and bail out.

The rest of the hike is easy to San Ysidro Creek. Huge sandy spot next to a slow stream. Unfortunately there are dried cow pies all over the place. I setup next to them, have a quick dinner with Anthony, Storm, and Bryan. We have a short debate about how far to go tomorrow. I want my 25 miler. StormTrooper is on board, but the other guys are not interested. We agree to get into Warner Springs and figure it out.

Woke up early in the morning and headed out around 5:30. Feet are feeling good. That rest helped alot. This bit is following the ridge so I’m making some good time. Ran into a few day hikers until Pioneer CG.  Had an interesting encounter at Pioneer around 10 in the morning. A kid named Twister is sitting under a tree with his shoes off and his feet have like a dozen Band-Aids of various sizes and states of stickiness. I stop to chat and he is going on about partying in Lake Morena and that his group is a few miles ahead. Something a little odd about that boy.

I bypassed the horse trough at Pioneer, but targeted Sunrise trailhead for my water stop.  That horse water wasn’t looking so good. Sunrise is about 18 miles from Mt Laguna and there should be plenty of water driven in by trail angels. When I got there, sure enough there was a pile of gallon jugs of water. Only one hiker around, but she pointed me to a small climb of trees at the end of the parking lot. There I found a group of 4 hikers huddled under a tiny bit of shade.

They made a bit of room for me and chit-chatted while making some DELICIOUS Chile Mac. Couple gals named 35 and Late Start. Two guys Gourmet and CocaCola. Gourmet has done the AT in ’19 and from Wisconsin, so it’ll be interesting when he meets StormTrooper. 35 did the trail from Tehachapi North. She is back to finish this section then bouncing to Stehekin, WA to work at the bakery there. It will be really cool to say hi when I pass through later this year. Late Start did the CDT last year, so there is a bunch of hiking power here.

I want to catch up with my boys, so I took off early and jammed in a bunch of downhill miles. Finished up at mile 66. I stopped at the same camp I hiked into last time. Really nice spot with plenty of room. My Sunshine Trailhead tree people all turned up with a couple other strays and made camp. They were chatting into the evening, last thing I recall hearing was “Oh Salty J went to bed early”, heh. Yes he did. 23 miles today.

Today Anthony, Storm, and I packed up and headed into town together. Bryan spent a little extra time in camp doing that coffee thing and caught up with us there. It was a small climb into the tree line, then a nice shady alpine trail . About 6 miles to the café. The place has been taken over by a French couple so there were some oddities on the menu. I ordered some weird thing: An egg on a hamburger patty a slice of tomato on a sour dough bread and covered in Holandish sauce. Side of tater tots. Yum.

I’m getting some hotspots on my feet. The one that has me worried is a big hot spot on the ball of my foot. If that turns into a blister my hike will become 2x more painful. I would like to keep hiking with these guys, but my feet need a rest.  I decided to get a room at Mt Laguna for the night.

Sat around with the guys in front of the store for a while then they pulled out. Waited another hour until the room was available, then bought a big can of beer, a frozen pizza, ate it all and crashed for a few hours. Washed my clothes and myself. Later I got up ate at the café, then right back to sleep. I was pretty beat-up and began to have a few doubts about this whole thing.  

It was really cold last night. Below 40 last time I checked.  The spot is next to the lake and the microclimate here was wet and cold. Slept really well, but I’m building up a water deficit (again). I finished packing up and hit the trail around 7:30 or so. Stormtrooper bolted almost an hour earlier. It was mostly flat for a few miles to Bolder Oaks CG where I ran into Bryan and Anthony. Bryan is a mechanical engineer who did a bunch of interesting gigs over his career. He says he holds the patent for the chemical/mechanical process for recycling the foam that is used in woman’s bras. Many jokes were had about that one. He is a part time ski instructor in Squaw Valley and getting ready to retire soon. He and I had much to talk about.

Bryan left Bolder Oaks ahead of me. Anthony and I wound up hiking together. The climb was constant and exposed, but nothing like the steepness I had to deal with yesterday. Anthony is a Michigan resident with an Advertising degree. He quit his job writing copy for GM and is working on the next move…..to the west. Might be a California resident some day.

Anthony and I arrived at a at Kitchen Creek at mile 30. Written in the dirt was a shout out to Salty J with an arrow pointing down hill. It was a super spot. Nice running water across wide flat granite. Forgot to take a pic. Stormtrooper and Bryan were down there sprawled out under the only piece of shade available. I took a break there for 45 minutes, but more and more folks kept showing up to share space under a single pathetic little tree. I filled some bottles and took off. All these kids are going to kick my ass anyway, might as well get a head start.

Bryan, Storm, and Anthony all agreed to aim for a spot at mile 37. My stupid Spotify cut out on me during the climb. I think the local cache is messed up which means I need an internet connection to fix. Guess I’m going to be humming to myself for a while. The guys caught up to me one by one and I ended up leading the parade into the camp site. Nice spot with some mildly nasty water.