The morning begins with Storm and me heading out early. Took a couple pictures of “eagle rock” and kept rocking until the road to Warner Springs gas station at 109.5. The community center is closed to hikers during weekdays this year. I thought it had something to do with Covid, but some day hiker gal I spoke with said it was due to semi-naked hikers running around while the elementary school was in session across the street. Guess some Mom didn’t like it. It is too bad the place is closed to us, I had a good time when I stopped there in ’17.

Storm and I road walked the 1 mile to the gas station, getting there before 10. There a nice picnic table setup in the shade near the station. Bunch of hikers there already and a stream of others come in while we are there.

Lot of folks are picking up resupply boxes.  Endless and QB seem to have their resupply dialed in.  Queensland is (un)dialed.  He seems to have twice as much stuff as he needs and is ditching all sorts of things.  Unfortunately, there’s no Burbon.  Powerbutt (that’s her new proposed name) is also over-supplied and Bryan offers to take one of her custom dehydrated meals. Others are resupplying from whatever they can find in the gas station.

As for me, I just keep going back and buying gatorades, beers, and hotdogs. I still have plenty of Mountain house meals. Which is an interesting segway into the benefits of packing those meals. They are simple to pack, light, and (for the most part) inclusive of all the nutrition I need. I’m really sold on the mountain house meal program. It gets the job done with simplicity. Anyway, I buy a few kudos and candy bars for my resupply and am ready to go.

StormTrooper i also ready to bolt. After I take a lenghty break in the bathroom, I head out with StormTrooper. He wants to go back to our exit point on the road and hike the small section that I can bypass with a more direct route. He has to make up 2 extra miles which is fine by me since he needs some place to expend his energy.

I stay ahead of him until I reach a nice little sanctuary by a stream at 114.8. By now it is 1:00 and super hot. StormTrooper and I make ourselves comfortable and await hikers to entertain us. That entertainment takes the form of Gourmet who turns up a few minutes later. He’s a funny dude. After him comes Bryan who stays for a few minutes, then leaves to climb the hill behind us. Splinter turns up to regale us with his folkzy old-guy humor. The guy is almost 70 years old and still hiking like a champ.

Others come and go. Gourmet is getting all agitated because he wants everyone to stay there tonight. He full of reasons, like it is too hot, the ridge won’t be sun exposed in the morning, etc. Eventually I have to break the news that I’m leaving and start hiking. StormTrooper assures me he will be coming behind.
The climb out is just like I remember. The trail follows the stream up hill through a box canyon. While in the canyon, it is shady, green, and full of life. Top the canyon and you are suddenly back in the desert. Dropping into the next canyon and the process repeats, after which it is permanently back to the arid environment. There is a lot of up and down climbing eventually topping out at 4500 feet. The spot we picked out is near some water accessible a few hundred yards off the trail.

Patches catches up to me when I’ve almost finished the climb. We hike in together. We arrive to find Queensland and Bryan (aka Mr Crinkles due to his noisy sleeping pad) hanging around chilling. Bryan starts his dinner while I’m setting up my tent. He is cooking the dehydrated franken-meal he got from Powerbutt. He winds up over-cooking it and burning it into his pot. He is trying to choke it down feeling guilty that he somehow has to eat it because it was a gift. I spend the evening working his guilt, encouraging him to eat every nasty spoonful. So funny.

As the sun is setting Stormtrooper arrives and quickly sets up. He said Gormet kept working him to stay at the previous site. He was almost convinced but finally left at 6. That kid impresses me. He hiked the same distance that took me 4 hours in just under 3. I’m doing the math in my head and know it is just a matter of time before he leaves me in the dust.

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.