This morning I woke up at 6:00 and looked out the front door of the motel.
It was raining. The wind was blowing pretty hard.
At 7:00, I added another day to my stay and had breakfast 🙂
Rest of the day was watching movies, reading, and watching other hikers deal with the mileage vs comfort dilemma . ’nuff said.
Woke up and laid in my bag while the sun rose. I was sacked about 10 feet from the trail so I figured I’d get up when the first hikers walked by. Packing was a lot quicker…no tent, just stuff my pad and bag, eat some fig newtons, and get moving.
Goal today was McDonald’s, then start climbing into the Angeles National Forest. The McD’s is located at the Cajon pass where the trail crossed I-15 at mile 341.8. It has been talked about for last 3 days like some kind of major milestone. I’m learning that thru-hikers are funny like that…..the most talked about locations involve fatty food.
The day started with some unburned scrub hiking. That was nice for a change.
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There were some amazing sandy dropoffs on the trail. It was a little scary with the wind gusting to 50 mph.
Got another shot at Baden-Powell.
Ran into Zach (now Sizzle), who I had not seen since our run to Sizzler at Big Bear. We hiked together for 10 miles or so.
He just graduated with a degree in marketing and was interested in the dot-com mania. We spent a bunch of time talking about the Blockbuster / Netflix case study they teach in business school these days. Funny that I can still remember working a consulting project in Dallas around 1999 where we were designing a digital delivery model for them. They shelved it because dealing with the franchises was too disruptive. 10 years later they were bankrupt. That seems a little more disruptive, no?
There was one crazy spot in the trail where there was a 200 foot stretch of shear drop on both sides. One side was 400 feet straight down. The wind still gusting 50+ Crazy. We loved it
After that it was a decent to I 15. Can you believe there is an official PCT sign pointing to McDonalds?
We arrived at mile 342 and headed to the golden arches. It was about 12 by then and it was starving hiker pandamonia. Every booth had hikers drinking shakes, eating pancakes/burgers/whatever, and charging batteries.
Just for fun, I bought 2 10 piece mcnuggets in addition to my meal. I anonymously tossed a box on two tables near me to see what would happen. Table 1 had all guys, table 2 all gals. One of the guys at table 1 asked “whose nuggets?”, after a 15 second pause everyone there devoured them. Table 2 (girls) got into a lengthy debate about ownership. That lasted for 10 minutes, until a consensus was reached and the nuggets were consumed with a velocity similar to table 1.
I’ll have to run that experiment again sometime.
Ended up hanging out with Tim and Sharon who I had met briefly before Big Bear. Her kids are out of school and they are moving from Orange County, CA up to Seattle. Both quit their professional jobs and are just going through a reset. I think Sharon is having a rough time of it…she is in shape, but the pack weight and daily abuse is rough. Both are determined, so I think they’ll be out here for a while. Probably see them again.
I decided to check into a hotel here today and take a lower mileage day of 12 ish. Storm coming in tonight and I don’t feel like doing another 5 miles just to get rained on.
Woke up to the sounds of birds and a swiftly running creek. That was the cool part. The not-so-cool part was that the rain fly on my tent was soaked. So was my pack which I left outside this time. I learned that condensation next to flowing water can be nasty.
I packed the dry stuff and hung the rest all over my pack to dry. Fireball was laying on the ground in his bag with his head covered. He will be a soggy character when he gets up.
I then ran around in circles until I found the trail. 2 miles to the hot springs!
Ok, so I got to the hot springs, but didn’t take any pics. Here’s the deal. There are a bunch of natural and man made pools with flowing hot water in them. That was neat. There was a few hikers and a bunch of locals camped around them with all their trash, that wasn’t. I was thinking of jumping into a large unoccupied one when some old, hairy, naked dude plunged in. He wanted to talk about….well I’m not sure. Saw more of his flock heading down….hmm.
I left. Found out from some French folks later that they found a good hidden spot with just hikers. Just as well, I think I’d have lost a half day if I’d stayed on anyway.
Trail was still giving me the love.
Hooked up with Sitting Rock (17 yr old) and her Mom. I’ve run into them a few times. They offered to let me pass, but instead I stayed with them and visited for a while. They are from Oregon and were telling me about all the berries we’ll see up there in August. Sounds awesome. Her Mom didn’t think much of the crowd at the hot springs either, heh.
Sitting Rock sat down, well, on a rock after the bridge and didn’t seem to be interested in moving. I headed off on my own again, intermittently hiking with a Swiss/German gal (Ladyback) who had a printed map hanging from her belt, a GPS, and a Phone with a mapping app running. I don’t think she is getting lost.
Now I must diverge for a moment. Couple of days ago, I realized that I don’t really need to do much planning as long as I can find a German around. They always seem to have a rational destination in mind, know where the next reliable water is, and any obstacles coming up. Haven’t done a lick of planning since. 🙂
Anyway, Ladyback kept me from getting lost as the deep creek spilled out into the Mohave Damn.
Clearly I was getting close to a road, the graffiti started appearing on all the flat surfaces. I suppose it is a good thing that these clowns are too lazy to hike very far.
Now this brings me to a thought. If the Native Americans did cave paintings and we preserve them as important relics, maybe we have that all wrong. Perhaps they were just a bunch of teenagers running around with berry juice pissing off the elders?
The ground was flattening out, here is a last look up the valley we walked through.
Ladyback stayed there to wait for her friends and I carried on to have lunch with Fire Ranger in some wetlands below the dam. Got the low-down on how he earned his trail name. Fire Ranger is a newly graduated Civil engineer from Fresno. Apparently in Idylwild, a group of super stoned folks built a huge fire in the campgrounds. Fire Ranger got things back under control, filled up a gallon jug of water, and instructed folks on the proper way to put the fire out. He said later that he kicked apart some recently made fire rings on the trail. Seems the name fits.
Walked another mile and hit some welcome trail magic from Chiapet. She did the PCT last year and was traveling North to start a season firefighting job. She was handing out PBR’s. Got a pic of the Frenchies + Fire Walker enjoying America’s finest beverage.
I don’t know why, but PBR keeps showing up on the trail. I’ve yet to figure out how it became the official beer of the PCT, though cost seems to be the driving factor for any consumable on the trail.
Next segment was back to the usual high-desert ridge walking with a twist. The whole place burned down. There were a ton of wild flowers, which was nice. Wasn’t wearing ear buds, so I could hear a constant hum of billions of bees doing their bee thing.
This snow capped mountain is the next destination. I think it is Baden-Powell.
Wasn’t sure what this dam was for, found out later it is silver lake’s dam. I think they are flowing Deep Creek (6+ miles back) through a huge underground pipe to fill this reservoir. There is a hydro power station near here. Big engineering project. Love it.
Hit a couple of climbs then dropped into Silver lake at about mile 324 ish. Walked the ridge line around the lake for a few miles. This lake is huge.
Saw a bunch of small sandy beaches with hikers in/out of the water. The walk seemed to go on forever. The trail here is pretty overgrown. Some bits I just put my head down and crashed through all the oats, wetland grass, and bushes.
I arrived at Cleghorn Campground to be reunited with a bunch of past hiker buddies. Blue, Jonathan and Drew seemed to be deep into their second 6 pack of IPA’s. Turns out you can order pizza and they’ll pick up some beer as well.
Vipr, Fun Dip, Josh, Wing It, and I all went in for a couple large pizzas. I ordered a 6 of modelo and a 6 of the IPA. Instead we got the modelos and a 12 of lame-ass PBR again. I’ll never escape that stuff apparently.
Anyway, lots of drinking ensued. The Pizza guy kept showing up with more deliveries + carrying around a cold order for some hikers he couldn’t find. It was funny. He said he was carrying those pies for over an hour.
As it was getting dark, we were informed that could not camp in the picnic area. Guess with mothers day coming up on Sunday, nobody wanted a bunch of hung-over smelly hikers spoiling the family fun.
Folks were going off in all directions trying to find a hiding place to camp. I finally just put on my headlamp and started night hiking. Did another 3 miles before finding a flat spot on a ridgeline to camp at 11 or so. Somewhere around mile 330. Too tired to setup tent, just flopped on the ground with my pad and bag. The moon was bugging me that night, it was crazy bright.
With the night hike I did almost 25 miles that day. Whew. McDonalds comes next 🙂
Woke and packed up early. Was one of the first ones out, which means I got passed a lot today by this bubble of hikers. The tortise wins the race, right?
The tentative goal today was to make the hot springs at 307.9. That is a 22 mile day.
Really good scenery here, which my photos will not do justice. The first few miles followed Holcomb creek.
Then up and over a couple ridges
Finally down to the head waters of Deep Creek.
Had some lunch at a primitive campsite. It had a typically uninformative map of the place.
Lots of blow downs on the trail. Quit a few are dead from previous fires.
Got to a huge foot bridge over deep creek at mile 298.5. Had some lunch with a bunch of folks who were swimming, relaxing. That is Fun Dip waving from the bridge.
When I crossed the bridge I saw this.
According to the paper on tied to the tree, the guy planned to propose to his GF on Saturday (tomorrow). Hope nobody rearranges the message.
The trail followed Deep Creek from here. around 300, there was another big ass snake laying on the trail. I stopped and poked him until he got off the trail to the left, but the damn thing got himself boxed in a shear wall 6 inches from the foot path. To the right was a shear drop. A trapped animal is dangerous so I was trying to coax him out when Fire Ranger comes bounding down the trail and tries to pass me, almost stepping on the snake. I’m yelling “Snake!!!!” and he almost jumps down the drop, scares the shit out of the snake and me. Good news is the snake ran off and everyone survived. Man….
Really interesting hike along the canyon walls following the creek. Since we are not supposed to camp at the hot springs and it was getting late, I called it about mile 306 and setup with some german and french folks in a flat spot next to a big tributary. the running water. Washed the socks, feet and did a little rock hopping.
Almost pitched the tent on top of a yellow jacket nest (they live in the ground). I’m sure that if I started driving stakes there, it would have been a cloud of pain. That was a close one.
Fireball cowboy camped right next to me. He was using a liquid fuel stove, which always freaks me out a little. Fortunately no explosions, just a lot of flame and soot. We had a good chat and sacked out.
Did a 20 today. This time my left ankle is bothering me. It is getting worked by the concave trail (the ridge was on the left side for most of the hike). I believe my condition is “anklus hurtitus a lot-us” Popping some extra ibuprofen for tonight.
Hot springs on the agenda for tomorrow morning!
One of the guys staying at the Natures Inn agreed to give me a lift back to the trail at hwy 18. Greg said early was good, I suggested 6, he agreed, and of course he was late getting up. Finally got up there around 7 ish. Big thanks to Greg for the lift.
There was a single person tent setup next to the trail head. Spoke with a guy packing up and said it was a gal he dropped last night. He hiked the trail in ’14 and was Angeling for her. They were late getting there so he just camped it and was heading home.
Hit the trail and started climbing. It was a great morning. Alice says she wants more scenery photos, so here it goes.
Most of the day was a pleasant walk through pine trees and a good, soft trail of pine needs on a loam trail. Lot of shade
Girl in the tent apparently woke up, packed, then passed me on the trail. She didn’t say much, seemed to want to get some miles asap. Soon after she passed me, I caught up. She was posting a written message on the trail stating “Rattlesnake ahead, be careful”. Thought that was cute. Asked her if she was my snake bait for the day? That got a frown. She blew past me and didn’t see her till the evening.
Around 11 I found a cool lookout on a rocky outcrop. Time for some lunch of hot spuds and my newest innovation of spinkled bacon bits. Yum.
Take note of the alpine meadow in the view. Little did I know that I’d spend the next 4+ hours walking around that thing.
While enjoying my taters Wing It showed up! Hadn’t seen him since Warner Springs. We spent a little time catching up. Neither he nor I have seen any other Indians or Pakistanis on the trail. We agreed we need to fix that. Had a good laugh about his hair/beard combination. I think he’s becoming wiser with every inch it grows. He should be a shaman in a couple months. I shot a promotional picture
The views kept coming. Here are a couple of Big Bear lake. You can see the two ski hills of bear mountain (left) and snow summit (right). In the background is San Gorgino which is 11.5k feet. According to a local I chatted with, it is the tallest peak in southern cal.
More walking on nice trail. This section is well maintained. I think it might even be Alice-able. Have to bring her up here sometime.
It was about then that I realized I was walking around the meadow I glimpsed at the beginning and stared at during lunch.
2:00, the damn thing is still there
3:00, finally I’m through it.
The remaining 1.5 hours was through a huge burned area. Only took a couple of pics. This used to be densely forested….now it is a gloomy barren spectacle.
I caught up with Wing again during the last segment and we chatted technology for a while. Nice diversion. We landed at Holcomb creek (mile 285.9) in a nice open meadow. Good primitive camping here.
Found snake bait girl with a dude named Toe Jam (Jonathon, since he’s not sure if this is real trail name). Turns out Jonathon is from Evansville, IN, fairly close to where I grew up and went to college. Snake bait’s trail name is Blue and she was a little more talkative. She’s a nurse from Michigan who is section hiking a 100 miles this year.
While we were sitting there, a load of people started turning up. Fire Ranger, Gordan (Australian on his second attempt), Hip, Happy Times (a permanently smiling hippy dude), Vipr and her sister Fun Dip from Seattle, and others. A large group of Germans turned up as well Felix who I hiked with a bit earlier, Fireball (carries a flask of cinnamin whiskey), a brother sister pair, and others. Most of these folks I’d seen and hiked with before. It was quite the reunion. Should have got a group photo….
Fireball had a raging fire going in their camp, so Jonathon and I left the Americans and headed over. It was a lot of fun. The Germans were cooking marsh mellows and passing around the whiskey. In another hour all the camps combined around the fire. Must have been 17+ people there.
Did a 17 miler today. The old man (me) needed some zz’s so I took off early. They were still going at it when I crashed at 9.