Day 14
Start: Idyllwild
Finish: One Horse Ridge
Daily Mileage: 17.8
Trip Mileage: 193.6
I think I perfected my nightly rotisserie last night. Even on my thicker air mattress, my hips get sore and I have to rotate from side to side all night. I found two other slightly different positions to add to the mix last night that seemed to work well and give my hips time to recover before I shift to them again. It’s important to get a goodnight’s sleep out here, but that has always been a challenge for me despite the number of nights I have spent on trail.
Justice left a bit before I was ready, saying that I would catch up with him. We had a 4 mile road walk on a winding mountain road to hook back up with the PCT after the hairiest part of San Jacinto. Like yesterday, I wanted to walk out the miles instead of hitching so I would have a continuous footpath across the country.
The road was very windy and the shoulder often non-existent. I would walk on the side of the road until I heard a car approaching and then get as far to the side as I could. There was only one time where I had to hug a cliff wall, so it all worked out. After I passed a small town, the traffic really dropped off.
The road was pretty uneventful, and I was glad when it finally came to an end, so I could start on my next road, the road up to Mt. Black to rejoin the trail. This turned out to be a mostly dirt road that was closed to cars for the season. I had to gain a couple thousand feet, and it decided to do that mostly in the beginning. With all of the road walking, I decided to finally put in my headphones for the first time of the trip. I try to reserve this for less interesting portions of a hike, when it becomes a grind to me.
About half way up, I met a mother and daughter who were thru-hikers. They reminded me that the eclipse was going on right now, and you could see crescent shapes in some of the shadows that was a reflection of the state of the eclipse. I never heard that before, but once I started looking, they were everywhere. Quite interesting.
It also emphasized to me that my news hiatus so far on the trail does have some potential impacts with not being reminded of what is going on in the world. I initially had been wanting to click the news app button out of boredom earlier in the trail at times, but only two weeks in I’m not feeling the urge anymore. It will be interesting to see if that changes over the course of the hike. Right now I’m going cold turkey, but that is probably not something I will keep up forever, I will just need to find some sort of medium at some point. But not now, I have no need for it yet.
After I met the other hikers, the road became more and more snowy as it continued to climb. Eventually it was continuous snow deep enough that you could only tell the road was there most of the time because of the absence of trees. Luckily though there was a boot path I could follow from other hikers making the same journey which also kept my feet mostly dry since it was packed down. The going definitely got slower though with the less stable surface and sliding around a bit. It also took a lot more energy to travel than the bare road.
I had been planning to grab some water near the top of the road in a stream, but once I got into the deep snow, I started wondering if I would even find the stream or if it would be buried. I was almost out of water so I did need the stream, and luckily it was flowing freely and I was able to use it to fill up. I didn’t even think of the possibility of the stream being inaccessible, and that was a mistake on my part. I will have to be more careful with that thinking when I could be in snow in the future.
When the road was nearing its end, it turned a corner and the San Bernardino Mountains came into view across the valley with some huge pure white capped peaks as high as 11,000 feet. That is the are I will next be travelling to, though only going up to 8,000 feet or so. It looks like I will have some snow at that level, but not too much. However, I was looking at the south side of the mountains which will have less snow than the north side which gets less sun. I think it will be alright though, and not as dangerous or risky as some of the stretches in the San Jacintos. I took a good break to take in the view and dry my tent from it’s nightly load of condensation.
After I packed up, I was shortly back on the official PCT after more than a day of walking around it. It felt good to be back on official trail, though I have no regrets about hiking around like I did.
The trail was also covered in deep snow, and I continued to follow the boot path. The trail was not evident under the snow, so the path wandered here and there, loosely following the trail. Covered in snow, that is good enough since the trail becomes relative.
I did finally fall for the first time going down a steeper slow which led me to put on my microspikes for the first time of the hike. The trail was a bit slow in the snow, but it was dropping quickly, and dirt patches became more and more frequent.
The trail became mostly dirt soon enough and I began thinking about where to stop for the day. I had expected to see Justice since he left just ahead of me, but I had not all day. I came to a stream flowing across the trail where I grabbed my water for the night and ruminated on where to camp. There were campsites ahead , but the best one would take another hour and my energy was waning even though it was only 4. I had just passed a campsite with a view and protection from the wind a couple tenths back, and I decided to just go back and use that. I was in no hurry, and if I felt like stopping I am free to do that whenever I want.
The camp had fantastic views of San Jacinto and Fuller Ridge for me to take in, and I just relaxed and stared off into nothingness for the rest of the afternoon. I was not bored at all, just able to take a load off and enjoy the unique area that I was in. I really need to do more of this hiking, so maybe I can work on it on this trip. I felt no boredom or need to press on with my earlier stop, so that’s all good.
Today was challenging with the tense road walk, long climb up the forest road, a few miles of walking through snow, and exposure to the sun and wind. However, the day went well and I’m happy with how it turned out, and especially happy with my campsite and relaxation.
