Day 28
Start: Wrightwood
Finish: Vincent Gap
Daily Mileage: 4.7
PCT Mile: 374
It was a leisurely morning in town. Cookie Monster, Chaos Turtle, and I were in no hurry to get on the trail since we were doing short miles today to prepare to climb snowy Mt. Baden-Powell tomorrow. The snow is hard and stable in the morning, and slushy and postholey in the afternoon, and there was a long snowy section including the mountain, so it was best started in the morning.
We unfortunately had to have another breakfast at the Grizzly Café. Though its portion sizes were impressive, the food is very bland and doesn’t have any seasoning. Same today as yesterday.
We packed up and left the hotel right before the required checkout time and migrated back to the hardware store / hiker hangout. Doing one last food run prior to attempting to hitch back to the trail, I ran into Boulder and Hard Suck Chuck driving the jeep that had taken us to town yesterday. They agreed to give us a ride back to the trail since they were killing time for an injury. That was a lot easier since the road was closed due to snow just past where we wanted to go and there was very little traffic. It could have taken a while to hitch.
We set off from the trailhead, back at elevations around 8,000 feet. The trail alternated between dry and patchy soft snow but was not too challenging. The trail went through great ponderosa forest.
Throughout the hike, Mt. Baden-Powell was looming in front of us, showing us it’s sheet of snow that we will be climbing tomorrow. Great views, but if I didn’t know there was a bootpath through the snow up it, it would never cross my mind to climb it.
As the mountain loomed closer, its top began to disappear as it grew in front of us, continuing to look more daunting with every step.
We descended to a gap at the foot of a mountain through some thick oak forests which surprised me at this elevation. When we arrived at the pass it was very windy and it took some wandering to find a spot slightly sheltered on a gravel turnaround next to the closed paved road through the area. There was even some running water in the ditch next to the road.
There are 12 of us camped here tonight; many hikers I have been around for a while and a couple new ones. Most of us will be heading over the mountain tomorrow so there will be strength in numbers. A big group is trying to be at the summit for sunrise, but I will sleep a bit more.
Great conversation and comradery for the night, and Chaos Turtle shared the cantaloupe named Wilson that he carried out from town. Wilson didn’t survive. We retired early for our early starts tomorrow morning.
