Day 30
Start: Islip Saddle
Finish: Three Points
Daily Mileage: 18.6
PCT Mile: 404.7
I had another choice first thing this morning. Take the trail over Mt. Williamson or take the road around it. I heard a report from a strong hiker that the north side of the mountain was sketchy and dangerous, so since I had nothing to prove, I opted to take the road around the mountain with Cookie Monster.
The trail parallels a scenic mountain road for the last 3 days of hiking I’ve done. Since the middle of the road is closed, it has almost no traffic. We hiked straight down the middle of the road the whole way with not a car in sight.
It didn’t take long until we met back up with trail. Most of the hikers are taking the road straight through and bypassing miles of trail. Since we aren’t in a hurry to put on miles, and since the trail is there, we opted to take the trail for the day and let everyone else speed ahead on the road.
However, after a short stretch of trail, we got to a trail closure to protect an endangered frog in the area. The Forest Service order to close the area had expired, but the PCTA kept the trail section closed for some reason, with big signs that the area was closed. Though it really wasn’t, we opted to take the bypass anyways since it would be hard to explain why we were in an area marked closed.
The bypass entailed more road walking, but it flew by and we soon started down another trail to rejoin the PCT. We traversed through a burn area that we went in and out of several times today. These seem somewhat frequent down here, and they all seem to have happened in the past 10 years or so. There are so many ancient trees burned, and areas which formerly had trees now desert wastes. Burning is a natural cycle, but it seems like half of the areas we have passed through have burned in the recent past, and that seems like too much.
After rejoining the PCT, we realized that we were ahead of schedule for the day and had loads of time to finish it out. So we started taking breaks at any excuse. That seems to work out better than just getting to camp super early.
The trail got deeper into the mountains and well away from the road giving great views of the surrounding range. I could see the pure white face of the mountain we hiked around earlier, and felt confident in the decision. It looked pretty severe.
The landscape varied between forest and desert for the rest of the day. There were frequent water sources though so we didn’t have to carry much.
The second half of the day had very easy mostly flat trail paralleling the road. Quite a relaxing walk and just pleasant hiking.
On our final stretch of the day, the clouds that have enveloped LA for the past couple days broke free and started our way. They descended and covered the mountains around us as they blew through. Sometimes it was cloudy, and sometimes clear giving the mountains an etherial feel.
We grabbed some water and camped on an abandoned forest road. The clouds closed in, and eventually we got completely socked in with the dampness that comes along with it. It isn’t supposed to rain, but I expect it to be a fairly wet night.
Today I passed two milestones. 400 miles and one month on trail. I have been doing well physically so far, and going slower than I normally would to not get to the Sierra too soon probably helped that. We are looking for about any way to slow down while continuing hiking and not stopping too early. Overall, the hike is going well, and I wouldn’t change anything.
