Fri. May 20    Miles today 6.8 (plus another 4.5 walking to town)  Total so far: 178.6   

Bill checks maps by sunrise light

Our campsite last night was about the best yet, but thre were still several miles to Idyllwild, our next resupply, so at 4:00 am we were up ‘n at it, hoping to beat the heat.  Even at 4:00 am,  it seemed unusually warm for 7,200 feet of elevation.  Litle did we know (found out in town later) that we were in the middle of a serious heat wave!  Well, we set out happily along the trail in the blackness of early morning, using our headlamps to light the way.  The next section of trail had been made with lots of dynamite, I think!  I was sort of glad I COULDN’T see down the dropoffs!  But the lights of the cities below were very pretty, and we stopped for a snack at 5:30 and watched a beautiful sunrise.  “Breakfast at 6:30” was the plan.  Little did we know we wouldn’t be eating that granola till past 10:30.  Adventure lurked!

Monty poses at our First Snow patch on the PCT!

A short distance along the trail, we came to our first little snowdrift.  Oh boy!  It was picture time, after days of hiking in heat, rocks, sand and cactus!  Shortly after that, though, the entire trail was covered with snow for about 25 yards, and on a steep hillside.  Tracks led across.  Out came our ice axes we’d carried since Campo, and we happily followed the tracks, thinking “no problema!” 

Things start to get a bit tricky

But soon we came to where the whole mountainside was covered with snow, and there was no longer any indication of a trail.  In Lassen Park, where we often backpack, there are small colored triangles on the trees to indicate the trail, but in the San Jacintos, tough luck–you’re on your own.  Obviously we weren’t the first to arrive at this spot–tracks led in every direction.  We tried to follow what looked like the most “used” set of tracks, but whoever they were–well, they didn’t know where they were going, either.  To add to the fun, since it was still early morning, the snow was hard and icy and very slippery.

For me personally, the next few hours were scary.  We were trying to find our way across steep mountainsides in icy snow.  Bill was having a blast, “bootskiing”, whizzing around and sliding around looking for the way to go, while I was creeping along with trek pole and ice axe,  fairly terrified.  Twice I slipped on the icy slope and both times (hooray!) was able to use the ice axe “self arrest” to keep me from sliding right off down the mountain.  Bill was pretty disgusted with how slow and cowardly I was.   I have walked on snow lots of times and never had a problem, but this hard icy stuff was too much for me.

We finally gave up all attempts at finding the trail, got to a place where the forest thinned out enough to see a landmark, determined a compass heading to hit the PCT up on a ridge, and just went for it, crossing creeks twice on “snow bridges”, and going over every obstacle till we finally reached the ridge and found the PCT!  We did some cheering and dancing and marched along, now confident of reaching Idyllwild.  And the snowdrifts-on-trail weren’t so big anymore, so we easily located the turnoff and headed downhill for TOWN!

By this time, we were pretty tired and hungry (we’d had only one snack for the last 6 tough hours), so we hiked partway down to where there was a spring by the trail and finally ate breakfast a bit after 10:30.  Then came along, hot walk into town, where we stopped at the local mountaineering shop.  They said very few PCT hikers were doing the next part of the PCT.  Even in nice conditions, it’s such a difficult stretch of trail that no one does it unless they have plenty of daylight.  He said the alternate routes were also snowbound, and the only other choice was to hitchhike or walk many miles up the highway to where we could take another trail back up to the PCT.  Hmmmm.  We decided to think about it.

On to the post office to get our box, and whom should we see but Josh and Anna!  We told them we’d found  Bugaboo’s data book lying on the trail the day before, and they said, “Great!  He’s camping with us–he sure will be glad!”  We took our box to the campground and made a frustrating discovery–every site was already taken, even the hike-in ones, and every other place in town was all booked up because of a huge big “Earth Days” festival this wekend.  So even though we were really tired, we knew we’d have to move on.   Talking to the ranger, we found out we were welcome to take showers, but that he’d “get us for sure” with a big fine if we tried to sneak in late at night to camp.  So we left all our stuff with Josh and Anna and went to get some dinner and do some shopping.  It was so hot that even the restaurant was uncomfortable. 

Back at the campground, we loaded our packs with 5 days of food and at sunset, began to walk out towards the road, literally not knowing where we would sleep that night.  We talked as we walked, and decided to go over to the local Christian campground and ask if we could sleep there, when just as we were almost to the state park entrance,  walking by the parking lot, a young guy called to us and asked for help in finding out how to get to Tahquitz Peak.  We got out our PCT maps and showed him what to do.  Then he asked if we knew anywhere he could camp, since everything was full up.  To make a long story short, he ended up giving us a ride to our trail back to the PCT and he and we are both camped at the trailhead tonight.  He’s happy because it’s near Idlylwild and it’s free (he’s just a poor UCLA graduate student in linguistic anthropology, named Brian) and WE are happy because we were saved from about a 10 mile walk along a busy , narrow mountain highway.  (Not to mention the risk of us being bothered or worse by some “bad dude” driving by.)  So we are very grateful to the Lord for working it all out for us, and very sorry to miss the famous “Fuller Ridge.”  But with all that snow, and no GPS, we dare not try it.

(Note: Later on, we found out that today they had to use a helicopter to rescue several hikers who tried to cross Fuller Ridge and got totally lost.  So we are glad we didn’t attempt it.  Josh, Anna & Co. did cross it a day later, by staying in a large group led by a guy who had GPS and knew the trail well.)

Well, we should have set up our tarp last night, because when we woke up, our sleeping bags were soaked with dew–very wet.  Yuck!  Figuring we’d dry them later, we headed out for a long day of what turned out to be mostly up, up & up.   There were some pretty menacing spiky pine cones lying on the trail…hmm, wonder if they would make good weapons of some sort? 

Trail cut in the rock

 The trail construction crews who worked on this stretch did an awesome job–at times it looked like they literally had to cut through solid rock.  We had breakfast with a great view of some range cattle (complete with cowbells!) far below where we were perched by the trail.  The wildflowers are still wonderful–big perfumed lupines and many others, including one that almost looks like a bouquet coming right out of the ground.  And I should mention that every single day since we left Campo, we see lots of hummingbirds.  They are so friendly–buzz right up and say “hi” and look so cute.  I am sure they don’t mistake us for flowers in our khaki clothes–they must just be curious.

Looking up toward the Desert Divide

As we climbed higher and higher, there were more and more interesting rock formations–very distracting, at least for me!  I keep wanting to stop and get a good look at them, and if I weren’t thruhiking, I would be seriously tempted to take a small rock sample from some of them.  As the trail climbed ever higher, I also got distracted by the fun (at the top of each mountain saddle) of looking back to see where we’d been on the trail. 

Dramatic dropoff

But I will say this–the PCT is tough, much harder than we’d expected.  We did a lot of training before we went, but to be able to make it on this trail, you sure have to be not only trained, but DETERMINED.  This trail is NOT for wussies or the fainthearted.  Today included, for example, climbs of 100, 300, ,400 and 1,100 feet.  There were rocky steep descents, too, of 1,000 and 300 feet.  But all that aside, who cares!  This is an ADVENTURE, and and adventure is about pushing the limits of what you thought you could do. 

We got to see the “Ghost Forest” high up on a ridge, and since we were on the Desert DIVIDE, there were awesome views in both directions.  The altitude is high here (7,000-8,000 feet), so the knarly oak trees are just beginning to leaf out. 

Sleeping bags in "solar dryer"

By noon, it was so hot that we conked in the shade of some live oaks for lunch, after first hanging our damp sleeping bags up to dry–I hung mine on a trail junction sign.  While we waited for the sleeping bags to dry, a friendly dayhiker came down the trail.  He said he’d planned to climb Spitler Peak, but it was so hot and the trail so steep that he just could not make it, and had turned back.  Hmmm–the Spitler Peak trail was where the PCT headed next.  And the worst of it was, there was supposed to be a trailside water cache at the junction where we were.  The cache was there, all right–and no water left.  We figured we were OK, with enough water to last till Apache Springs, 3 miles ahead.

But shortly afterward, along came Chris, one of the thruhikers we met at dinner in Warner Springs.  He looked exhausted, and had no pack on.  Turned out he and his wife Barbara were totally out of water and were counting on the cache.  When we told him there was no water in it, he looked pretty grim.  So Bill and I said, “Tell you what, we can give you some of our waater.  We’ll leave ourselves just enough to squeak by till Apache Springs.”  Chris gratefully took our water and headed back to Barbara, while we hoisted packs to begin the 3 mile, 1,400 foot CLIMB to the Apache Springs side trail.  It was still hot, and the trail was awful–one long, very steep hill after another.  I had seen this part of the trail from down below and thought “Oh, that couldn’t possibly be the PCT–it looks like a fire road.  The PCT would never just go straight up a hill like that.”  Oh, yes, it could, and it did!  I was reduced to hiking at a crawl, very discouraged, and carefully rationing my bit of water.  Heat + steep hills + me does NOT equal happy hiking! 

But at last we reached the sandy chaparral saddle with the side trail to Apache Springs.  Bill headed down with our empty water bottles and I waited by the packs.  About 20 minutes later, along came Chris, who promptly dumped his pack by ours, grabbed his water bottles and headed after Bill.  He said Barbara was somewhere behind him.  Soon Bill was back, with an extra bottle of water for Barbara and I to drink from right away.  It was nice and COLD, with only  a few floaty things in it, so I gratefully drank half of it, and just as I took my last swallow, along came an exhausted, discouraged Barbara.  She was thrilled to get fresh, cold water!  I talked to her a bit and commiserated with her about how slow, hot and miserable we’d been today.  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Barbara sighed.  “I thought Chris and I were in really good shape.  But today it was all I could do not to break down and cry.”  “Well, pretty soon you’ll have plenty of water, and there’s a nice downhill ahead” was all I could think of to say to her.  

So off went Bill and I, to tackle the 3 miles to a gap where we planned to cook dinner and camp.  The trail was now much nicer–mostly downhill and with awesome views of deep gorges and the Coachella Valley with its thousands of houses far below.   There were also some more amazing (and scary) bits of trail engineering where the trail was literally carved out of the face of sheer cliffs.  Finally we reached the “gap”–a nice flat place on a ridge, where we cooked up a hot dinner of cheddar mashed potatoes with jerky bits and peas.  Our “dinner view” was over the edge of a multithousand foot dropoff with a fantastic view.  In many ways, the whole “look” of the place reminded me of Yosemite. 

Our campsite tonight is at 7,000 feet and couldn’t be nicer–a soft, sandy flat place surrounded by huge boulders and dwarf live oaks.  Off to one side we can see the big dropoff with lights twinkling far below.  And as a precaution, we put up the tarp tonight.  We’ll miss watching the stars, but dry sleeping bags are nice, too.