Sun. May 15 Miles today 16.5 Total 91 Sect. A

Early morning light in cactus country

We got up this morning at 4:00 am hoping to beat the heat for what we knew would be a killer day. Packing up by headlamp is a bit tricky, but we were ontrail by 4:30, and hiked by headlamp till 5:00. It seemed like the PCT was just traveling along the edge of a large valley for a LONG time, without going down and across as we knew it was supposed to do. Finally the trail turned left and came down off the mountain, landing us in “cactus country”. It was a beautiful clear morning, but already warm. Not good. We hurried to reach the creek where we planned to eat breakfast, and poor Bill did not quite look where he was going and bumped his shin into an “anklebiter size” cactus right by the trail. Ow! We stopped, and I tried to pull out the more obvious spines from his leg, but it was still hurting so much that when we started hiking again, he didn’t notice that he had not picked up his trek pole, but left it lying by the cactus. Not till we were all done with now late breakfast, and loaded up on water from the Scissors Crossing water cache did Bill notice he was missing his stick. He had to hike 2 miles back to find it, and as a result, we were VERY late starting on an 8.5 mile climb into the hot, shadeless San Felipe Hills.

Hot 'n tired feet in the San Felipes

It took us 5 miserable hours to hike those 8.5 miles, because it was so hot (99 degrees and maybe more—I stopped looking at the thermometer) that we could not go far without stopping to rest. Many of the cactus were blooming, but I was too wiped out to photograph any of them except an ocatillo with its flowers that looked like flames. At lunch, I flat out said, “I am NOT cooking anything for lunch—it is too hot!”

The amazing, flaming ocotillo

What a relief to reach the top! I was exhausted. We pushed on, glad that it was more “flat” with only “some” climbing, plus an afternoon breeze, and reached the “San Felipe Hills 3rd Gate Water Cache” by dinnertime. With the breeze and the water, I was glad to cook dinner—tuna, rice and dehydrated green beans (the beans from our own garden, last summer).

Then we hiked on till sundown and camped by a bend in the trail—the only flat place we could find. We were tired and sore, but cheered by the fact that we’d met the San Felipe Hills challenge! Before crawling into my sleeping bag, I decided to try an experiment. I have been having a lot of trouble getting any sleep at night so far because I ache so badly all over by the end of the day, especially my knees. So what I did was take some Motrin. It worked—with no pain, I could sleep! We were looking forward to breaking through the 100 mile mark tomorrow.