Miles: 231.1 to 256.6 Mileage: 25.5 Day: 13 This morning was the first time on the trail that I felt beaten before lunch. The first few miles followed Mission Creek upstream. It was a seemingly endless slight uphill grade on loose baseball-sized gravel or sand. These are my two least favorite hiking surfaces. By the […]
Miles: 210.8 to 231.2 Mileage: 20.4 Day: 12 Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the miles, but the hikers slept very quietly overnight at Ziggy and The Bear’s. I woke up a couple of times to shift positions and the rustle of my sleeping bag was all I could hear. Even with Interstate […]
Miles: 187.9 to 210.8 Mileage: 22.9 Day: 11 The wind picked up overnight and from our camp above 8,000 feet; it made a mockery of our tent. Stakes were pulled out of the ground and the temperature dropped. In the morning, there was frost on our sleeping bags. We slept in until 7:30 a.m. Richard […]
Miles: PCT: 178 to 187.9; road walk and side trail to PCT: 6.4 Mileage: PCT: 9.9; off trail: 6.4 Day: 10 We left town after a leisurely morning around 11:15 a.m. The road walk out of town was steep but not heavily trafficked. We took the South Ridge Trail up to Mt. Tahquitz and then […]
Miles: PCT: 1.6; Cedar Springs Trail Junction plus road walk to Idyllwild: 19, minus a 2.5 mile hitch along highway 74. Mileage: 18.1 Day: 9 When the light returned around 5:45, the rain and wind we still working full time and we were still in our sleeping bags dreading the moment when we stepped back […]
Miles: 140.3 to 161 Mileage: 20.7 Day: 8 At 5:30 a.m. I woke to hear rain pattering on the tent. I do not enjoy packing up in the rain, but I figured, it’s the desert! How long can this last? And I was right. The pattering stopped in 15 or 20 minutes and we packed […]
Miles: 115 to 140.3 (plus 1 mile to get water) Mileage: 125.3 Day: 7 We camped in a rare forested area next to a flowing stream. Once we started hiking, that didn’t last long. The whole morning was a long, slow climb through boulder-pocked desert scrub. The first few hours were cloudy and cold above […]
Miles: 101.1 to 115 via resupply in Warner Springs Mileage: 13.9 Day: 6 The walk into Warner Springs was chilly and windy. The sky was fully overcast and even the ants were slowed by the drop in temperature. Rather than moving quickly in neat lines to and from their mounds, they lay nearly still, no […]
Miles: 82 to 101.1 Mileage: 19.1 Day: 5 Today was a different day on trail. It was cloudy and very windy. Temperatures never made it over 70. Sometimes we were walking in a fog, and with it, the humidity it brings. And we had hiked to our goal for the day by 1:30 p.m. […]
Miles: 61.7 to 82 Mileage: 20.3 Day: 4 Body status update: Day one felt great. We made good time and nothing seemed to slow us down; not heat, not liters and liters of water, not five days of food. Day two was painful. Sore feet, hips, shoulders, the beginnings of blisters, etc. My energy […]