Category: PCT 2018

It was a lazy Saturday start. I was first to wake up, Laura shortly behind. Without waking Justin we tried to the room in search of a good cup of coffee but the sleeping giant awoke. He decided to come with for a cold walk for some tea. Unfortunately, these small towns businesses have random hours so to our dismay the coffee shop was going to open until 9. It was 8:03. So we walked to a breakfast joint, it wasn’t great. We should have splurged and went to Dennys. Oh well, good in our stomachs and back to the hotel we went to finish packing our bags.

I worked really hard to part with a few things I haven’t been using. Like my camp towel, a few toiletry items, and 2 extra water bladders. I did however stash said items in a postal box and send them forward on the trail in what is called a “bounce box.” We stashed our town stuff that we don’t use on the trail (like a huge bottle of body wash and extra large tube of sunblock) and some extra food items we didn’t need to carry for 6 days all in the box. The box will be waiting for us in Wrightwood which will be our next town stop sometime around next Thursday or Friday. Wrightwood is currently 90 miles from where we are camped this evening.

So we pack, we check out of the lodge and walk to the post office–which conveniently enough is only open for 2 hours on Saturdays 10am-noon. While I’m mailing the box, Justin calls up John from yesterday and arranged our ride back to the trail. 10 minutes later, John shows up at the post office with 2 hikers he picked up along the way (from his house) who were headed into town for food before they went back to the trail. It was Jumanji and Enigma. Jumanji I met back at Mary’s Place drinking lemonade over a hundred miles ago. Crazy!

So John drops us off back to the trail at mile 266. Our plan from there was 13 miles to a camp site at mile 279. It was a pretty easy day. Although our packs were heavy being the first day out of town, the terrain was fairly forgiving. We were back on the trail by noon today and had camp set up by 630pm. We only took 2 bread today so our pace was pretty decent.

We’re at an elevation of 7,674ft so it’s going to be another cold night up here. Electronics and water filter are stash inside and tonight I brought my water bottles inside the tent with me. Let’s hope they don’t freeze. I carried 3 full liters here today, so the pack was extra heavy. Tomorrow will be 6 miles down trail before we hit water again. We did run into a group of college kids out on a day hike. Most of them knew nothing about the PCT — yes, even though they were hiking on it. But they were full of questions for us. We all laughed when one of them said, “when I grow up I want to be just like you guys!” We kinda chuckled and agreed we still hadn’t grown up yet ourselves.

Just a few shots from the day. This was a burn closure of the trail. We had to detour on a 4×4 road that wasn’t a ton of fun. I’m kinda on a hot chocolate kick at night. Altho we all bailed into our tents before I could finish this evening.

And if you’re wondering how much food we have this is what that looks like. My Zpacks food bag (the green bag) is usually my day snacks. The clear back is 12×20 stuffed with everything else. Maybe a bit much, but I always like my options. The other bag is Justin’s food. Yeah, I should have grabbed a 4 pack of Hawaiian rolls myself. I was super jealous of that tonight. Altho he did share some of his Whoppers with me.

I’m sure that’s enough babble for today. Hoping to stay warm tonight. Might need to add my liner bag of these high elevation nights get any colder… although the desert is near again…. one extreme to the other out here. Goodnight.

So we went from massively windy and tents collapsing at mile 239 to below freezing temps at mile 256. After we retreated to our tents last night we al knew we were in for some much colder temps. I had on almost every layer of clothing I’ve been carrying except my rain jacket. Anything contain a battery (cell phone, headlamp, power bank) and my water filter were all tucked in a stuff sack inside my quilt. Sadly, I didn’t bring my water bottles inside.

None of us were really wanting to brave the cold this morning. I decided to hike in what I slept in to keep warm through the cold morning–which means wool top and bottom, rain pants, my wind shirt and my puffy. It was at least an hour and a half before I could start to shed the layers.

Not really sure how I was the first one packed up. But I patiently waited as Justin and Laura packed up their things. Of course, with a little humor involved. Yup, that’s my sleeping pad I’m wrapped in.

Since we only hiked 16 miles yesterday, we had 10 miles to Big Bear. With a decent morning start, we knocked out those 10 miles by 11:45am. Justin having been on food motivation hurried down the trail. Laura and I having stopped to shed layers showed at the road minutes later to find trail magic #1 sodas….and then Trail magic #2 pure randomness.BUT while we were rummaging through box #2 (and Justin sat idle with his back to the road) we hear a voice “Hey… do you need a ride to town?” Laura and I look up and there’s a gentleman outside of his SUV. Never even had to stick the thumb out today. Pure luck. We ditch the box of random stuff and run over to the road. His name is John. Says he picks up a few hikers a day. A hiker himself, he was able to tell us about the water availability through the next stretch of the PCT. He’s anxious to get back to hiking as he just returned to work after having a full knee replacement. John drove us the 9 miles into Big Bear Lake where I retrieved my resupply box from the hostel in town. He also gave us his number for a ride back to the trail tomorrow. We were lucky enough to snag a few toiletry items from the hiker box. Justin scored a can of fuel. I grabbed a different cord for my iPhone, the one I currently have isn’t working with my solar charger. Justin arranged for a room for us at the Black Forest Lodge while Laura and I went for our other boxes at the post office. It’s a good thing these towns are small because we walked from the hostel to the post office to the Mexican restaurant and then the lodge all within 8 minutes.

We couldn’t wait to eat. Mexican food was calling my name so we forged them came back to the lodge to clean up. I organized my laundry stack and food sack. So much food in my resupply! Friday afternoon at the laundromat was just as entertaining as one could imagine. I’ll leave it at that.

With just a few hours past lunch, we were already thinking about dinner. We took an Uber 2 miles down the street–cause it’s cold here and that was too far to walk!–where John had recommended a good pizza place. We did a resupply at the Vons right next to the pizza place and took and Uber back. This is what the mess of resupply looks like again. All 3 of us trying to figure out how to pack all our food for the next 6 days in a bag. We are all tucked in now, journaling and blogging and ready to call it a night.

Just a note: I was able to go back and upload the photos from days 17&18 which I couldn’t do while I was on trail. And I’m not sure how the garmin exactly works sometimes as messages have been coming from random numbers. I appreciate the messages but I don’t always know who they are coming from. Not sure what the technical side of it is but thanks for all the well wishes and words of inspiration 🙂 I’ve tried to respond to some of the messages but I don’t think it goes through properly. So thank you… you guys are awesome. I have such an amazing group standing behind me in this crazy adventure!

Well…. it happened. The tent blew over last night. I wish I had a photo of it but it was hard enough packing up with one side collapsed. I felt kinda silly trying to stake it back up in the middle of the night a few times. But when the sun came up and I saw how miserable Laura was, I learned it wasn’t just mine that blew over. Hers too. It happens. I actually slept threw mine falling over each time. My trekking pole that keeps it up is pretty darn light so I didn’t feel a thing as my head was covered by my sleeping bag. The only thing that made me wake up was the noise of the tent ruffling in the wind and the draft that was now coming through. It was so windy you heard the trees make noise before the wind scurried down by us. I wish I could tell you what the mph were up there but I didn’t have service at the time to look it up.

The wind carried on throughout the day. It was so cold Laura and I hiked in our rainpants all day. It’s the only longer layer we both carry other than our sleep clothes. At times it felt like we’d be blown off the side of the hill. We saw some gnarly looking clouds early on in the day that graciously burned off as the sun burned them off. We were so thankful for that.

We were pretty much the last ones to leave camp today, even with our hike beginning around 715. With the temperatures being much colder today the water situation worked perfectly. We all had about 3 liters on us to last the 16 miles that we covered today. We arrived at the Arraste Camp site just after 4. We quickly went down to the water access, filtered and set up our tents. Justin was savvy enough to get a fire started for us. So we were warm through dinner and conversation after. 2 other hikers joined in on the fire and shortly after we all bugged out to our tents.

Tomorrow it’s 10 miles all downhill into Big Bear. We will stay the night there and get a few chores done. Until then, goodnight.