We left Big Bear ready to be back on the trail again. We got a later start in the morning, but we were still able to cover 19 miles on the first day. This put us well on our way as we only gave ourselves 5 days of food to get to Wrightwood and we needed to average about 21 miles a day.
Our second day out of Big Bear was our first rainy day. And it rained ALL day! Since we only have our desert clothes and the bare minimum for rain gear it sucked! We are only anticipating it to rain two to three days in this first section of the PCT and we didn't expect we would get an all day rain. Oh well, clearly we survived just fine.
The night of our rainy day we ended up at Deep Creek hot springs. Technically you are not supposed to camp there, but we had not found anything else in the last 15 miles and we were not sure when the next one would be. So we took a long rest in our tent through the night.
Coming out of Deep Creek drainage we walked through the Mojave reservoir, which in some years can be full and the trail flooded. Certainly not a problem this year. Again we had another day where camp spots seemed to be scarce. We ended up at Sliverwood lake camping area. We misinterpreted the directions to the ranger station and ended up in the group camping about 2 miles away. We were tired, it was late, so we took another long rest in our tent in a closed group camping spot.
The third day out was something to look forward to. A trail stop at McDonalds! When the trail Crosses I-15 you can take a .4 mile detour to McDonalds. It is even on the trail sign (see pic on Tiffany's post). We met Mike and Jill there and all took advantage of the seat out of the wind and the food. I would guess that I ate an amount of McDonalds food equivalent to all the McDonalds food I've eaten before then.
Full from McDonalds we headed up and over a ridge to cross the San Andreas fault. Not much to report on that other than another water cache with pool side lounge chairs. If we had not spent so much time at McDonalds we may have stopped for longer at the cache, but there was also no shade. We moved on to climb up to our camp spot on a ridge.
Our camp spot on the ridge set us on the road which was part of a trail detour to avoid Poodle Dog bush. This is a bush that grows in burn areas and can give you an ichy rash similar to poison oak. We were happy to avoid the Poodle Dog, but not happy when we found we took the road too far and missed the PCT junction. The distance we went wasn't too bad, it was the elevation we dropped and had to regain that was heart breaking. Oh well, considering this is our first major mistake over 350 miles we are not doing too bad.
Our last town stop was in Wrightwood. We got off the trail at mile 369.5. We couldn't have had better luck hitching in; we had someone pull over for us literally as we were walking off the trail onto the side of the road. We got picked up by two college aged boys who must have been disappointed to find out how old we were.
In Wrightwood we came into town just in time to see the two Germans, Autobahn and Sasquatch leave. They said the Yodler was the place to be. After a quick stop at the hardware store we headed that way. There we found the hikers! It is fun to reunite with your fellow hikers in town. We shared a room with Stilts, Muppet, Dear Hunter, and Sexy Legs. The Yodler was only a block away so we would take turns going into the room to shower and coming back to pizza and beer all clean.
Hikers seem to all run on the same general schedule. We were all up by 6am and had food on the mind. The only two places serving breakfast didn't open until 7:00. This meant that by 6:55 all six of us were lined up at the door.
After a hearty breakfast Tiffany and I went shopping for our supplies, repacked our bags, ate some more, then waited for our ride to the trail. A local we had talked to earlier in the day offered to give us all a ride.
The day out of Wrightwood was a true nero day for us all. We hiked together one mile to a visitor center and camping area. Here we lounged around through the late afternoon and evening. We knew it was a light day with a garbage can at the camp spot so we even had a few beers with us. A few others stopped by to say hi but decided to go a little further and passed on. We all decided that we slept better that night than we did in the hotel.
Soon it was time for us to start moving north again. We find that because we don't cook breakfast we start earlier than most. We left the four at the breakfast table. Sexy Legs and Deer Hunter are taking there time to get to Agua Dulce because Sexy Legs is having problems with one of his knees. We would meet up with Stilts and Muppet later on.
Out of the visitor center we had a short bit of trail before we headed up! It was 3,000ft over 4 miles to the top of Mt Baden-Powell. We took the 1/4 mile detour to hit the summit. Fun to be on top of a peak again.
At Little Johnny Springs and trail camp we met up with four others refilling on water and using the picnic tables for a long break. We hiked out of here with Muppet and Stilts and finished the day on the endangered species detour. You can choose between an 18 mile detour or a 4.5 mile detour with a little road walking. This is supposed to bypass 4 miles of the PCT, guess which detour we took. The detour goes through Buckhorn Campground. We decided to sleep there for the night. After sleeping in the middle of nowhere a campground seems noisy. The toilet and running water was a nice amenity to have though.
Next morning we again left Stilts and Muppet eating their breakfast. We are descending to the valley floor and headed toward the desert again. Climbing out of the creek basin you could tell it was going to be a hot day. About half way through we met up with Gumby and Camel. We leap frogged them a couple times, then ended up hiking with them into our camp at the Mill Creek Fire Sta. The camping was kind of crappy and right by a fairly busy road.
That leads us to today! This morning started with a large detour. This detour is on a paved road that parallels the PCT. We took this detour to avoid the Poodle Dog bush again. This 10 mile segment is supposed to be heavily overgrown with the nasty stuff. The detour takes you through an LA County work camp that was burnt down during a fire in 2009. Much of the reason for the Poodle Dog bush problem is related to this fire. The bush flourishes in the 5 to 10 years following a burn. The 2009 fire we are walking through covered about 220,000 acres.
Now we sit at a water cache at the North Fork Ranger station where the resident for the forest service keeps several large jugs full of water for thirsty hikers. Once the heat of the day has passed and we have quenched our thirst we will head out again and descend into the Mojave desert where we hear they had a record breaking heat wave today.
Trail Statistics
Mile: 436
Days: 26
Body: Feeling Good
Candy Bars: 22
Bags of Chips: 4
Jars of Peanut Butter: 1 (Shared)
Showers: 6 (5 with soap)
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