Day 7: Mile 77.3 – 86.6

April 14th, 2022 by Jon

We woke up in a bed this morning, which felt pretty freaking great after being in a tent for 6 days. We slept in until 7:15 or so and made plans to hit up Julian Cafe for breakfast when they opened at 8:00. We did some packing and rearranging and planned to camp about 10 miles up the trail. We weren’t willing to commit to full-on zero, but with town food and a shorter hiking day, we were feeling pretty good about the day.

We walked over to Julian Cafe and we were the first ones in when they opened. If you are ever in Julian, you should absolutely check them out. All of us had MASSIVE plates of food in front of us pretty quickly and the cinnamon roll we got for the table to share looked like a small cake. Everything was delicious. Nicole and I both had the two egg breakfast with potatoes and breakfast meat, and Ajia had the biscuits and gravy. What a way to start the day.

After breakfast, we stopped by a small outdoor store so that we could get our names on the list for a shuttle back to trail. Unfortunately, many people had already signed up the day before, and we couldn’t get on the list until 12. It was still incredibly nice of these trail angels to be offering rides, so we couldn’t complain. We got back to our trail and prepped our stuff to leave. Ajia took a second shower just for fun and we checked out at 11. We couldn’t think of anything we wanted to do on order to kill time so we decided to go try our hand at hitchhiking.

We walked a few blocks to the edge of town and set up on a long flat spot with a good shoulder. It felt pretty weird but we felt confident knowing that it was a hiker town and many people were familiar with the PCT. With packs at our feet, we stuck our thumbs out at every car that passed. You just do your best to appear friendly and not ax murderer-ish. After about 25 minutes and feeling somewhat discouraged, a kind woman actually pulled over! She had room for all three of us and even moved her car seat out of the back so we could have more room. She mentioned it was her first time picking up hikers too but she and her family had just gone to check out the underpass where hikers get picked up and had run into someone who was going to be hiking the PCT doing a training hike.

It took about 20 minutes to get back to the underpass and after thanking her profusely, our trail angel drove off. I did text the trail angel that we had gotten a ride as soon as we were in the car, so hopefully some other hikers could get a ride. We ducked into the underpass and threw on some extra sunscreen that we found in a box. We knew we would be on a pretty exposed climb most of the day so even though we had already applied, a little more didn’t hurt. We also ran into Jonah again, who we saw on the way into Julian yesterday. He is carrying a nice camera and taking lots of pictures. The four of us hiked out from our little shaded oasis and made the climb into the hills beyond the highway.

It was a hot, steep climb, and once we got about 90 percent of the way to the top, we began a very long section of trail that was virtually unchanged for about 8 miles. We went horizontally across small mountains to get around it, only to cross a small saddle and get on the next mountain and do it again. Imagine driving a car down a straight rural highway and having mountains on one side. Now imagine a hiker up about 90 percent of the way up there just following you along. That’s basically what we did all day. We had lots of wind, some washed-out trail that made for some precarious climbing, and we felt very exposed.

Now I’m not going to say it was boring, but it was probably the least exciting or interesting day we have had so far. The terrain had lost any semblance of being semi-arid, and it was just straight-up desert scrub the whole way. We eventually climbed over the ridge that we had been stuck on one side of for so long and went down the other side to a relatively large sandy area. It was our selected camping area for the night and we were the first ones there! We got a great spot for our tent on the other side of a large bush that protected us from the wind. We had lost Jonah on the climb up, so the three of us began setting up camp and making dinner.

As we finished eating, we saw more and more hikers come down the switchbacks and they were camping here too! We invited anyone who came along to join us for dinner. After 45 minutes or so we had around 12 hikers all enjoying making dinner and telling stories about their time on trail so far. Most people were from the States, but there was also a couple from Belgium and a man from Germany. We stayed up talking until 8:00, otherwise known as hiker midnight. Eventually, even the warm clothes we had weren’t enough, and people began to retire to their tents and warm sleeping bags.

My foot had been bothering me since the day we hiked into Julian, but today it felt pretty good! Tomorrow we plan to hike 15 miles or so to a spring so we don’t have to dry camp again. It’s heavy bringing all that extra water to camp. We will also go by the 3rd gate water cache, which helps provide water in an otherwise pretty dry section, and then we should also pass the 100-mile marker! Very exciting stuff. We need to get close enough to Warner Springs to pick up our resupply box before the post office closes at 1:30 on Saturday. If we can do our plan tomorrow we will only have 8.4 miles into town the next day so we should be okay.