April 17th, 2022 by Jon
The morning came as it always does, and being as high up as we were, it was pretty cold. I closed my eyes again after Ajia jostled me awake when the alarm went off and wished for warmer weather. That would prove to be a mistake later in the day, but for now, we gritted our teeth and pulled on cold, smelly hiking clothes with visible salt stains. We’ve begun packing the inside of our tent first and throwing those items out so we can at least enjoy the warmth of a tent a little longer each morning.
Breakfast was oatmeal and grits again with carnation instant breakfast for extra calories. My hunger is definitely starting to come online now. I start to get hunger pains if I don’t have a snack every 2 hours or so. We ate quickly, knowing that the sooner we started hiking the sooner we would feel warm again. We were off by 6:30, our fastest time yet!
The trail switched back up the mountain we had climbed part of yesterday in the shade since the sun hadn’t made its way over the top yet. The brush here is becoming more lush as we got higher and we noticed some small pine tree/bush-looking things that remind us of home. We were climbing for about an hour and a half, making it nearly 4 miles before a quick snack break in the shade. We knew we would get hot later, so sometimes it’s good to just enjoy something while you can, even if it’s cold. We set out again, looking forward to Mike’s place in about 4 miles.
Mike is a trail angel with a small ranch very close to the PCT. He lets hikers fill up water from his water tanks and when he or a friend are around, they make pizzas for people. It’s a nice place to hang out for a while, and also has kinda junkyard vibes. It’s an odd combination. We had a banana which was our first fresh fruit since the apple we had on day 2 or 3 of our hike. It tasted delicious.
Since this would be the last water for a little bit, we had a decision to make. We could camp at 15 miles for the day and dry camp, which meant lugging more water with us all day, or carry enough to get us to 17.4 for the day where we could camp near a spring. We felt tired from yesterday’s hot climb, but today’s temperatures were already rising and carrying all the water up the steep 3 mile climb out of Mike’s place sounded terrible. We elected to push further so we carried 2 liters for the 10 miles we had to the spring. We got moving quickly; we knew the bulk of our remaining uphill today was in the next 3 miles, and it was pretty grueling to climb out of the valley, over the ridge, and down into the next valley.
Five and half miles after leaving Mike’ place, we arrived at a tent site with enough spots for 7 or 8 tents. I bet there will be a lot of people who camp here tonight. It was around 12 so the shade was pretty minimal. We did manage to find a little bit under some small bushes that were growing on an incline, providing the smallest patch of shade possible. We sat down and basically had lunch in the bush. I’ve given up trying to keep my clothes clean. It is impossible with how dry and dusty the desert is, so I basically lay right in it.
During our breaks, we all take our shoes off to try to air them out a bit and dry out our socks. Moisture means more/worse blisters so we take every chance we can to get them off when we aren’t on our feet. I had actually already eaten what I thought was lunch at Mikes place but apparently Nicole and Ajia just had a snack because it was only 10:30 when we were there. I have a little extra food in this section, so I had other snacks while they ate lunch.
We hoped to wait out the heat so we stayed in those bushes for about an hour just sort of dozing and eating before we realized it probably wouldn’t get cool until a lot later. Definitely later than we wanted to be hiking, considering we still had 5 miles to hike, water to collect from a “swamp” according to our notes, and then get to camp, set up, and eat dinner. All that stuff takes quite a bit of time. Nicole went first, she always says she is going to siesta but then she gets antsy and starts hiking anyway. We enjoy giving her a little bit of a hard time about it.
But she was right, we did need to get going so shortly after she left, Ajia and I threw on more sunscreen and we headed out. Right as we left we ran into Zander and Kate! We had camped with them basically the last 3 nights, or at least pretty nearby. It was fun to commiserate about the heat and the hiking pain, basically everyone has some part of their body that hurts the most and we all love to tell each other about it.
We all hiked through what I can best describe as strange inland sand dunes. It all looked the same and you could only tell you were moving when on top of a dune before descending down the side of one, only to go straight back up 5 steps later. It was kind of annoying hiking through it. Eventually, the trail became a little straighter as we passed the dunes and realized we were still pretty high up in the mountains. We could see the valley floor before us and Mt San Jacinto lying massively in anticipation. We will start climbing it the day after tomorrow.
This side of the ridge was much more sandy then the other side which also made for challenging hiking. Thankfully, it was mostly downhill, which felt good for a short while before starting to take a toll on all your joints from the heavy impact of each step. I was feeling in a good rhythm before karma came to bite me. Remember this morning when I wished it were warmer? Well, now my wish came true, and it felt about 80 or so. To add insult, there was no breeze whatsoever, and so not only did you have hot blazing sun shine down on you, but it also radiated up from the sand below your feet. Every 5 minutes or so there would be the smallest patch of shade that I would stand in and sip the smallest bit of water since I had to make it last until the spring.
I came to a dry creek bed that I knew was only a half mile away from the spring and when I got to the patch of shade I completely hit a wall. I had skipped my last 5-minute break since I was so close, but I simply couldn’t make myself take another step in the heat. I threw my pack on the ground and leaned against it. I was totally drenched in sweat and it was dripping off everything. I sat there for a good 10 minutes, staring at the sand, thinking about the sun, and how tantalizingly close I was to water. Ajia caught up to me and we sat there for a minute longer before we pushed on the last 0.7 miles to the spring.
When we got there, a sign by the PCT pointed down a steep trail and told us the spring was a quarter mile down that-a-way. We trudged down and when we got to the bottom, 7 or 8 hikers were there already including Nicole and several others we had already met and everyone was sitting in a patch of shade. You could tell everyone was pretty beat by the day we had.
We sat for a while, collecting ourselves, before grabbing our water bottles and filter and climbing down (yes, actually climbing) a 10-foot canyon to find the smallest little stream, only 4 inches in width at some parts and 2 inches deep. It had a few very small pools that we could find to collect some of the water. I can see why they call it a swamp; the ground around it is all wet, and it’s not a nice channel where a stream can run. We carefully collected our water and after filtering, it was actually quite clear. It tasted, as one hiker put it, “like swamp tang”, but hey, water is water.
We had hoped there would be places to camp at the spring, but the trail was so steep that there really weren’t any flat spots to pitch a tent. Unfortunately, that meant climbing with a bunch of water back up the steep trail we had come down so we could go find a tent site labeled in our maps 0.3 miles down the PCT, or about 0.6 from the bottom of the spring.
You guys, that 0.6 miles was hard. I just did not want to do it. But we did, because what else can you do? We found the tent site quickly and it was actually pretty nice! There were tiered flat spots among some dry 8 foot tall bushes that covered the hillside and gave everyone a fair amount of privacy. The ground was soft sand so it was a great find. We setup camp, did our stretches, and as we were starting dinner, Kate and Zander showed up! We celebrated getting through another tough day and pointed them towards a spot that we had scoped out earlier, next to ours. Nicole came up to our site to hang out and cook dinner together, which had been our ritual, and we invited Kate and Zander to join as well. Apparently, it’s Zander’s birthday today, so that was fun to celebrate too. They are going to wake up at 3:00 tomorrow so they can hike by 4:00 to try to make it the 16 miles to paradise valley cafe which closes at 3:00. The food there is pretty legendary and we are looking forward to it as well.
Tomorrow we are hiking to the highway 15 miles away, and then we will be headed to Palm Springs to stay a night with some family friends, Cathy and Phil, who kindly offered to get us from the trail at the highway, let us shower and sleep in a bed, and maybe even use the pool. Sounds completely luxurious and we have been talking about it for the last two days. Nicole is going to come with us, which will be great too.
