May 21st, 2022 by Jon
We woke up this morning to no dust in our tent and no wind overnight. What a change from basically the entire last week of camping. We decided to do breakfast in the tent again just because, and then we packed up and rolled out by about 6:30. The first thing in store for us this morning was a massive mile-long, steep climb to get up and over a ridge, just so we could go down and enter the valley on the other side. The valley became a meadow, and we walked through trees of all kinds. The sun had just barely risen, and golden light streaked through the forest, giving everything a yellow hue.
We meandered through the valley, turned this way and that, and I didn’t care that I had no idea where the trail was going. Everything was just so gosh darn beautiful. Singsong and I hiked all morning together and enjoyed talking about the trail so far. We’ve come a long way and it’s crazy to think back to our first week on trail. My foot hurt all morning so I tried to walk carefully. Every day, Singsong and I both deal with pain that flares up for a few hours, and then usually it goes away, and something else hurts. It’s hard not to get worried each time, but at the end of the day, it’s part of this hike. We try to listen to our bodies and take breaks when we need to.
Eventually, we crossed a dirt road and signed a trail register. We recognized many of the names of those who were only a day ahead of us. There was also an excellent sitting area right by the register made of chainsaw-ed logs. We only had 0.8 miles to the primitive campground and spring where we planned to take our first break. We got there around 9:15, having already done nearly 7 miles. We got to a second dirt road where we planned to turn down into the campsite, and at the fence, there was a sign that said “trail magic!” We haven’t had any for a while, so we were pretty excited. We saw Goob leaving as we walked down the road and he smiled as he passed and told us it was really good. We eagerly kept moving and came to a large campground with lots of cars and dirt bikes. It was the weekend so it made sense that it was pretty full. We noticed a bunch of dirty-looking hikers sitting on chairs at one of the sites and figured it must be our people.
When we walked up, Chris immediately greeted us and told us to grab some coffee, biscotti, and fruit and take a seat. We sat and ate and introduced ourselves and when we finished our food, he offered us each a homemade breakfast burrito. They were perfectly sized and tasted delicious. After that, he offered us soda and those Danish butter cookies that come in the tin. We enjoyed sitting around for a while, and after signing his guestbook, we thanked Chris profusely and headed over to the spring to gather water. It was flowing super well and we filled a 2L bag in about 10 seconds. Lately, all the springs have been barely trickling, so this was a nice change.
We headed back to the trail up a small connector trail. We continued hiking through a beautiful forest, but the landscape was definitely changing as we lost some elevation. We were coming off the mountain we had been on and the landscape changed back to exposed sandy desert hills. The heat really started to climb by now, and anytime we weren’t in the shade, we were sweating pretty profusely. Hikers don’t always talk about it, but basically everyone gets what I call swamp butt. It’s when your back sweat becomes so profuse that it soaks your waistband and the top of the back of your shorts. It happens, it isn’t pretty, and no one makes fun of each other for it. That’s what most of today was. Lots of swamp butt.
We ridge-walked and switchbacked down the mountain, and it became apparent that we were dropping into a new valley. The hills were bare, except for small clumps of Joshua trees here and there. After another 7 miles from the spring, we came to a small paved road. Next to it, about 45 5-gallon water tanks sat by the road. It’s always super nice to have these caches of water; you shouldn’t rely on them too much, but hikers benefit from them in a big way. We sat underneath a small Joshua tree to get out of the sun and cool down. It was probably about 80 degrees, and from 12-3, the sun feels really hot. We sat there and enjoyed drinking as much as we wanted, knowing we could refill whenever we needed.
We sat there and watched as a convoy of 30 rally cars drove by to go off-road on some of the trails around here. Thankfully, the PCT is only open to hikers and people on horseback, so we don’t have to worry about that. It was pretty cool to watch them all go by, though. After that, a guy named Dean arrived and brought our snacks and offered frozen water bottles! 2 instances of trail magic in one day? What a life! We took Oreos, fruit snacks, chocolate wafers, and a frozen water bottle. We thanked him, and then he left, saying he comes up the 10 minutes from his house pretty often to offer some trail magic. It was so appreciated! We sat there enjoying our new snacks and drinking ice-cold water.
Then we entered a dream state, obviously because ANOTHER family drove up, opened the bed of their pickup, and laid out huge bowls of fruit and asked hikers to come grab stuff. They even had Ziploc bags so you could take some to go. It was absolutely unreal. They had watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, grapes, and satsuma oranges. We had just gotten our packs back on so we ate a bunch of melon and then took a big bag of grapes and oranges to go. 3 trail magics. In one day. How did we ever get so lucky?
We headed off into the hills around 2:30, feeling very fortunate. That feeling lasted about a half mile before the 4 liters Singsong was carrying and 5 liters I was carrying began to feel heavy. Add the scorching heat and sun that was beating down and the complete lack of shade meant we were struggling HARD. Every step in the sand felt like a small victory, though, and slowly, but surely, we made our way up the trail. We had a long, gentle climb that went straight up a valley that was on the opposite side of the road from the one we had just come out of. After a little over an hour of hiking, we stopped to lie in the shade of a huge Joshua tree that was positioned perfectly to provide a patch of shade. We sat there for about 30 minutes cooling back down, drinking a whole liter of water, thinking how we should have waited for the afternoon heat to come down a bit before leaving, and enjoying the bag of fruit we had just gotten. I laid my shirt out to dry because it was completely soaked, and when that happens, the chafing can get kinda bad. I’ve learned to just lay it out during breaks because it dries in about 5 minutes in the direct sun.
Feeling a little recovered, we pushed out for the last few miles. We had a camp spot in mind at a small road that was 2 miles away, where we heard there was a picnic table. We hiked on the ledge of a mountain to get around it and had great views of the mountains we had just walked through all day. We turned a corner and entered another small valley where we could see a road down far below us. We hiked for a mile or so along this ledge before coming to a saddle where 2 dirt roads met at an intersection and there was the picnic table off to the side! There were a few great-looking campsites, but Singsong and I both still felt like we had energy, so we decided to push a little bit further. We had gone 19.5 miles, and we wanted to set up an easier approach to Walker Pass. We hiked up into the next set of hills and I apparently walked right over a snake that Singsong saw afterwards. I went back to look, and sure enough, I walked right over it. It was a regular snake, not a rattler, so no harm done.
We walked a bit more, eyes peeled for more snakes, and came to a small spot just below the trail that was the perfect size for a single tent. We decided to call it a night, set up camp, ate dinner, and were in our tent by 7:15.
