Just going for a walk

So there was this grand plan. After Hikertown, the PCT crosses the Mojave desert (at least I think it's the Mojave desert), walking along the LA Aqueduct (I do know it's the LA Aqueduct) for a spell before turning east and heading towards the wind farms. Over this stretch, the trail is notoriously hot and exposed, and many people thus opt to do this section in the cooler parts of the day: either early early in the morning, or late late at night. So that's the first thing: people hike this portion at night.  Now it turns out the night of May 25th, leading into the morning of May 26th, was a "supermoon": the brightest full moon of the year. Furthermore, it turns out this particular supermoon would be experiencing a total lunar eclipse that would be visible from California. So that's the second thing: the opportunity to experience a celestial phenomenon. Michael Be--who actually throws full-moon parties in his normal life--had noted the convergence of these two e...

After a night at the Ostrich Farm where we heard the wind howling in the upper branches, but felt little at ground level in our tents, Runts, Candy Corn and me headed out in the morning. I was planning to continue the Lake Fire closure circumvention, doing a road walk up Pine Canyon Road to Three Points, then following the road to the left all the way to the PCT trailhead at mile 511. Runts and Candy Corn, though, managed to get themselves a hitch to the trailhead (there's a reason for this, but I'll include it in tomorrow's entry) but I wanted to hike this portion, just to maintain graph connectivity. For my Saturday hikes, there are a couple of ways I find the next hike. Both involve graphing all the hikes I've done on a big map. From there, one way is to look for bits of trail I haven't done yet, then figure out a route that covers that. This leads to planning 15+ mile hikes just to get that final little 1.5-mile connector trail. The other is to try and connect a...

Today was just a long day. We started out from the Bonquet Canyon Road campsite. It was fairly quiet at night: less traffic on the road above, but in the morning the traffic started up again. Only two of us camped there--Runts and myself--and we got up, gathered our stuff, made use of the generously provided water cache, when who should come strolling up but Candy Corn. She would join us, and the three of us would hike together the entire day. And what a hike! Today was basically going up a mountain range, then going down into a narrow valley, then going up the next mountain range, then going down into a narrow valley, then going up the yet next mountain range, then going down into a narrow valley, and finally being at Lake Hughes Road. There's a fire closure here--from mile 485 to 511--but there's a reroute: you can do a road walk up Lake Hughes Road, then take a left at Pine Canyon Road, and rejoin the PCT when it intersects Pine Canyon Road. This will neatly circumvent the L...

Today I met some new friends, and also an old friend that I've been missing especially these past couple days. Let's start with the new friends. So on the way out of the Acton KOA, and through to Agua Dulce, I got to talking to Mike and Jackie, a father-daughter pair who were section hiking this bit in the interim between Jackie's graduation (congratulations) and starting her first job out of college (congratulations). They had originally wanted to do Walker Pass down to Agua Dulce, but found it too windy past Tehachapi, so from there they bounced down to the Fire Station on Angeles *Forest* Highway (i.e., the "not-the-2" highway in ANF) up to Agua Dulce--they only had two weeks to work with, you see. I had been leapfrogging them the past couple days, but finally today got to talk with them some on trail. Turns out Jackie is a bio-electrical engineering major (think biomedical engineering with an emphasis on electrical systems), who's starting her first job at...

Could I have made today a bigger day? Well, kinda. So today I did about 10 miles, from my campsite in what was effectively a large ditch by the side of a dirt road (which was a great spot, my description notwithstanding), to the Acton KOA, about 10 miles away. In theory I could have stopped by, grabbed my resupply package, packed up, and headed back out. And that was the original plan. But it turns out the next campsite is another 10 miles from here, so if I had done that I would have needed to make it a big day. But I didn't do that. But I had a good reason! I had hiked down from my campsite to the North Fork Ranger Station--the next water source--fully intending to get water and go, but who should I meet there but Mark (Friend of Pokey)! And so we got talking, and then he headed out before me, but then I caught up with him and we got talking again, and so on, all the way down to the Acton KOA (well roughly: as Mark pointed out, a "down" on the PCT invariably involves a ...

And in the morning, when I woke, I felt again like a thru-hiker, and the jitters of yesterday were now fully of yesterday. And I finished hiking the part of the trail near Mount Pacifico that I had done earlier this year--although I had been going up then, but was going down now--all the way to the Mill Creek Fire Station. And it felt shorter than last time. Maybe it was because it was downhill, maybe it was because there wasn't any snow. Or maybe it was a case of "going there it's always longer, coming back it's always shorter". Why is that? Is it the familiarity--and I was certainly familiar with the trail here: here was that corner where the plants hadn't yet overgrown and you could see the weird rock slants, here was where Ian and I stopped to put on our microspikes, here was that runoff channel that had looked so magnificient in the morning sun last time, but was just in shadow now. Or is it the certainty--because I was certain of what was at the Fire Sta...

Ismael gave me a ride back to the trail this morning, having scouted out Three Points the day before. We were a bit late getting out: Ian and I had gone to the post office to mail off my full resupply to Acton KOA, and by the time we returned Ismael was wandering around Ian's place looking for us. Not good to be late and keep him waiting--and a second time for me too!--will have to improve in future. Pasadena was cloudy, but on the drive up Highway 2 into the mountains, the clouds broke, the blue filled the sky, and the day warmed. The PCT travels the northern part of these mountains, but driving up I was reminded of the southern part--the part closer to LA and the part that I had been hiking earlier this year--and just how imposing and intimidating those mountains looked! And now with the cloud banks crashing over the peaks: they looked so tall, so magnificent, so impossible to climb. And yet they're not: I've been to the tops of many of them. Just goes to show: from far a...

Ended up spending a full zero day in Pasadena, crashing at Ian's place. Originally I had wanted to drop into Pasadena, resupply in the morning, then head back out in the afternoon, but logistically that got busy so instead of rushing, I took the day. Here's the thing: the PCT is closed between Vincent Gap (at mile 374) and Three Points (at mile 403) due to the Bobcat Fire. For a while, Highway 2 between those points was open at select times, so some folks were contemplating doing a road walk. But then a couple nights ago, evidently a boulder the size of a semi fell down upon the highway on that stretch, just above where the PCT goes, and CalTrans just shut everything down, all the time. The sign clearly says "Pedestrians Prohibited" and you can go, but if you get caught it's a $5000 fine and (possibly) 6 months in jail. Oh, and the rumor is that the guy who did get caught?, they revoked his permit as well. So yeah, I'm not doing that section, but moving on up ...

And today is the day I hiked with Ismael! I remember soon after I had first let it be known that I intended to do the PCT--this was back in 2019, back when I planned to do it in 2020--Ismael came up to me after church. I had known Ismael as a fellow member of the hospitality team, but it turns out he had also hiked the AT a few years back. Hey, Charlie, are you hiking the PCT?, he asked. Yep, I said. Great!, he said, and we promptly talked trail for the next hour. There was a board meeting after church that Sunday, and though we spoke in the wings of the Sanctuary, we did get shushed a time or two. But we kept talking, about gear, about the Sierras (he's done the JMT too), about preparation and planning and everything else under the sun. More accurately, mostly Ismael did the talking, and mostly I tried to absorb everything I could from the fire hose of his experience (albeit always delivered in a down-to-earth manner, with that smile twinkling in his eye). After that, any time I h...

Today was the big climb up to Wrightwood. Cajon Pass sits at 3000 feet but to get into Wrightwood the trail climbs to 8000+ feet, before offering a variety of paths into town (which itself sits at 6000 feet--so why did we climb up here again?). But those decisions were for tomorrow, today was just about the climb. We left the hotel, grabbed breakfast at the McDonald's, then headed onto the trail. The day started overcast with low clouds obscuring the mountainsides, one of those days when I glance up and think, I'm going to head up into that, and it's going to be  glorious. Tina and Heather finished breakfast and headed out early, whereas J-Pro and me took our time and headed out later. After a bit of confusion at the I-15 and some railroad underpasses, we started up the mountains to the west of Cajon. This ended up being a walk over a local ridge, before dipping down into Swarthout  Canyon where some trail angels had set up a water cache at the road. From there, the trail h...