Day 19: Mile 220.1 - 238.6

A lonely day today, but that's fine: such days will come. I was one of the last out of camp: to be fair, I'm kind of the runt of this current bubble of hikers, everybody else gets in and out of camp faster than me, and also hikes faster than me. I guess technically that means I won't be in this bubble for long: soon will be overtaken by the next bubble of faster-fasters. Hmm, that's not any more reassuring!

I remember when talking to Melanie that we had both noted that there's no sense of *place* when hiking the PCT. When I hike Cleveland National in the Santa Anas, or even more recently hiking Angeles National Forest just north of Pasadena, I get a sense of place. Let's take ANF: I know how to get from, say, Mount Wilson to Mount Lukens, I know the valley to the north of Lukens is Trabuco Canyon, I know people live there so you get help in an emergency. CNF is even better: I can hike you from the Santa Margarita River all the way up to Corona; and not only do I know the routes, I can roughly guess the weather, and know where the breezes will come from. I *know* that place, because I've *walked* that place. But even though I've walked the PCT, I don't feel like I know any of the places, if that makes sense. When on the PCT, I just blindly follow the trail: I pay attention to my surroundings for the beauty and majesty of the scenery, but not to understand the geography of this or that canyon or peak or stream.

And I suppose that's not necessarily bad: it's possible to *know* a place on the PCT, where that "place" is the PCT itself. I think back to Rick and Will: Rick knew the PCT like the back of his hand, knew where to camp and where not to camp, where to get water and where to haul water, where it will be steep and hard and where you can cruise. He had the whole thing mapped out in a spreadsheet. That's a type of knowing too, I guess, knowing a very thin slice of geography, a -/+10 mile swath, say, around a thin line running from Mexico to Canada.

But I nonetheless want to get a better sense of the actual geography of where I'm passing through so here's my attempt, after consultation with AllTrails (which has *contours*, which Guthooks does not). We started today at Whitewater River (the last big river before the Kerns close to Kennedy Meadows, Chief said yesterday), and then we crossed over two ridges to the next river over: Mission Creek. Not as strong as Whitewater, but we would follow it upstream, sometimes in the wash, sometimes in the bluffs above the wash, sometimes bushwacking through the trees and overgrowth that inevitably springs up around any unkempt above-ground stream. The bushwacking was slow as it always is, but the rest was some climbing and some incline. We proceeded upstream until a mighty fork in the river, at which point we went to the right, up what's called the North Fork. We followed that up and up. Here the scenery would start to change: below, it has been desert scrub-brush, but as we climbed, it eventually became pine and fir trees. Here the weather was also cooler: down below, the 90+ F temps had made even inclines a slog, but here a combination of higher elevation and later in the day made for cooler climbs, which made for more possible climbs. A fire has been through this canyon, though, this canyon of the North Fork, and the slopes are slightly spooky, littered with dead trunks. And that's where I end the day, in a gorge full of dead trunks. camped out by the small but persistent brook of the North Fork of Mission Creek.

The day was, as I said, lonely. I bumped into Rooster and Dale where the trail first meets Mission Creek encounter, talked a bit while sitting under the shade of a big tree (and while Rooster sunbathed after a dip in the creek). Then they headed out before me. I wouldn't see anyone again until lunch, when I saw Rooster laying out in a primo sandy spot for his midday siesta (to beat the heat). I wandered ahead some more hoping for another good spot: I found one, shady, nestled under some low brush, but nowhere near as nice as Rooster's, and took my own long lunch. Rooster passed me here, and the next time I saw someone was when I passed Dale, almost 4 hours later, as he was making camp up on the mountain. So from 7am to 6pm today I saw two people--Rooster and Dale--and each twice. Lonely day! To be fair, I get sometimes on Saturdays too: I've gone 9 hours without seeing a soul on West Loop in CNF. So it's fine: nothing scary or uncommon, just another day.

And that was the hike! A longer day--more miles than usual--my feet weren't complaining so I kept going. Evidently taping the big toe in the morning helped! Probably should have stopped at Dale's spot, about 1.8 miles before here, but my feet were ok and the views along the canyon in the sunset were amazing. Just this steep canyon, with all these crenellations as the slopes jab in and out, and the light slanting through, highlighting the dead husks of burned trees: just amazing. The sort of view that almost makes it ok that you probably pushed it a bit farther than you should have and will probably pay in the morning!

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Some notes:

-- Whitewater River > Mission Creek > San Gorgonio Wilderness > Campsite

-- Coming over those first two ridges of the day, I looked out over Mission Creek and saw the aggressive climbs up the other side of the Mission Creek canyon. Wait, are we going to climb *that*? You should never check Guthooks if you can help it, but I immediately checked Guthooks and found, whew!, no, we don't climb that, instead we follow the Creek upstream, which is thankfully much less steep. So, as always, there's an exception to the rule.

-- It was hot today, so I deployed the umbrella to great effect. The real benefit of the umbrella?: you can take off your hat, letting heat dissipate from your body off the top of your head. It's really nice. I also deployed the sunglasses, based on a lesson I learned in Chino Hills State Park: sunglasses change the *color* of the sun, so while it technically *isn't* cooler, it *looks* cooler, and that's a real perceptual thing. So the sunglasses helped me keep cooler in my head, which is good enough for me!

-- This is the first real bushwack of the trail. Some might label earlier parts of the trail as bushwacking, but to my mind that was just overgrown. There are two conditions here: 1) whether you can see/follow the trail, and 2) whether you have to push through plants. Given that:

* Can follow, no push through plants = great!

* Can follow, push through plants = overgrown.

* Can't follow, push through plants = bushwack

* Can't follow, no push through plants = no excuses, you're plumb lost!

Don't, by the way, ever get into the last one!

-- Oh, the past couple nights--well, I didn't "cowboy" camp (which is where you have no tent and just sleep under the stars)--maybe, I "cowhand" camped. Which is where I put up the inner tent but not the rain fly, so I can see outside through the mostly mesh upper part of the tent. I remember Dennis (of He What Loves the Camino) telling me about his cowboy camping at Scissors Crossing, and how I really must try it. Well, I did my watered-down version of it the last couple nights. Overall, it was fine: I was down in the desert so the nights were relatively warm, so it was comfortable enough. And less work: the spots I got both nights were narrower, so putting up the rain fly would have been a bother anyway. Dennis expoused the benefit of looking up at the stars, but I sleep without my glasses so I can't see anything anyway. I would do it again--not at this campsite, though, too high up and so too cold for that--maybe when we get back into the desert after Angeles National Forest.