Day 24: Mile 282.0 - 298.5

I woke this morning intending to do a full Ismael: wake early, get hiking early, eat breakfast on the trail later. To be fair, I've been trying to do this for a while, but it usually doesn't work out: it's just too cold in the mornings and my hands freeze over. My solution today was to pull on a pair of gloves and my puffy, which did seem to help but I still got started late. Well, something to keep working on.

I did get started enough, though, to see the butts of many morning chipmunks, scampering away from me first along the trail then taking an ankle-breaking turn and skirting along fallen logs before disappearing over the end.

I had dry-camped alongside a dirt road and, after some hunting, had found a mostly level spot next to an old abandoned campfire. Of course, after hiking for less than a mile, just on the other sides of these hills, I found prime camping spots, level as can be, with great views down the canyon, over the valley, to the far mountains. Well, something to keep working on.

The hike today was about getting first to Little Bear Springs Trail Camp to have breakfast and get water (and where, it seemed, everyone camped last night). From there, the next water was Holcomb Creek, although the trail crossed over some desert hills and bluffs to get there. I played a game here: when I got to higher spots I would try to guess where the water was. Clearly, it was off there, to the right, for the dark green foliage there, although dark and dusty and dry, was nonetheless denser. And of course, after a few more miles of hiking, I heard the creek, tumbling and cascading, and solidly to my left. Well, something to keep working on.

I took lunch at the first Holcomb Creek crossing, where Cookie was just finishing up hers. I had first met Cookie back at Mission Camp Springs, I think, hunting for the blue barrel under the spring. Had met her again at the hostel, where we had ended up pooling our clothes for the washer/dryer. When not hiking, Cookie is an educator, lastly working with 2-3 year olds with developmental difficulties: she has that calm, even-keel sort of voice that seems willing to repeat itself over and over again without agitation. Now she was beside the creek and, bolder than me, had already dipped her feet and her head--the latter to beat the heat. She was packing up to leave and, as I was pulling out my lunch, disappointingly noticing that she had picked up flaky corn tortillas instead of the soft flour ones. Do you want to trade?, I asked. Are you sure?, she asked. Yeah, I'm getting off trail today anyway, so I can get new ones. Well, in that case, and we traded. (And, yeah, the flaky corn tortillas aren't as good on trail, to me anyway.)

I would see Cookie again when the trail again crossed Holcomb Creek, now sitting in the shade on the sand beside the water--she had been hoping for a place to jump in (but never found it I don't think--the water was a bit too shallow). She was talking to another couple--Martin and Caroline--who I had been leapfrogging all day. I had actually met Caroline back at Little Bear Springs Camp when getting water, and she had asked, are you planning to go to the malt shop? Malt shop?, I had asked. There was a malt shop coming up ahead--it turns out at the same place I was planning to get off trail at Splinters Cabin--but it was a bit off trail, about 3 miles away. But Caroline wanted to try it. The last malt shop we visited (back in Lake Morena) she hadn't actually gotten a malt, so she was hoping to get one this time. Well, meeting them again at this second Holcomb Creek crossing she was again discussing the malt shop, now with Cookie, worried about it being off trail and whether they'd be able to get a hitch. I set out, thought about it a bit, then turned around and came back. Hey, if you guys want, I have a friend coming to pick me up at Splinters Cabin later today, I said, I can ask if he'd be willing to give you a ride to the malt shop if you like.

Martin and Caroline, being polite folks and not wanting to impose, said they'd think about it and see if it worked out, but that also started an afternoon of me hiking with Martin, chatting away the day. Martin was from Tennessee and was a big hiker: he'd put in probably around 1500 miles over the past year or so. He'd hiked a lot when he was younger, then fallen away, then after going through some stuff had returned to it and been hooked. He'd thru-hiked significant portions of the AT, and lots of trails in the Smoky Mountains, especially the more unpopular ones. It was on one of those thru-hikes through the Smokies that he had realized that, while it was fine being a lone wolf and all, he wanted someone to share these experiences with, so had checked his online dating profile--which he had decorated with crazy hiking stuff--and found one match. Which was Caroline, who was similarly a crazy hiker. They had actually come out to the west coast early, had hiked some deserts in preparation for this PCT go, and now here they were! Martin noted that they were still working things out--sometimes they hiked together, sometimes alone (to be fair on a thru-hike staying together all the time can be difficult: it's very hard to keep the exact same pace as someone else as you tire and energize throughout the day)--but so far things were going well. Off trail, Martin worked as a software architect--mostly the result of a mentorship and self-taught (he had a degree in geography rather than computer science)--and towards the end, when we reached the Deep Creek Bridge (and my exit point), we started talking about technical things too. Which is why I found myself trying to explain how sigma-delta modulators enabled the digital era of high-fidelity audio while sitting in the warm sand beside a placid creek, beneath a tall bridge, as a duck calmly paddled by. It was fun talking to Martin. Being older, he had many of the same revelations as I had: that as important as *what* you work on is *who* you work on it with, that at this age working on something more meaningful starts becoming important. I asked him if he'd thought about doing some sort of software related to hiking and being outdoors, and he had, but at the same time he also didn't think about it too much: being out here was one way of being away from computers and desks and programming, and he wasn't sure he wanted that to leak in. (To be fair, I remember a similar sentiment expressed by Pearl Jam back in the day: they wanted to continue regarding music-making as a hobby, and were loathe to think of it as a job, because they feared that would suck the joy out of it.) And being a more experienced thru-hiker, he had a different attitude about each day than me. Whereas I aim to get about the same number of miles each day--it's not the mean, it's the *variance*, I say: you want to minimize the variance--they took a much more laissez faire approach. Some days they would hike big miles, and other days if the creek was especially nice they wouldn't and just hang out by the water. I would comment to Ian later that the PCT felt relentless and he would ask, why?, and I wouldn't have a good answer. Likely that pressure comes from me, and likely Martin and Caroline's much more "eh, see what happens" attitude is part of the antidote.

Talking with Martin, I lost track of time and so when Ian buzzed me on the inReach that he had arrived and that the road was closed so I've have to hike out farther than I had anticipated. Oh man, is it that time already? Ian was also willing to take Martin and Caroline to the malt shop, but Caroline's feet were hurting--she was soaking them in the cold water of the creek--so she decided against the extra miles. So I belatedly headed out from the Deep Creek Bridge and headed west, along first dirt, then paved, roads, until I bumped into Ian, hiking down to meet me and take me off the trail, down the mountain, and back to Irvine for my second Moderna vaccine shot.

Incidentally, the drive down from Lake Arrowhead was pretty amazing: night was settling in, but there was still enough light to see the outlines of the San Bernardino mountains behind us as they dropped from indigo to black, and below the lights of the LA basin spreading out to the horizon. A few tiny lights dared to climb up the ankles of the mountains, and a large swath of dark flowed from the mountains into the city--the Santa Ana River, I would later learn--but I was struck by just how close this place was. And I remembered back at Fuller Campground (after coming down Fuller Ridge on San Jacinto) talking to Navy Guy (unfortunately, never had asked his name). Navy Guy was very nice--when I had come in at dusk and was hunting for a tent spot, he had said it was fine to set up next to him (I ultimately ended up on the other side of a large boulder from him, but under a dead tree--probably should have taken him up on his offer!), but I had talked to him more in the morning. He was out there for a weekend trip, training for a summer trip on the JMT camping out overnight and then  summitting San Jacinto the next day. He had been based out of Norfolk, but had often come out to San Diego and had taken the chance to get outdoors. He was surprised that more people didn't drive up to Fuller Campground and summit San Jacinto from there--as far as he could tell, it was the shortest walk to the summit--although he suspected the dirt road to Fuller Campground deterred many. (It's not that bad though, he said, he'd driven it in a sedan before.) But that reinforced something to me: these places that I'm seeing, these amazing views, these serene woods, these climbs up shelf-trails just to see what's over this ridge, all these are not that far away. All this wonder: it's *right* here, all you need to do is get in your car, drive maybe a couple hours (which isn't that much for what you're going to get) and you're here. And then *you* can see the view from Fuller Ridge looking out over the Santa Anas down past San Diego into Mexico, and then *you* can see the lights across the water of Lake Arrowhead as the woods turn dark and the waters turn silver in the dusk, and then *you* can gaze down from the slopes of the San Bernardinos north over the deserts heading out to Mojave. In a very real way, it's all *right* *there*, not that far from a trailhead. That was a lesson from my Saturday hikes, actually: it's all right there, all it takes is some gas, a short hike, and--most importantly--my willingness to shed the concerns of civilized life for just one day.

Previous   Next

Some notes:

-- Early in the day I had been walking along when suddenly I hear a loud buzzing. I thought I'd stepped by a beehive, but after stopping and looking around, found instead it was the sound of dozens and dozens of flies. Closer inspection found a dead fox, its ribs already showing through (likely the birds had gotten to its innards already), caught under what looked like a fallen tree. I wondered how it had gotten there--unlikely that the tree fell on it, maybe it had crawled under there after getting hurt and died? But people ask me if I've seen animals out here: yeah, but maybe not always in the way you think...

-- Ian and I did drop by the malt shop ourselves. I picked up a big pastrami burger, a plate of onion rings (*true* onion rings with continuous rings of large onion inside), 3 scoops of ice cream for dessert. And I could have kept going too, but I made the mistake of drinking two glasses of apple juice and that swelled the stomach too much.

-- Many thanks to Ian for driving out to Lake Arrowhead to pick me up (which took him an hour and a half), then driving me back to Pasadena (to swap some gear that I had stashed at his place), then down to Irvine (to get me home), then finally back to Pasadena. If you know southern California, you know how much driving that adds up to! (And if you don't, it's 5+ hours on the road!)