Day 35: Mile 403.0 - 415.2
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 away a thing may look a certain way, but when you get down to it, one foot in front of the other will nonetheless get you to the top!
As for the trail itself, from Three Points the trail was mostly pine and fir forests, and they had tried to coat the ground in their needles, but their deciduous cousins had made strong inroads, mixing it up and holding on. The trail wandered around the hillsides, never climbing too severely nor dropping too sharply, but just taking the scenic route, as is its wont. I took a page from that tendency, and for lunch wandered off trail to Sulphur Springs, where I got to sit at a picnic table in a little canyon that you can drive up to (there's a paved road and everything). Nobody else was there, but it was nice to keep at least one vestige of civilized life--sitting in a chair, or rather on a bench, at a table--before going whole-hog and sitting on pseudo-flat rocks on the ground. From there, it was a short hike to Fountainhead Spring, where I loaded up on water, then it was off to Mount Pacifico.
I had been to Mount Pacifico before--earlier this year in fact, with Ian--and the trail had been covered in snow. That had been the point, actually, I had wanted to get in some snow training. The snow had long melted, of course, and I will say the trail is much easier when 1) you're going downhill, and 2) there isn't any snow. I had thought to camp atop Mount Pacifico--we had seen campsites up there on our snow hike--but as I came to it and looked up, the clouds were now streaming over the peak, occluding it behind white wisps and gray bulks, so I decided to continue on. Eventually I made camp at a wide flat spot a couple miles from the road to Mount Pacifico (just past the split in the trail), where the views were amazing: looking down into the desert to the north; looking down onto the ranger station, its roof reflecting the last rays of the sun to the west; looking at the clouds crowding over Mount Pacifico to the east. All around it seems, the clouds are streaming in now, heavy and dark, although I doubt it will rain. And if it does rain, well, that's what the tent is for! And until then, the play of the clouds with the setting sun, suffusing the valleys below with fingers of orange light streaming down, well, it's just incredibly beautiful is what it is!
Usually when I come back to trail, I feel a bit out of sorts. This time was no exception: while I didn't feel like I didn't belong like last time, I did feel a bit out-of-place. I did feel a bit strange, as if I remembered there's a way of being out here, but it's arises and manifests more instinctually than consciously, so there's no way to make it happen. I just have to wait until it does. One complication is that I was alone all day--aside from seeing Nikki and Yardsale at the trailhead, I haven't seen another thru-hiker all day, it's just been me. For once I think I'd like to leave town with a group of thru-hikers, see how that feels, see if the transition from town-and-city to trail-and-water-source is smoother if it happens with other people around. Didn't happen this time, maybe I'll get it coming out of Acton KOA.
And that was the hike! A shorter day today, but that's ok: return-days are usually shorter for me, I feel it let's me ease the legs and lungs back into it.
-- Pasadena > Three Points > Sulphur Springs > Fountainhead Spring > Mount Pacifico > Campsite
-- I will say that, for all my hiking in the southern part of these mountains earlier this year (ostensibly as training for the PCT, in fact), these mountains are not my mountains. These mountains are still the mountains I visit. Rather, my mountains are the Santa Anas over by Orange County: those are the mountains that I don't just visit, but that I've come to *know*. There's a difference: even if I hike every trail in these San Gabriel Mountais, I think a part of me will still feel like an interloper, an outsider come to explore, a tourist come to see the sights, rather than a local wandering their hills. Why is that, and why do I feel like a local in the Santa Anas? Is it--like rooting for baseball teams--just about proximity? Is it just about the time I've spent in the Santa Anas as opposed to the San Gabriels? Or is it something more subtle, maybe the loneliness of the Santa Anas--so many hikes I did there I'd go for hours and hours and not see another soul, whereas the San Gabriels are much more popular--does that almost exclusiveness slowly build up a sense of "my mountains"? What is it, fundamentally, that ultimately gives rise to that sense of "this is my place"? I remember watching the Whimsical Woman YouTube channel, and after she finished the trail, she was driving to her new job and the highway happened to cross the trail. And she stopped and got out and looked at the trail, walking off into the distance, and remembered, and said, I want to go, I want to get my tent and my bag and I want to go, because this trail, this trail is home, and she started crying. To have such a strong sense of place: where does that come from?
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