Dave and Lexi's 2004 PCT hike

Southern California Part 1

April 24, 2004
So we have finally begun! On Friday (4/23) we got an early ride to the start of the trail from Bob Reiss, a trail angel in San Diego. After sticking our feet under the fence into Mexico, and taking the requisite pictures at the monument at the start of the trail, we started north into the sunrise. I've been on a high ever since. It's hard, at times, to believe that we're really here walking north.

Our first day was a 20-mile trek from Campo to Lake Morena State Park. Campo is a small town populated almost entirely by border patrol agents. From there, we meandered over open chaparral and through Hauser Canyon. It's stunningly beautiful here in a dry, Spartan way. From the stops of the hills, you can see forever. I confess that I had imagined this are would be a dry and unattractive wasteland-I hadn't expected it to be so beautiful.

At Lake Morena, we were greeted by a host of amazing folks who were organizing the ADZPCTKO (Annual Day Zero PCT Kick-Off). This is a celebration hosted by past hikers, trail angels, and other fabulous people that came complete with all-you-can-eat barbeque on Saturday night. Other events included presentations on water locations in the desert, trail information for a relocated section of trail in Washington (which seemed a little too far off to be relevant), movies made of past PCT trips, and the annual gear contest. Since Dave has made most of our gear, he's been looking forward to the gear contest, as it gave him an opportunity to show his stuff and get some feedback on it.

Over all, the weekend seemed a little like the first day of college: the new folks are a little nervous about what's to come; the old vets are enjoying their reunions; and some incredible force of organization makes the whole thing work. Everyone here is incredibly mellow, supportive, and just damned nice! I hadn't expected the social aspect of this trail to be a big feature of it, but now I think it may be one of the most important parts of the experience.

-Lexi

April 25, 2004
I was apprehensive about the kick off crowd, but everyone was so darn friendly, it was a blast. We got to know Munch, Birdnut, Quixote, Cadence, and Monte. (No news on our trail names yet.) We entered the G-FORCE (Gear for Cruising Effortlessly) competition, a pack weighing followed by an exhaustive explanation of every item in your pack. We took Honorable Mention with all our homemade gear. I entered my Pocket House tarp/tent, backpack, and tent stake monopod in the gear contest, taking 3rd place with the tent, receiving lots of nice compliments, and getting some nice prizes.

Coming from northern Vermont, virtually everything about the desert seems peculiar. When the day breaks, it can be in the 30's, but the moment the sun rises, the temperature shoots up. By 11AM it starts to feel hot, but in the shade it is still cool. The intense heat of the sun beats down in the early afternoon; your head bakes and your feet feel like you're walking on hot coals.

To stay sane and cool, we tool a siesta for 2 hours under a grove of live oak trees at Fred Canyon. Lounging barefoot feels just like an ice bath.

Even with the long break, we finished 20 miles easily by 4:30. The smooth trail contours around every bump instead of climbing over it, so the hiking is vastly easier than any eastern hikes could dream of. We expected these distances to be challenging, but so far, it's no big deal. The switchbacks run hundreds of feet just to gain or lose ten feet. There simply is no Hell Brook Train (Mt. Mansfield) around here.

Twice already I've been given cold beverages by trail angels in the heat of the day: Coors Lite and Red Bull. I'm truly a Belgian Strong Ale kind of guy and think these lightweight beverages taste like cat piss, but in the desert, they taste glorious. I already have plans for my own homebrewed trail magic next year.

In the next few days, we'll enter our first long (20+ miles) dry stretches. We'll carry 6-8 liters of water each, and camp between water sources, to break up the distance. We got accurate information about water sources and caches at the kick off, so I'm feeling pretty confident that we'll be fine.

-Dave

April 27, 2004
Now we're really just in the desert. The section yesterday between the Laguna Campground and the Pioneer Trail Trailhead was Mordor without the orcs. The ground was a dusty mix of rocks, gravel, and sand. Fire charred the scrub and literally boiled the life out of Jeffrey pines.

We prepared for the long dry miles by cooking dinner during our midday siesta, and hiking on in late afternoon to a dry camp. After dark the temperature dropped and soon became comfortable.

In the morning it was a nippy 34 degrees. We packed quickly and munched lunch stuff as we walked. Our next water was a fire tank 9 miles away. All day we descended out of the Laguna Mountains. The temperature steadily went up. We tried to stay cool in the shade of large rocks, but they were few. All day we managed our water to survive the 3 miles across the valley floor to the infamous Scissors Crossing. We drank upwards of a liter per hour and didn't pee a drop. The flats felt like an oven. It was 104 F in the shade. The bottoms of our feet blistered. We motored to Scissors Crossing by singing our own desert versions of "The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah..."

At Scissors Crossing, Freefall (PCT '03) and Ert Angel met us with a 60 gallon water cache and cold spritzers on ice. It felt like being rescued from a volcano. At this time of year, hikers like us consume 40-60 gallons a day at this cache. The people who maintain it are hugely generous. It must take enormous effort, and for nothing more than the sincere thanks of every hiker. Without these water caches, we'd have to carry even more than the 6-8 quarts each we already have. At 2 pounds a quart, that's a lot of weight. I've never had my pack weight fluctuate so dramatically over a single day.

So far we're handling the heat OK. We're drinking a lot and staying well hydrated. Our feet are taking the brunt of the effort. We, and everyone else, have blisters. Several times a day we take off our shoes and socks, to dry and cool our feet. In another week or two, they'll be toughened up.

-Dave

April 29, 2004
On Tuesday night, we ate dinner at Scissors crossing and then headed up the trail a few miles to get a head start on the next section: 25 miles without water through the San Felipe Hills. We climbed out of the valley in the early evening, once it had finally cooled down a bit. The trail wound through what seemed like an exotic garden. Cacti with names like "beavertail," "barrel," "Teddy Bear Cholla" and "prickly pear" all lived up to their names. Many of them had bright pink or yellow blossoms on them. My favorites though were they Ocotillo Cacti - very thin tall plants almost like giant pipe cleaners up to 10 feet tall, fringed with fuchsia flowers on the tips of each stem.

After many switchbacks we found a comfortable little alcove in a sandy wash where we set up for the night. We thought that surely in this unlikely spot we would have our first night alone, but, even there, a few hours later we saw bobbing headlamps coming down the trail. Tall Paul and someone else we couldn't see in the dark slept just across the trail.

Wednesday fortunately was cooler as we traversed the barren dusty San Felipe Hills. The trail wound seemingly endlessly through every nook, cranny, gully and wash as it contoured around the hills. In places the next section of the trail was just a stone's throw away, across a gully, but it would take half an hour to get there as the trail wound tortuously around to avoid gaining or losing elevation. Finally we made our way down to Barrel Springs where we spent the night.

This morning we came through a ravine of live oak woodland with a stream trickling along the bottom. After the desert, it seemed like heaven. After 10 miles, we came to the town of Warner Springs, and the first 110-mile section of trail was completed.

We're definitely tired and sore. Our feet, especially, after being baked on the desert floor, are taking a beating. Nonetheless the experience is incredible. We've come through desert, chaparral, pine forest, oak woodland, and grassland. The variety of terrain and environment we've seen in just 100 miles is nothing like what we have at home, and it's only beginning!

-Lexi

April 30, 2004
Yesterday morning we walked under pleasantly overcast skies across rolling grassy hills to Warner Springs, our first resupply. We had finished our first section and 100 miles. Hooray!
After picking up our resupply box and bump box at the trailer/P.O. (it was literally crammed with hiker's boxes), we crossed the street to the Warner Springs Ranch. We shared a room with Birdnut, Cadence, and Radar and got showers and did our laundry. The peculiar part is that it wasn't just a cheap hotel room, but one of nearly 100 separate bungalows. There were beautiful rosebushes, manicured lawns, and most importantly, hot springs that filled a swimming pool. The hot water felt wonderful to our overworked bodies.

After long, hot days thru Scissors Crossing and the San Felipe Hills, our feet were really sore. I had blisters in strange places between and under my toes, and my whole feet ached from the hot walking. It became clear that we were on par. Everyone else hobbled around a bit, too. Lounging in the shade felt great. Some fellow hikers with no apparent sense of irony recuperated from the desert by sunbathing.

Today we slept in (until 7:30!), made sure the hot springs were still in working order, and packed up our gear. At noon we left the cool shade of the Ranch and climbed back into the desert hills. The temperature was in the high 90's when we reached Lost Spring and made camp. Fortunately we had a filter because the spring was nearly dry. All that remained was a dank pool filled with algae, floaties, and swimming things. Unfortunately, the filter couldn't remove the distinct vegetal and sulphur notes from the aroma of this vintage of scummy water.

-Dave

May 2, 2004
Since Warner Springs, we've been hiking through chaparral. The trail winds through the nooks and crannies of every hill, contouring its way north. Again it's hot, near 100, and we've been getting up early, hiking 13-16 miles by 1:00 p.m., and hiding from the blistering sun during the afternoon.

Our feet are healing slowly from the rigors of Scissors Crossing, but it's slow. Most of all they're just sore from being walked on too much. We've been careful with our feet: washing them and our socks every day, airing them out at rest stops, and "managing" the blisters.

I know that I referred to Mordor before, but today we walked through a 15 mile stretch of shadeless, charred wasteland. The live oak carries on, and new growth spurts from every burned stump.

-Dave

May 3,2004
Whew! What a day. We have finally, after nearly a week and a half of hiking, finally entered mountains - the San Jacintos. The north facing slopes and the valleys are full of huge trees - mostly spruce and pine. The south and west facing drier slopes are mostly shrubby manzanita. The trail winds improbably across steep cliffs and through rocky summits. Clearly a lot of dynamite was used to make this route possible! It's quite a relief to be out of the searing heat of the desert, but the trail here is much more strenuous: It's steep and rocky, more like trails at home. Before today, we have been doing 20-22 miles with relative ease. The 18 miles we went through today, however, were exhausting. At some points the trail was brutally steep, and we finished at 8,500', having climbed 5,000'. Everyone agreed that this was the hardest day yet.

Tomorrow we descend to Idyllwild on the Devil's Slide Trail. We'll buy more food, wash our clothes and bodies, and visit the hardware store to do a little repair on the pole-handle connection on our trekking poles.

-Lexi

May 5, 2004
Today started easy, but ended up our hardest yet. After repackaging the groceries we bought yesterday at the store in Idyllwild, we ate croissant-muffin things and got a ride from Spirit back up the hill to the Devil's Slide Trailhead. She is following her husband, Steady, up the trail with their RV. The town comes to him. She gave us three hard-boiled eggs and wished us well.

We walked back up the PCT and retrieved out one-gallon water cache. Headed north again, we soon left the PCT to make a loop over Mt. San Jacinto. The PCT avoids the 10,800' summit, but we didn't. At the turn off for the Palm Springs trail, we bid Badwater goodbye. He was headed home to Chelan, WA. Perhaps we'll catch up with him there.

The climb was hard. Already at 9,000' I felt the altitude. On south facing slopes the trail was clear and dry, but on the treed north slopes, we had to sleuth out the trail as it meandered beneath large patches of snow. At the summit spur trail we gleefully ditched our packs and went to the top. Smoke from an 18,000 acre fire in Temeculah to the southwest obscured the view in every direction, but it was still fabulous to be on top.

Back at our packs we strategized. Earlier we had considered it impossible to also cross Fuller Ridge, but at that moment it seemed like a reasonable challenge that would put us in a much better position for tomorrow. The remaining trail back to the PCT was often snow covered, and very hard to follow. Back on the PCT we each tanked up with two gallons of water (it might as well have been lead), it being the last water for 21 miles and we hadn't had dinner yet. This load made the 4.5 mile hike along Fuller Ridge really tiring. Fortunately there wasn't much snow. The trail wound around precarious gendarmes, steeply switchbacking up and down as the sun sank low.

At 7:20 we arrived at a campable spot at the end of the ridge, and set immediately to cooking dinner: little star-shaped pasta with pesto and zucchini. Mmmmm! It was a fabulous but tiring day. Tomorrow we leave the mountains descending 7000' to the desert valley floor. [Editors note - San Jacinto is known to have the biggest elevation change over the shortest distance in North America!]

-Dave

May 6, 2004
Today gets my vote for least pleasant day so far. We started the day at 7700 feet. After a mind-numbing, bone-shaking and increasingly broiling 16 mile waterless descent, we found ourselves at 1200 feet on the desert valley floor. We left behind the shelter of the forest to return to the bare open desert. I had gotten used to the mountains in the San Jacintos! At the bottom of the descent the only welcoming thing to greet us was a shadeless water spigot courtesy of the Desert Water Agency.

We tanked up again and began the 5 mile long crossing of the desert floor. The first part was on paved road. Then the path headed off cross country through the cactus and yucca. The trail there was not really constructed, partly, according to the guidebook, because of the difficultly of maintaining it due to the shifting sands, and partly to discourage dirt bikes from using it. Instead, there was just a general direction to follow marked by posts 100 ft or so apart. The sand was so soft that it was really hard to walk through. That combined with the brain frying heat and the stiff headwind made the crossing very arduous. About 3/4 of the way across Interstate 10 cuts across the valley. We took a quick rest in the unappealing shade of the overpass.

Finally, we reached our destination, the "Pink Motel." This is neither pink nor a motel. Rather, it is a run-down trailer in the middle of a junkyard that Don and Heather Middleton allow hikers to stay in, and they keep it stocked with food and water. Never has such an unlikely place seemed so welcoming. It was full of the friendly faces of Quijote, Too Obtuse, Pacer, Sycamore, Tall Paul, Charlie, and several other folks we've been hiking with. The moment I walked in the door, Quijote handed me a cold soda. Dave and I slept outside to the drone of I-10 and the drone of the wind turbine used to power the trailer, completely content to be there.

-Lexi

May 9, 2004
We slowly left the Pink Motel (in all its glory) and headed steadily uphill. By the time we reached Whitewater Creek, it was already hot, and we started the daily hydration routine. After crossing a host of dry ridges, we finally reached Mission Creek and cooled off under a Sycamore tree. We soon began to see helicopters and small fire spotting/retardant dropping planes circling overhead and just out of sight. Eventually we smelled smoke. After talking to other hikers in Big Bear City we learned that a fire had started very near the PCT just to the south of us, and that nearly 100 firefighters had been choppered in to contain it. It has been quite a wakeup call for all of us just how easily a fire can start here.

After our first night alone in Mission Creek, we continued climbing up to near 9000'. This time, the elevation seemed a lot easier. It was a relief to be back among the cool trees. Views of San Gorgonio Peak were fabulous.

The next night, after hiking a solid 20 miles, we camped near old jeep roads. In the distance we heard mysterious muffled roars and growls. As you might expect, this was a little disconcerting. This morning the mystery was solved, as we hiked past cages with lions, tigers, and bears (Oh my!). It turns out that this is a retirement community for movie star animals. Who would'a thunk?

We had a pretty easy 16 mile day hiking though hills filled with pinion pine and Joshua trees. After a precarious hitch in the back of a barely functional pickup truck filled with bales of hay, we made it to Big Bear City, where we've been eating donuts, ice cream, pizza, beer, omelettes, pancakes, and biscuits covered in dense cream gravy. Mmmmmm, all the food groups!

-Dave

May 10, 2004
Yesterday we hiked to State Highway 18 and from there made our way into the town of Big Bear City. The hitchhike into town was remarkably easy. I had only been standing by the road for a few moments when a dilapidated pick-up truck full of hay pulled over. We hopped in the back and sandwiched ourselves between the hay bales. At first we thought our luck had run out when the truck refused to start. After poking around under the hood, however, the owner managed to persuade the recalcitrant truck to start, and we were on our way.

Our first stop was the fire station, where the local crew allows hikers to shower. From there, we did our laundry (accompanied by some excellent donuts), and got a ride to the Motel 6 with Tall Paul and his wife, Linda. She had surprised Tall Paul by showing up at the trailhead that morning with his Jeep.

At the Motel 6, we ran into hoards of other hikers including Cadence and Birdnut, whom we hadn't seen in quite a while. We had a relaxing pizza dinner with Ert Man, Steady, Spirit, Radar, and Ross. At dinner, Ert Man, who has been trying to give me a trail name for weeks, came up with Wildflower for me. Appropriate, since I'm carrying flower guides and I had spent part of the afternoon identifying the flowers in some of Radar's pictures. So now its official, Dave and I are Packman and Wildflower. It may seem a little silly to those unfamiliar with trail culture, but now I feel like I'm really a thru-hiker.

Going into town is a funny thing. While hiking, Dave and I are relatively solitary. This is increasingly true now that the pack has spread out somewhat, and water is more frequent, so we don't congregate at important water holes. In town, however, suddenly we are very social, trying to catch up with everyone and getting our people fix before setting out alone again. It can be a little overwhelming. The difference between the partying (and generally, though not always, younger) crowd and the more mellow crowd (of which Dave and I are a part) is more pronounced. There's not much beer to be had once we're all back on the trail. It was good to be done with the business of town and head back out this afternoon.

-Lexi

May 12, 2004
Today's 22 miles started near the PCT's first crossing of Deep Creek. This area was burned in the fires of 2003, and sometimes the smoke still seemed to linger. The fire burned everything: entire trees down to the grass that held together the fragile topsoil. Now it was a landscape of ashen sand and charred chunks of wood. And yet, here and there flowers pop up, and live oak sprouts from blackened stumps.

Once we had crossed the creek, the fire's impact became patchy and eventually disappeared. Our morning's hike ended at Deep Creek Hot Springs. Here there were an abundance of overly tanned and naked people who had braved the 1 mile side trail. Like most of the hikers, we enjoyed the hot pool briefly before retreating to the shade.

One Gallon (he doubled the traditional 1/2 gallon ice cream challenge on the AT in Pennsylvania) and Fritz were taking a pleasant zero. Ert Man was as well, but only because new shoes had given him monstrous blisters.

In the afternoon we hiked another 10 miles, losing some time fording and refording Deep Creek in search of the trail. We cooked and ate dinner at a small water cache near Highway 173, and hiked to Grass Valley Creek just before dark.

In honor of Lexi's 33rd birthday, and in keeping with our tradition of "yummy homemade desserts", I pulled out a chocolate raspberry cream cake, with candles, of course. Yeah, I bought it in Big Bear City, but it was homemade (by some local person). It arrived a bit squished, but it was still fabulous. Happy birthday Lexi!

-Dave