5/28/2023
Section: Mile post 151.8 to 165.8
Distance: 15.15 Miles
Moving Time: 07:08 hrs
Elevation Gain: 3,517 ft
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And so begins the climb up to Idylwild. Today’s stage starts out in the beautiful San Bernardino National Forest and stays within those boundaries for the entire day. The desert setting continues to be captivating as the landscape takes on a more bolder-y vibe looking more and more like a dryer version of Bishop with giant rocks wherever you look. Today’s stage winds itself out of the low point along the Pines-to-Palms highway and eventually gains the lower flanks of a spine which we will travel along all the way to Saddle Junction, the exit to get down to Idylwild.
I woke up with a small hangover. This was super unfortunate and something that seems to be far more prone to happen now that I am in my 30’s than it was just 3 or 4 years ago. I should have said no to that last Hornito’s shot but, this isn’t a Taylor Swift song and i did, so - time to get up and face it i guess. The tent had accumulated a lot of condensation in the night being situated out in an open field and was a mess to clean up. We had decided to sleep in a bit, till about 6, given the previous evening's festivities so the sun was above the horizon by the time we were up. Amanda left to use the bathroom and came back as I was getting things put away. She looked at me solemnly but with a small smile said “you better get down to the house now… there are chickens in the backyard.” With a smile on my face I made my way down to see the greatest of all wildlife so far - 2 Orpingtons and a Rhode Island Red. I tried to catch one of them while the bathroom cleared but they were pretty quick. I was not the only one to try and fail on this.
After, I headed back up to the field and saw that Amanda had packed her things. By then it was about 7:30. Chris and Nikola came up and said goodbye. Nikola told Amanda that if she saw anything he had forgotten to please grab it for him. Joe and Jane also caught a ride with a guy named Shaggy up to the trailhead. Amanda and I watched both of them go and considered our options. “The Paradise Valley Cafe opens in about 30 minutes” I said with a grin. “Okay, fine, let’s do it,” she agreed.
At 8 we crossed the Pines-to-Paradise highway and sat ourselves at a table as the waitresses busied themselves with coffee and waters. Rebel from Port Townsend joined as well as Travis from Iowa and another Swiss woman who we had seen off and on. We ordered various plates - I got a Huevos Rancheros - and talked about various things. Travis had an ultralight camp chair which I was pretty jealous of given that I was pretty tired of sitting in the dirt. At some point, one of the waitresses came to the middle of the patio we were eating on and made an announcement. Evidently, someone inside had purchased everyone’s meal. A total of about 20 people had their meal paid for. We all shouted and clapped for the nameless donor as a thanks for our meal. After we were done eating we bid goodbye to our table mates and made our way out to the front parking lot.
Just as we arrived at the side of the road, I saw a white Jeep Cherokee leaving the parking lot and flung my thumb up to them. The Jeep made a haphazard stop in the parking lot and Amanda and I ran to catch it. It was Richard himself and he beckoned for us to put our backpacks in the back where there was just enough space to get them in. We joined his brother and nephew in the Jeep on a 5 minute ride up the trailhead - glad that we didn’t have to tack an extra mile onto an already long day. At the trailhead we dumped out thanking Richard not only for the ride but for the stay the night before. From there, we tightened our shoelaces, started our stravas and hit the trail.
The first few miles of this, the 13th day, was packed with many interruptions. There were restroom breaks, there were snack breaks and there were blister popping and bandaging breaks. On this last stop, to pop and repair a blister on my left small toe all under Amanda's disapproving eye, I went to tighten my shoes and one of the eyelets split - the shoelace pulling straight through. “Damn,” I thought “these aren’t that old” before remembering that, while the mileage on them was low, they were about 3 years old. Fortunately, the position of the break wasn’t detrimental and I was able to make the shoes work.
We went on, the trail switchbacking through some large boulder fields as it attained the southern end of a long ridge. A group of 3 guys passed us, Jaycob, Alex and a 3rd guy with long hair, weaving their way through the boulder fields. We talked briefly but were all interested in getting some miles in before the sun really started to heat things. Shortly after that we passed our first water source and passed the group of 3 again as we had enough water to get us a little higher on the ridge.
We climbed for a time in the sun, begrudging with every step our late start until we came upon an intersection with both crossways heading down to a separate spring. “We should get water here,” I said to Amanda “we’ll do a full fill and that should get us most of the way to Idylwilde.” The water options between the Pines-to-Paradise highway and Idylwild were fairly numerous but almost all involved a steep descent of 500-1000 feet down to springs off the side of the ridge and I wasn't keen to do that more than was necessary. As we deliberated Travis passed us waiving as he did so.
I made the descent, hating every step, to the spring and was devastated to find a disgusting looking cattle trough fed by a sad trickle of water coming out of a ¾” pipe. “This is it?” I said in disbelief. I stood there for about 5 minutes deciding what to do. The filter had cleaned water for us on almost every continent on earth without fail but the water in front of me still sparked some doubts. In the end, the climb up and back down to another source just seemed abominable and I decided that, if I could filter from the exact spot where the fresh water was dumping in it would be fine. I filtered about 2 liters before Amanda showed up and voiced some very familiar thoughts but the cleaned water looked good and smelled fine so i kept going. After about 15 minutes, Amanda and I returned up the long, 500 foot slog to the saddle with 9 liters of water prepared to keep moving.
From the saddle at mile 162 we continued upwards, the sun really beating us down this late in the day. “I miss our alpine starts,” I said begrudgingly. As we rounded a small bend in the trail, Amanda came to a sudden stop. In the bushes off to the right of us sat an adolescent rattlesnake taking advantage of the midday sun. This one wasn’t rattling but, as Amanda recalled her walking stick drumming exercise, it woke up and made its way across the trail. This one, unlike the Rattlesnake we had encountered a week ago, was a classic Diamond Back but, like the other one, was in no hurry to get out of our way. We hurried past the part where it had disappeared.
From the rattlesnake encounter the trail steepend considerably. We climbed hard, gaining elevation. As we did so, Phillip passed us as well as a number of other people. We caught up to them later at a nice shady spot which we commented on. “Not so nice when you finally see the ant infestation,” Travis nodded to one of the other guys frantically wiping down his pants on a nearby rock. We all laughed and Amanda and I continued on.
The climbing passed through another steep section before it gained the top of the long ridge we had been working on since the beginning of the morning. The group passed us again as we toiled under the sun only for us to leapfrog them one more time at another spring junction just up the way. This is the arithmetic that comes up here in the desert with water in tricky places. Amanda and I had opted to do large water carries which meant more weight but less side trips down to pull more water. The other option was to carry less weight, travel faster but make more trips up and down to low land springs. I don’t honestly know which is better but I was happy to only make one descent down for water.
We continued on, the trail traveling in a descidedly northern fashion, hoping that we would run into Jane and Joe somewhere up ahead. At this point, Amanda’s feet were really starting to hurt, the zero drop shoe putting her footbeds to the test. I had traveled a little ahead and was making my way up a short rise when a familiar, tall and lanky figure with a wide brimmed hat came into sight. “Don” I shouted. He looked up with a reserved smile as I came up. “I’m out,” is all he said. “I’m sorry to tell you that way but I can’t shake this cold and my wife is starting to worry. My son-in-law is going to pick me up at Paradise Valley Cafe tomorrow.” I told him I was so sorry and that we had really enjoyed hiking with him. At that point Amanda came up and voiced her condolences as well. We really liked Don and it was sad to see him go but he wanted to get through the desert before temperatures really started to rise and was convinced that the cold would not allow him to do that. We told him about the group behind us and wished him luck on his journey home before parting ways. I think this is the hardest part of the PCT. The most wonderful part is meeting amazing people from all backgrounds, areas and walks of life but the hardest part is sometimes seeing them for the last time.
Amanda and I walked on, a little less pep in our step. We decided to camp on the backside of a large saddle leaving the climb up for the following morning. Amanda’s feet were killing her as we rounded the last of about 15 switchbacks. It was a cute little campsite in the shadow of a house-sized boulder looking over Palm Springs and the Coachella valley. We conducted our usual evening activities, an occasional gust of wind from the saddle buffeting our tent but otherwise settled easily into the evening. We went to sleep just as the first lights of the huge city below us blinked to life.
