PCT Day 13
Mile: 151.8 to 162.7 (+1.3 miles side trail to water and camp) (12.2 total miles)
Start: Woods paneled hotel room at Silver Pines Inn, Idyllwild, CA
Stop: Tenting under huge pine trees at Cedar Springs remote campsite
Shannon and I woke up late this morning after recovering from last night’s hiker party and hit up the Red Kettle diner for breakfast in the sleepy little town of Idyllwild. I threw down a yummy bacon and avocado omelette down the hatch and Shannon chowed down on butter and syrup laden french toast. Our hangover cravings now satisfied, we headed back to the hotel where I journaled outside on the back porch while Shannon worked on his businesses. As we were packing up to leave the tiny town of Idyllwild, our friend Crystal came by to say hi and see what we were up to. I’d been reading a book on my phone about foraging and showed her what Miner’s Lettuce looked like along with other edible greens like chickweed and cleavers. These are some of my favorites to make a spring pesto with garlic mustard and the plants are filled with vitamin C and other yummy vitamins and minerals that us hikers probably weren’t getting enough of with our dehydrated and preservative-heavy hiking foods like ramen and granola bars. There were a whole bunch of Miner’s Lettuce, Chickweed and Cleavers under the porch because it was shady and damp which was a great foraging find for us. When Shannon opened the door to our hotel to see where I’d gone to, he found Crystal and I hiding under the porch snacking on the greens like we were some sort of vegetarian porch trolls. He laughed at us, refusing to eat any of the greens and reminded me that I had to leave soon.
I packed up quickly and Crystal and I fed the giant koi fish in the pond and petted them again. Shannon and I said goodbye to Crystal and headed out to a cafe, where we caught up briefly on journaling and caffeine. The barista gave free coffee packets to the PCT hikers courtesy of the the owners of the coffee place and we wrote some cards to friends and family. Chappy (or Chapchick aka Louisa as we had named her after we gave her chapstick for her sunburnt lips) was coming into town that evening to stay with Crystal so we didn’t worry too much about our little friend from Toronto.
Back at the cafe we met Brynn, Joe, Treebeard, Eliza and Cash who we’re all hanging out drinking coffee. Cash had just gotten back from having her giant blister popped, drained and cleaned and her sprained ankle looked at by a medical professional. She is a freakin trooper to have been hiking on a sprained ankle and the giant clementine sized blister she’d shown us the night before at the hiker party. Cash was supposed to stay in town for another few days till everything healed up and her antibiotics kicked in. Gotta love hiker injuries!
We ran into a trail Angel named Grumpy, who said that he could give us a ride back to the PCT trailhead that we’d left about 18 miles away from Idyllwild. Grumpy was a trip – he was very kind, very opinionated and definitely lived up to his trail name Grumpy. Each day he wore a different version of a tshirt sporting Grumpy, one of the seven dwarves from Snow White, which made it easy to find him in town!
In Grumpy’s car we drove through the wildfire burnt hillsides, down the windy road and past some constructions for a rockslide clean-up and down to the desert back to the Pacific Crest Trail. A Prius was going too slow for Grumpy so he yelled at them that their batteries needed to be changed out and then passed the Prius going like 80 miles an hour on a double yellow line. Oh boy… Well, we made it in one piece and gave Grumpy a donation for his time and because gas is so insanely expensive in California and with this gas shortage it’s even crazier. We said goodbye to him since he had to leave to go get his dog groomed. What a character!!
On the trail we hiked a bit with a hiker named Matthew in the hot, miserable slog of the desert heat and very little shade. We took our time readjusting our packs and took our sun umbrellas out while Matthew went on ahead. Later on we ran into him and lanky hiker Double Snacks sitting under a shade tree resting in the hottest part of the day. We said hi to them briefly then headed on in the oppressive heat until we found a large cave where we immediately detoured to rest in the cool shade. The cave was big enough for at least 5 or 6 hikers to hang out in and we accidentally scared the crap out of Matthew when we hollered at him to come into the cave. Matthew didn’t need much convincing and hung out sharing his plantain chips in the coolness of Hiker Hangout Cave. Shortly after we accidentally also scared Danielle, a sassy independent girl with badass earrings, but she came and hung out with us anyway. The cave shade was irresistible!
Unfortunately, we couldn’t be cave people forever and eventually had to leave the natural air-conditioning of Hiker Hangout Cave to go back to the brutal sun and radiating heat waves coming off the desert floor. We started the hot climb up into the San Jacinto range foothills, the sun baking our brains a bit. We stayed positive and tried not to have a grumpy attitude by admiring how it was a nice change of pace to be climbing actual mountains and gaining elevation on this trail since it had been relatively flat since Mexico.
We had been tracking the weather and updates on the Guthook navigation app and it looked like if we could get over the 10,800 ft Mount San Jacinto peak on Saturday, we’d avoid the possible snowstorms and high winds that were forecasted on Sunday. Grumpy the trail Angel had told us that it was definitely going to snow on Sunday and to get off the mountain if we could before then since we didn’t have snow spikes to keep us from sliding off steep snow-covered trails. We had a goal now to outrun the snow and that got us moving a little bit faster!
The afternoon drew on and thankfully the shadows got longer, the trails became cooler as we ascended into the mountains. Climbing ridges sure was jaw dropping my beautiful but it also meant that finding water on the ridgine was going to be tougher and the walks off trail to springs were going to be longer (averaging 2 miles round trip) and steeper (about 500-1000ft elevation drops). We knew tonight that we had to walk at least a 2.6 mile round trip to get water and back to the trail so we might as well find a decent place to camp down by the water source if we were too exhausted to hike back up to the PCT in the dark.
On top the ridges, we passed by giant pine cones that were bigger than our faces which was pretty amazing! They sure make pinecones big out here in California!! We found a pair of sunglasses that someone had dropped along time ago and put the those on the pinecone, who became a really rad pinecone for all the PCT hikers to check out. Yeah, you could say we were pretty bored when we were dressing up pinecones… we sounded almost like Tom Hanks in “Castaway” with his volleyball Wilson!
At the side trail to the water source, Shannon and I talked to a couple guys who were camped out on the ridgeline who’d already been down to the water source. The latest trail news was that 5-7 hikers were already down at the spring that we had we’re aiming to camp at so we weren’t sure if there was going to be enough room for us. We had to get water anyways since upcoming water sources were not reliably flowing and the two guys wished us luck with finding a campsite and warned us to be very careful going down the steep slippery path to the spring. Gravel shaped like miniature marbles or ball bearings covered the hard packed trail making it extremely easy for your shoes to spin out from underneath you if you weren’t careful. 20 minutes later and probably close to 800 feet descent, we finally arrived at the Cedar Springs remote campsite where there was tons of water, tons of campsites and tons of wind. It was beautiful because there were huge towering pine trees shading the campsite making it the first time we’d camped in a forest the whole trail. With the water and chirping birds it didn’t feel like the desert at all which was a nice change of pace!
Shannon volunteered to grab some water while I set up the tent and prepped for dinner for us both. I made friends with thru-hiker and veteran Poppy who was hammocking near us. Poppy had just gotten his second COVID vaccine and had stayed in Idyllwild for a couple days recovering from the side effects and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. We nerded out a bit on Star Trek and when Shannon came back we talked a bit more with Poppy then chowed down in a nearby flat spot as the sun set.
Shannon and I made a quick dinner in the near darkness and the wind, shivering slightly from the winds sinking and rising up the mountain flanks. Shannon had packed out a giant pickle in a plastic bag which was ended up being really disgusting, but we ate it anyway because it weighed close to half a pound. As we ate, off in the distance between the pine boughs we could see the lights sparkling from the cities of Palm Springs and Palm Desert in the valleys below. We hiked a bit in the dark to an overlook where we could see better and it was quite the shock to see how large the two cities were after hiking through tiny villages and mountain towns.
With the wind rustling the tall shady pines untouched by the many forest fires over the years, it was a serene and perfect night to cozy up in warm sleeping bags under the stars. We were so grateful to spend a night in the forest for the first time on the Pacific Crest Trail and it made us excited for the terrain up ahead!
