PCT day 27
Mile: 317.3 to 341.9 (24.6 miles)
Start: Coyote spring campsite
Finish: Sharing the floor of an Airbnb in Wrightwood, California with 12+ hikers (via Cajon Pass, Highway I-15)
We spent some time at our breakfast of oatmeal and tea and coffee trying to figure out what had come around our campsite last night in the brush. From the sounds of it, we decided the animal was probably a predator like a coyote. It didn’t sound like a deer walking or rabbit hopping, it sounded like it was stalking something or carefully observing the area. Later on a local Trail Angel suggested that it could have been a mountain lion from the way we described the circling behavior, the quiet padding of feet and the stalking. Yikes! I just wanted to keep telling myself that the animal was only a stupid little coyote and not a big scary mountain lion so that’s what I did to not get freaked out that an apex predator was checking out our tent all night.
We packed up our bags, avoiding the massive ant kingdoms that were patrolling the area and headed out in the cool morning air to collect water from a nearby creek since there was no reliable water source for the next 12 or so miles. Because of the severe droughts happening in California, the water source turned out to be a stagnant yet somewhat clear puddle. The large puddle was full of tadpoles, water bugs, bathing birds and pocket gophers burying tunnels near it. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t terrible and we carefully tried not to scoop up any tadpoles and baby frogs.
At the water source we caught up with our friend Haiku, who had already hiked eight miles this morning by the time we saw him at the water source! He was in really good hiking shape from spending 2 months hiking the 800-mile-long Arizona Trail before starting the Pacific Crest Trail so he was averaging 25-35 miles a day. Talk about overachievers! Haiku left and we plowed on through the heat of the day, as it started to get pretty hot around 8:30am.
The trail today was fast, flat and unfortunately also very exposed to the sun. We immediately sported our hats, sun veils, sun-proof shirts, sun gloves, sunscreen on our faces, chapstick and used the thick layers of dirt that collected on our legs as a natural sunscreen. We passed the outside of a dam and a power plant, traversing a dry spillway where a bridge crossed a beautiful cattail and reed-filled marsh. Dozens of fast flying swallows were flitting around the marsh in a huge group, catching insects and returning to their mud nests under the bridge we were walking on to feed their baby swallows.
The trail wound over a small hill and spilled out into a gorgeous view of the dark blue Silverwood Lake. It was the most water we’d seen in a while and I know my mouth drooled a little at how refreshing and cold that lake looked. Motorboats jetted by, leaving white furls of churned water trailing behind them in the huge bowl of the lake, bound on all sides by blue mountains and evergreen forests. Fishing kayaks, in their spectacularly bright neon colors shone like vibrant beacons against the clear blue waters. We had been warned that the lake wasn’t good for swimming due to a toxic blue-green algae infestation, but from far away the water looked so perfect to swim in and we were very much tempted.
However, as we got closer to the lake we noticed large swaths of blue green algae were collecting in the bays like giant tufts of cotton candy. We had heard that unfortunately the blue green algae was toxic to humans. You could kind of see that for all the people who were out on the lake this morning, nobody was swimming which was somewhat ominous. We decided to follow what the locals were doing and not take a dip in the lake even though we desperately wanted to swim to cool off from the hot, humid hike.
The rolling hillside trails heated up like an oven with the heat waves radiating from the rocks and packed sands underfoot. The sun beat down from above us as the vegetation was so stunted it offered little shade. As we were getting baked simultaneously from above and below, we were also getting cooked from all sides as the plants released their own humidity and stifled any breezes. It was kind of the worst being cooked alive in a natural oven. I tried to take my mind off the fact that I had voluntarily chosen to come hike this crappy desert section of PCT by focusing on the wildflowers. Gorgeous yellow blooms and red lipstick flowers shocked the landscape and were strikingly distracting against the deep navy blue of the lake and the nuanced violets of the surrounding mountainsides. The flowers did their job distracting my mind from the overpowering heat and I made up my mind that we were going to have to start waking up even earlier to hike during the cooler parts of the morning.
At lunchtime we diverted from the trail and crackling powerlines to go wander down to a picnic area that had glorious water faucets, toilets and tons of shade. This side trail to the park was the only water source for the next 15 miles so we definitely had to stop. We spread out our gear at the empty picnic tables in the open-sided shelter and relaxed, super thankful to be out of the dominating sun during the hottest part of the day. We took hiker trash baths by rinsing off our dirty legs next to the empty outdoor sinks and patting down our arms, necks and faces with water to cool off. I rinsed my shirt, neck gaiter and socks out to get the dust off as especially on your feet you can easily get cracked feet or blisters from the accumulated dirt.
At lunch we each drank several liters each of water and electrolyte drink mix in the shaded cabana area. Lunch was a salty soup of ramen noodles (gluten free rice ramen for me) and afterwards we got a little bit sleepy from the full bellies and heat of the day. We laid our tarp down on the cement floor right next to the picnic tables and rested for about half an hour, relaxing in complete Hiker Trash style. Thankfully nobody was around since it was a weekday so we weren’t bothered and could sleep away the hottest part of the afternoon.
As we were packing up after our siesta, a park ranger rolled by slowly in his truck and looked at us strangely. Luckily we were on our way out and he decided it wasn’t worth it to come over and ask us what we were doing. We happened to be packing up our shit that was spread out everywhere – it truly looked as though a bomb had exploded from our backpacks. Our food and cookware was spread across several tables as we sorted trash from food, our tarp with makeshift pillows and blankets was stretched on the ground and dusty hiker laundry was drying on a couple of picnic tables in the ranger’s nice pristine park. We were barefoot and I was still somewhat damp from washing my shirt off in the park ranger’s sink. Oops! We smiled and waved to the ranger who thankfully left us alone. Once he was gone, we cooled off in the sink before we left the park, wetting our bandanas and hats for the hot hike ahead of us. We packed up and then reluctantly hiked up into the hot, dusty hills while trying to avoid the tons of bushes of poison oak stretching their rash-inducing branches into the trail.
The PCT crossed under a highway overpass where we ran quickly to avoid getting hit by fast moving traffic. The trail turned into a bike path for a while which would’ve been nice if it wasn’t so hot out. The hot cracked pavement was radiating so much heat that you could feel it through your shoes and had to avoid stepping on the melting stripes of sticky tar. We finally got back to an actual trail, not just a bike path, and learned about the endangered animals in the area from a sign that someone had put up which was a nice distraction. We learned about the endangered Arroyo toad and other animals as we trudged on into the lower mountain flanks.
As the trail continued, we ducked under crackling powerlines that were blowing like crazy in the late afternoon breezes so much so that they whistled as the air currents whipped over them. We wished that we could just slide down the powerlines like they were zip lines, all the way down to Cajon Pass and the legendary McDonald’s that all the PCT hikers had been talking about for at least 100 miles. Yes, there was a McDonald’s and it was only less than half a mile off trail. It was the heavenly Golden Arches, the thru-hiker saving grace of cheap terrible food, the oasis of diabetes that we couldn’t help but look forward to at the end of our day. It was what was keeping us going through this stupidly long stretch of desert. The thought of salty french fries and milkshakes with 200+ ingredients like emulsified chicken fat kept us moving quickly down the dramatic sandy canyons and windy ridge walks.
We took the drone out for a while to get some video footage but the late afternoon mountain wind currents were too unpredictable and we had to put it away eventually so it won’t wouldn’t blow off the side of a cliff and disappear forever. We sidewinded our way down the switchbacks, descending to the ever lower elevations where we could see the distant I-15 highway traffic growing bigger and bigger, and the looming Golden Arches growing closer and closer. It was hard to believe that a 1.5 out of 5 stars McDonald’s on Yelp can motivate hundreds of PCT hikers to do 25+ mile days in outrageous heat, but by golly gee, it did. Like stereotypical Americans, a crappy McDonald’s on the side of a traffic-choked highway motivated us to achieve great feats of exercising.
Finally we were spit out onto a dead end highway exit road. Our plans in the darkening skies were that we’d go get McDonald’s, cross the sketchy highway overpass and stay at the hotel where previous hikers had their laundry and gear stolen because it was a better option than camping in the area. There was supposed to be a lot of not so good activity at the bottom of Cajon Pass from local troublemakers, drug cartels and homeless addicts so tenting wasn’t really a safe option because of all the people and traffic.
Sometimes in times of need we have a saying that, “…the trail provides.” It turned out that we didn’t have to worry about where we were going to stay or what we were going to eat because we saw a sign for trail magic at the bottom of the pass! Trail Angel and former PCT thru-hiker Joquerin was cooking vegetarian sausages out of the back of his trunk and providing hikers with beers and comfy chairs to sit in. We hobbled over to him, sat down and enjoyed the glorious trail magic and conversation. Shannon chowed down on vegetarian sausages and beer while I ate some gluten-free mangoes. Joquerin was in the area taking care of a family member and during his time off, he was also helping hikers. Today he’d been doing trail magic since 11am this morning and now it was currently 8pm – that was a long day for him!
As we thanked Joquerin and were starting to walk away, the familiar voice of our charismatic friend Treebeard came out of the growing darkness.
We couldn’t believe it was him! Treebeard (who had also hiked the Appalachian Trail like we did) was just finishing his 28-mile-long southbound slackpacking day from Inspiration Point to Cajon Pass. (Slackpacking is when you leave most of your overnight gear somewhere safe so you can hike faster with a lighter pack.)
Treebeard grabbed some vegan sausages from Joquerin, hung out with us and told us a Trail Angel named Brian was coming to pick him up around 8:30pm to drop him off at an Airbnb with 12 other PCT hikers. He checked with the person who’s put down their credit card for the Airbnb and asked if we would want to crash with their group in town for the night. In a split second we said, “Absolutely!” not really knowing what we were signing up for. It sounded safer than camping with drug addicts under the overpass or staying in a sketchy hotel next to the overpass. Sometimes you have to wing it on the trail.
So we got on board the Treebeard train and made plans to come to town with him. Shannon and I went to grab some glorious McDonald’s while Treebeard grabbed half of an abandoned pizza that he found outside the restaurant. All three of us jumped into “…not a Trail Angel…” Brian’s jacked up Ford Raptor truck that he threw into sports mode and we tore off into the night, tearing down the dark mountain canyon roads to the tiny town of Wrightwood. Brian used to own an antique shop in town and was currently helping hikers in need.
We got dropped off at a giant Airbnb, meeting a bunch of hikers like Lady Scout, Helen and lots of other guys and gals. It was probably the most women that I’ve seen on the whole Pacific Crest Trail which was really awesome – girl power! On the Appalachian Trail 7 years ago it generally felt like a sausage fest where oftentimes the thru-hiker ratio was 80% men and 20% women hiking.
At the Airbnb we were thankfully able to shower, do laundry and drink a couple of adult beverages with the group of PCT hikers. We chatted, laughing and watching ridiculous YouTube videos on the big TV in the living room. One of the girls told me how she had gotten locked out earlier in the day from her laundry while she was at the Airbnb by herself since the laundry room had a key code to get into it. She had to wander around the house with just a towel on for an hour until someone was able to contact her with the laundry room key code. Yikes!
Luckily, since it was a group of thru-hikers, around 9:30-10pm we all decided to sleep since we were getting really tired as it was well past hiker midnight (aka 8pm). We just spread out our sleeping bags on the floors and couches, like a big Hiker Trash sleepover. Just as we were falling asleep, 4 really drunk PCT hikers (who were also apparently staying at the Airbnb) showed up after having won a pool tournament at the local bar, beating the bar owner’s son and friends. They were very excited about their victory and their excitement quickly became drunk obnoxiousness. For about another hour, hour and a half, they wouldn’t shut up no matter how many of us tired hikers asked them to calm down or take it outside. Finally at midnight, we were able to go to sleep because the drunken idiots went upstairs. Shannon and I looked at each other, rolling our eyes, because this type of stuff always seems to happen with groups of thru-hikers on the trail trying to stay somewhere. There always was that one group of hikers who ruin it for everybody. Oh well…at least we were able to get laundry done and shower.
During the night, I woke up to drink water and a humongous spider the size of a small apple was on the wall right next to my face. I took one of the magazines at the Airbnb and sacrificed it to smash said spider. Sorry spider and sorry Airbnb, but that thing was friggin huge, and did not belong inside. After the drunk idiots and the spider incident, I was exhausted and passed out hard for a few hours.