PCT Day 28 (zero day in Wrightwood, California)
Mile: 341.9 to 341.9
Start: Floor of an Airbnb with 12 or 13 other hikers
Finish: Suite at the Holistic Health Day Spa hostel
Shout out to our friends: HEYYYY HEIDI J!!!!
Around 4:30am, several of the hikers staying at the Airbnb started getting up to catch rides back to the trail. Most of the hikers who were waking up at 4:30am and being loud were the same drunk buttholes who kept us up last night and it was good to see them finally leave. After a solid 4ish hours of sleep, we decided we probably weren’t going to get much more rest and decided to pack up.
Coming up after the town of Wrightwood was a 24 mile long closure of the Pacific Crest Trail where your options were to 1) walk a very winding, busy road where there was nowhere to get out of the way when speeding cars and trucks came barreling at you or 2) get a ride around the trail closure and come back when the trail was opened again. It was a $10,000 fine or 6 months jail time if you hiked this section of trail, which was closed due to landslides, fallen down trees and dangerous conditions. Most of the hikers that we had talked to were going to take a ride around the closure and come back some other time to hike it so they didn’t get hit by traffic walking the busy mountain highway. We weren’t sure what we were going to do and needed to spend some time figuring out logistics.
As we were packing up our things back at the Airbnb, Helen, one of the nice hikers we’d met last night, asked Treebeard to help her do a pack shakedown to see what she could get rid of to make her backpack weigh less. Meanwhile, Shannon and I decided to go to breakfast and figure out what to do next. Since we only got four hours of sleep and weren’t sure how to get back to the trail, how to resupply or what the heck we were doing with our lives, we decided that breakfast and some caffeine might help. Helen and Treebeard joined us for breakfast and we chowed down on delicious omelettes downtown. There was just one waitress for both the inside and outside of the entire restaurant on Memorial Day weekend, which was a little insane, and we tried to help her as best we could, grabbing napkins and drinks for her. Over breakfast Helen and I realized we were both on gluten-free diets because of health issues and it was good to bond over the suckiness of the diet and exchange recipes for GF trail food.
After breakfast while Shannon went to the restroom and Helen and Treebeard walked to the post office, I stood outside the restaurant watching our bags. As soon as Shannon left, a local scrawny guy with a Fireball whiskey t-shirt started talking about how good he was at the guitar and how pretty I was. Oh geez…left alone for 5 minutes and they’re already hitting on me even though I was covered in dirt, sweat and nastiness. The guy was getting weird so I made some excuse to go inside the restaurant and grabbed my wallet and other important stuff like my phone. By the time Shannon was out of the bathroom, the weird guy had thankfully left (thank goodness).
We walked over to a coffee shop since at breakfast with Helen and Treebeard we didn’t really get to talk about our plan for the next couple days of hiking. We did a lot more getting to know Helen and Treebeard and catching up with old hiker friends passing by on the street than decision making. At the coffee shop, we were able to score some free coffee and tea as the cafe’s policy is PCT hikers get a free coffee or tea which was really nice trail magic. We made sure we tipped the baristas our extra money.
At the coffee shop we decided that with only 4 hours of sleep that we probably should stay in Wrightwood for zero day (aka a rest day) to catch up on rest. Somehow we were luckily able to reserve a room at the Holistic Health Spa hostel at the start of a busy Memorial Day weekend. Mama Bear (or Mamasita) was a super sweet Trail Angel who owned the hiker hostel and we were very excited when she called us back to say that she had a room for us to stay in tonight. We hung around the tiny downtown of Wrightwood exploring the local hardware store which was like the hiker hangout where we got our free PCT pins and signed their hiker register. Later we waltzed over to Jensen’s grocery store and talked to some of our hiker friends.
Armand, Mama Bear’s husband, picked us up from downtown in the afternoon to bring us up to the hostel. We hung out at the hostel on the comfy couches on the large shaded front porch, reading, writing in our journals, relaxing and watching the dozens of hummingbirds flit to and fro by the hummingbird bird feeders. It was very relaxing. Our rooms weren’t ready to check in until 3pm so we hung out with hikers David, Mighty, Grace, Ben and Jolly Rancher. At 3pm, we were brought in to check out our rooms. Grace and Ben didn’t really care much for their room so they went up to the Bud Pharm, which was a marijuana farm that allows PCT hikers to camp at for a small donation. Since it was also Grace’s birthday, about 30+ PCT hikers were having a big celebration at the Bud Pharm with the owner bringing in speakers and hikers bringing lots of drinks and food to the party. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get a ride to and from the farm so we said our goodbyes to Grace and Ben just in case we didn’t see them.
We loved our room and Shannon and I decided to enjoy a little R&R and finally catch up on sleep at the hostel. As we were napping and catching up on much-needed rest, hiker David kept frantically knocking on the door to our suite, waking us up. Grumpily, Shannon answered the door and asked what the problem was. Oblivious to anyone’s needs besides his own, David had been at the hostel for several days and was looking to be entertained by others. He kept asking to get advice on what he should do for hiking the next few days since he had skipped about 60 miles of trail already and would skip the additional 24 miles of fire closure. Shannon sighed deeply. He was very blunt and said, “I don’t know, that’s up to you. Whatever you decide to do, hike your own hike. I’m going to go back to nap since we only got 4 hours of sleep last night. Do you need anything else?” David kept talking and then finally got the point that he had woken up two very grumpy hikers and left us alone for a few hours.
Later in the evening, Shannon worked on his online business while I walked to the local farmers market in town with hikers David and Jolly Rancher. David was asking about my relationship with Shannon and was making judgments on the spot about us which was kind of obnoxious. Thankfully Jolly Rancher was really cool about the whole thing and told David to chill out with being so judgmental. Gah… some people are so obnoxious.
Jolly Rancher told us about his job as a crane operator, talked about Bitcoin and investing in various cryptocurrencies when everyone thought the world was going to end during the start of the COVID pandemic. Sounded like now he was sitting pretty on some nice cryptocurrency earnings which was really cool. He was a funny guy and I parted ways with the guys at the farmers market when they went to grab pizza downtown. I bought some fresh veggies and sausage from the market, walking the 1.5 miles uphill back to the hostel with dinner. Shannon and I cooked dinner on our suite’s stove after marinating the veggies and meat. We sipped on adult beverages and had a delicious homecooked dinner of fresh foods which was amazing for a change! We watched a little TV and went to bed early so we could get a head start tomorrow morning on our 29-mile-long slackpacking hike to Cajon Pass. It would be our longest day on the PCT so far and we needed to get a good night’s sleep beforehand!
As we were getting ready for bed, another knock came from the door of our room. This time it was Jolly Rancher who had walked the 1.5 miles up from downtown bluntly confessing that he’d forgotten the key code to get in the building and had to, “…urgently drop off a load and couldn’t stop to chat.” We laughed and let him in where he ran upstairs to the bathroom to take care of business. He was a funny guy!