PCT day 29
Mile: 369.3 to 341.9 southbound
Start: California Highway 2 inspiration point trailhead
Finish: Cajon Pass at Highway I-15
May 29 2021.
Today was the start of the Memorial Day long weekend and also the day that we were going to hike 29 miles slackpacking southbound to Cajon Pass where we had come off the PCT the other day. Slackpacking is hiking but with a lighter weight load in your backpack since you leave some of your stuff behind that you don’t need for the day, like your tent and your sleeping bag. Less weight allows you to hike faster and you pick up your overnight heavier gear at the end of the day from wherever you stored it.
When we woke up we weren’t entirely sure what to do with our extra gear today so we packed up and asked Mama Bear of the Holistic Health Spa in Wrightwood where we were staying if we could stay in our suite another night which somehow ended up working out for us. Thanks Mama Bear! We weren’t sure how we’re going to get back to the hostel that evening but we figured that we could just Uber from Cajon Pass or ask a local Trail Angel if they could pick us up later that evening.
Around 9am, Mama Bear’s husband Armand, who worked at Northrop Grumman, drove us the 5-10 minutes up to the trailhead to start our day of slackpacking. The first part of the trail was pretty steep up to Inspiration Point but it was fine because the weather was so cool due to the higher altitude. Armand had told us that sometimes it’ll snow a lot up here and that way out in the distance from the mountains that you could see the salt flats where the military had tested some of the sound barrier race cars and planes that first broke the sound barrier. He said his first internship out here was to attach the space shuttle to a plane to perform various tests on it! It was pretty cool talking to Armand.
Back on trail, we ran into lots of nice weekend hikers and ended up having to take a steep side trail past some ski slopes to the only water source for the next 23 miles. We took the .5 mile detour off trail and spent probably 45 minutes waiting for our water to run through our gravity fed filter until we “camelled up” with each of us carrying about 6 or 7 liters of water which added 13-15 pounds to our packs. Unfortunately because of the ongoing drought in California, many of the water sources hikers had relied on in the past had dried up. Rumor had it that there may be a water cache where Trail Angels had stashed many gallons of water in some bushes next to the trail but it was too dangerous to rely on the cache, especially with the loads of hikers ahead of us possibly depleting the water.
During the day we ran into lots of hikers that we knew hiking north like Shade from Iowa, Mariposa, Coca Cola from Detroit and Eric from Hong Kong. We definitely confused the crap out of them since we were hiking the reverse direction (aka south) and they had just seen us the other day hiking northbound. It was funny to see how confused they got but we laughed with them and checked to see how they were doing.
The trail flew by since we were heading downhill for about 20 miles. If we’d gone the northbound way, it would’ve been a 20-mile-long hill climb and that did not sound super fun. Shannon and I sat on the side of the mountain for a while, chowing down on Spam singles packets (aka the food of the hiking gods) and talking to Shannon’s mom and his sister as we hiked since we got a little bit of cell service.
The afternoon started to become shadowy and cool, and we descended down to some train tracks where multiple locomotive engines pulled hundreds of train cars through the mountain pass. A memorial bench was laid out overlooking the beautiful mountains and train tracks for a guy named John who had loved the Pacific Crest Trail. We crossed over the busy train tracks during a lull in the constant freight trains, climbed down through a tunnel with fresh tire tracks having gone through it and when we popped out on the other side we ran into a couple families that we accidentally scared! A group of families with two off-roading SUVs was hanging out on the other end of the tunnel and I think we scared them a little bit as they didn’t expect to encounter a couple of dusty dirty hikers that looked like homeless people to jump out of the tunnel. We definitely scared their sweet dog who they said never barks and she got scared of us with our big backpacks. We apologized profusely and the dog seemed to chill out after a bit and we hiked on past them.
The closer we got to the highway, the more trash we encountered. We ended up trekking next to some rusted out graffitied cars that were looked like they’d been out in the desert for a while. We also ran into a small water cache where a lizard was hanging out guarding the jugs of water put out by trail angels. The nice thing about hiking south while everyone else on the trail was going north was that we were able to chat with everyone and catch up on the latest trail news and gossip. We talked to some cool hikers like Lynx from Tulsa and an older guy whose name we didn’t catch but told us today that he had stepped right next to a rattlesnake and was still pretty wound up from the near-death experience. And this week the older guy had seen two mountain lions, one on Monday around 6:30am drinking water from Mission Creek where it was really brushy (also where Shannon and I had also seen mountain lion claw marks up and down the trees). He had seen another 10 or 15 minutes hiking out of the town of Big Bear around noon that just bounded across the trail. Geez this poor guy! He’s out there by himself, looking pretty sunburnt and rough while also having to endure all of the animal encounters.
We walked through a super long, curvy and heavily graffitied dark tunnel under the I-15 highway where thankfully no one or nothing was hiding. It was so completely black in the tunnel that you could barely see even with your headlamp turned on! We were a little nervous that we’d encounter a tweaker or an aggressive animal or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Luckily we were just in the tunnel alone and made it out unscathed.
In the afternoon we ran into a hiker who told us that as he was coming into Cajon Pass earlier that day he saw a car flip on the highway and then heard the huge crash. People were already on the scene when he managed to hike down to the roadway there. He said he was a little shaken up since the incident had just happened as he was getting to civilization and he told us he didn’t want to go back to civilization anymore and was glad to be back in the woods.
Finally, we arrived at the now familiar Cajon Pass where there was no trail magic today from Joquerin who was probably taking the day off so we ended up grabbing birria tacos from the delicious taco truck. After we ordered tacos, Shannon called “Not Trail Angel” Brian to see if he was around to pick us up and take us back into Wrightwood from Cajon Pass. Brian was super nice and even showed us the beautiful canyon home where he lived. It was so serene and dark in the canyonlands that you could see all the stars in the sky and you could hear the sounds of the critters running around in the night.
We made plans to take Brian out to lunch at the Açaí Bowl restaurant tomorrow afternoon because he was really fun to hang out with. As Brian dropped us off at our hostel, he offered to drive us around the fire closure where it was a $10,000 fine or 6 months in jail if you got caught hiking it. You could road walk the 20+ miles but it was super dangerous especially since the road had just reopened back up to drivers after being closed for a long time. Apparently the construction crews hadn’t quite cleared all the rockslides off so there was not much of a shoulder to hike on without risking getting hit by a driver. It was also Memorial Day weekend and all the drunk out-of-towners were zooming around the mountain curves using the winding road like a daredevil raceway. We decided it would probably be the smartest and safest option to drive around that section of closed trail and thanked Brian, telling him we’d see him tomorrow at lunch downtown.
Shannon and I went back to the hostel to decompress from the long day and chat in between chowing down on some heavenly birria tacos and refreshing cold drinks. (Birria is a Mexican dish of slowly stewed goat or lamb meat but the kind we’d ordered from the taco truck was beef.) We really treated ourselves by showering even after only being on the trail one day. Out here it’s so dang dry that you get incredibly dirty from all the dust and our toes looked like we had dipped them and chocolate sauce.
After showering we chilled out, watching episodes of “Naked and Afraid” where we yelled at how much of a diva some of the guys were being. Our legs hurt so much from the long day of hiking that it was hard to fall asleep. I walked back and forth and drank a lot of electrolyte drinks to stop the muscles twitching in my legs. I alternated the water and hydration drinks with alcoholic Topo Chico which is a mineral water seltzer drink that I tried to use tonight to fall asleep. This was our biggest day yet. 29 miles down – woohoo!
