PCT Day 31
Mile: 411.7 to 413.9
Start: gorgeous tentsite on a cliffside
Finish: Forest Service road 4N33 (aka the White Sands campsite)
We took our sweet time waking up, cooking oatmeal, tea and coffee as we enjoyed being in a shaded forest for once instead of exposed desert sands. Hummingbirds chirped and trilled in the cool air around us. While Shannon organized his camping gear and started packing up the tent, I unknotted the bear line from the pine branch and the rock anchor where we hung our food last night to make sure chipmunks (and maybe bears) in the area didn’t grab it. As we enjoyed breakfast, we were passed by a few hikers who’d woken up early to take advantage of the cooler part of the day.
Once out of the camp, we strolled through the giant pines and admired the endangered bright magenta snow plants that emerged from the pine needle clad roots of the tall evergreen trees. The snow plant truly looks like something from outer space. It’s a plant that doesn’t have chlorophyll so it’s not green – instead the whole plant, (the leaves, the stems, the flowers) are all bright fuchsia colored and stand out dramatically in the greens and browns of the forest. They almost look like a weird upside down pine cone that’s bright pink! We found out that the endangered snow plant is actually a parasitic plant sucking nutrients out of the pine tree roots and the fungi attached to the tree roots. We also found out that the snow plant’s original Latin name translates to something like the bloody flesh like thing which is kind of gross snow plant is way nicer sounding. The first time I saw a snow plan, I thought someone left out some raw meat in the forest. The plant is that weird looking!
Our hiking pace slowed down a bit as the trail here was so thick and overgrown that the majority of the day we spent bushwhacking. Sometimes the overgrown bushes were so thick you couldn’t even see your feet which was nerve wracking since you couldn’t see if there were snakes or scorpions or a cliff you were about to step off! The PCT Association really needed to do some trail maintenance out here. Some of the comments on the Guthook navigation app about this section were hilarious and definitely not for children’s eyes.
Around lunchtime we accidentally missed the Mill Creek Fire Station where we were going to eat lunch because of my poor navigation skills. We had to turn around and hike back ten minutes which Shannon was a little bit upset about. Sorry! This was the only place for the rest of the day to collect water, sit in the shade during the hottest part of the day and take a nap. There was no water for about 15 or so miles so it was imperative that we stopped here. While we were up in the parking lot filtering water from a faucet, we heard fellow thru hiker (with an extraordinary personality) Turtle call out from down below at us. He asked, “Do you two love each other?” Shannon and I laughed and replied, “Um yes?” Turtle replied, “Okay, thank you!” and disappeared around the corner into the fire station. What. The. Heck.
As we collected water from the faucet up above the fire station, we waited for the water to go through the gravity filter by sitting outside the bathroom in the stinky shade and got bit in the butt by fire ants. After the water filtered, we hung out at the fire station with Chucks, Turtle, Pastor Frank and Coca Cola. They were relaxing in the shade and snacking as the fire station communications channel crackled outside. The local firefighters at this station allowed thru hikers to come hang out, rest in the shade at the picnic tables, grab water from the faucets and charge our electronics in the outlets outside the station. Over the fire station radio we heard about an illegal campfire that the firefighters were busting and all of us hikers were like, “Oooooh, go bust them!!” and cheered on the firefighters.
Besides eavesdropping on the firefighter communications radio, over lunch we also heard all about Chucks and Pastor Frank’s experiment of an “Only Fans” page they made for pictures of nasty hiker feet, which made us laugh so hard that my stomach hurt. The girls were hoping that their account would grow so much that they could pay for their entire hike by monetizing their dirty hiker feet lol. They actually have a single paid subscriber and kept updating pictures of their dusty blistered feet on their page – crazy gals!!
After lunch, like complete Hiker Trash Shannon and I laid under the picnic tables out of the sun for our siesta. Later on we headed out into the cooler part of the day where the rest of the afternoon we battled more overgrown crappy trail. Sometimes the trail slipped away entirely into sandy landslides that were pretty scary to navigate around as you would start to slide down the mountainside and couldn’t get solid footing.
Later in the afternoon I almost stepped on a cute chubby mouse because I couldn’t see my feet in the overgrown bush. I paused and looked down at the thicc boi who was stuffing his face with seeds and didn’t seem to care when I stuck my camera in his face. It was a little unnerving that I came so close to stepping on the chubby lil mouse because the trail was so overgrown that I was just lucky I didn’t almost step on a rattlesnake instead!
After many long hours, we finally emerged from the jungle and popped out into some beautiful wild flower gardens near a campground. We needed water and unfortunately the campground’s water source had dried up long ago. So we hiked on a couple more miles to a nearly dried up spring and were able to slowly filter water while the sun started to set. Shannon and I took turns filling the water bag up and while he was filling it up, I decided to explore the area to find a campsite. Our only options for the next four miles were camping on ATV roads as the trail was too rough and narrow. Luckily it was the end of Memorial Day weekend so we didn’t think many people would be driving down the rugged roads that we were on.
I took a walk down this beautiful white sand ATV road to an overlook where there was a spectacular sunset over the mountains, coloring the skies a million colors. Instead of camping on a shitty tick infested looking side of the road by the spring, we filtered our water, packed up and decided to head over towards where the sunset was so we could camp on the side of the road there since there was a nice beautiful sandy flat spot for us. Luckily, the road we were camping next to was not very well traveled. We settled into two gorgeous campsites near the sunset overlook and set up our tent as our dinner was cooking.
As we were talking over dinner, I wasn’t really paying attention to our surroundings and all of a sudden Shannon jumped and smushed something next to my bare foot which scared the crap out of me. I wasn’t wearing shoes because the sand was so soft and white and felt like being at a Caribbean beach dipping my toes in the warm inland beach. A giant weird spider-scorpion thing ran out at me from under Shannon’s shoe and I screamed and jumped up. We later found out that the creepy crawlies are called camel spiders or whip scorpions because they move as fast as a whip. They’re pretty freaky looking like long spiders with pinchers at the end of their claws.
After the first whip scorpion came by, we looked around for more creepy crawlies on the ground near our cooking dinner. Horrified, we noticed half a dozen of these 2 or 3 inch long, spindly nasty spiders with long front pinchers running around everywhere where we were sitting. We went on high alert jumping up and our relaxed white sand beach oasis has now become a battleground against these stupid scorpion spider things. It became a crazy smashing spree. We had never seen these spider scorpions before and all of a sudden dinner became very stressful since we didn’t know if they were poisonous, but we certainly don’t want to find out the hard way.
The area we camped at was halfway up a wild canyon and we felt like the whole time that something could have easily been watching us from the rocks above. So we brushed your teeth together, went to the bathroom close by together and then jumped into the tent. We brought all of our stuff inside the tent so we wouldn’t wake up in the morning with dozens of scorpion spiders hiding in our gear.
During the night, we woke up to some crazy howling nearby in the valley. It sounded like some large animal roaring or meowing constantly. The animal sounded like it was going up the valley to the water spring almost like a howling bobcat or a mountain lion. As we listened to the animal moving, Shannon politely asked if I could close my tent door flaps all the way so that we would just have some peace of mind that whatever was out there would stay out of our tent.
