Pacific Crest Trail : Wrightwood to Agua Dulce

Miles this section : 81
Miles completed : 444

View from high up Mount Baden-Powell.

Wrightwood is a pleasant community of wooden houses, many built to quirky designs, I spot a geodesic dome, some kind of castle, even a kind of half scale wild west town in somebody's garden.  No campsite though, there is a Methodist Camp (closed to PCT hikers today), then the 'holistic center' sounds promising, but turns out to be some four miles away.  Apparently the idea is to phone up friendly locals and ask if they have room, not really me to be honest... I find a trail leading uphill behind one of the bars and camp there, excavating a space again, it'll do for a couple of nights.  And yes, Wrightwood provides me with my usual town needs of beer, burger and pizza.

Baden-Powell summit.

It's snowing as I leave town, not normal weather, the waitress at my breakfast stop assures me.  Well, I quite like it, makes for pretty scenery with the snow covered pines, and the climb back up to join the trail keeps me warm.  The ascent continues, I'm approaching Mount Baden-Powell, named for the father of scouting of course.  Don't quite make the summit, reaching a campsite a mile short at 5pm or so it seems sensible to stop - not least the mountain is wreathed in cloud and there'll be no view.  Camping at eight thousand, six hundred feet is a little cold, who'd have thought.  Up to the summit next morning under blue skies, the view is indeed fine, and it's a lovely walk down through the melting snow.

California Mountain Kingsnake.

Not far beyond the mountain the trail is supposed to be closed, to protect an endangered species of frog I gather.  I reach the junction with the official detour, no sign of any closure on the ground, hmm, what to do.  Don't like to change plans, but the original trail is tempting, not least it is twelve miles shorter, but, there's no water that way and I am running low, detour it is then.  Turns out to be pretty but hard work, much up and down, and tricky walking too, the landscape here is made up of steep sided hills, the hillsides either bare rock or scree slopes with pines somehow growing from them, the route is generally a narrow ledge carved into the scree, and the shifting surface means I need to step carefully.  I think most hikers must walk along the road instead of this, I see precisely one during the detour, an experienced PCT hand named Mike - he watches me digging out a flat spot to sleep on and gives me a trail name, 'Digger', could be worse I guess.

It's good to get back on the PCT proper, not too hot either so I make good time, after falling a few miles behind on the detour I'm at my planned finish, 'Big Buck Trail Camp' for 7pm or so.  Except, no sign of any camp, in fact it is steeply uphill to one side of the trail, and steep downhill the other, no place to camp at all.  I walk another mile or two, well, it is miles I'm not doing tomorrow.   And I swear, at my campsite up on a saddle, someone else has already dug out a space...

Vasquez Rocks.

Next, a descent back down to the desert, hard work in the heat.  For the first time I pay to camp, at the Acton KOA, fifteen dollars is worth it for hot showers, there's a pool too, and they have burritos, the portion of mac'n'cheese I had planned to eat can keep a little longer I'm sure.  Then a fine walk through Vasquez Rocks to reach the small settlement of Agua Dulce - the rocks being the actual filming location for the Star Trek scene referenced a few posts back... I mention this to fellow hikers who are all 'Star Trek?  Before my time dude'.  I'm in Agua Dulce in time for a big lunch, and then a bit of shopping, this is the location of 'hiker heaven', where a local couple hosts any and all hikers coming through.  They sound very hospitable, but that many people in one place sounds like my idea of hell so I plan to walk on this afternoon - but that can wait 'til next entry.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pacific Crest Trail : Big Bear City to Wrightwood

Miles this section : 90
Miles completed : 363

Bridge over Deep Creek.

I do indeed find a bar after a nice walk along the 'lake' - actually the eastern section has no water, still pleasant though.  I meet something of a character, a self made millionaire, prison administrator turned paramedic turned actor named Brad, he buys me a beer and I eat pizza, all is good.  Then an early start, back up to the trail and into a long day of walking, some twenty-five miles or so in fact, indeed I have four straight days of twenty-four miles or so each coming up, through the Mojave desert as well... The first day at least is easy enough, all downhill and I make camp in good time, and for the first time this trip, build a fire and boil water on it.

Deep Creek hot springs.

Next day I mostly follow Deep Creek, this may be the desert but for now water is plentiful - as indeed is beer, I get no less than four cans over the course of the day, thanks to various 'trail angels', as they are called, handing out cans or just leaving boxes of them by the trail.  Highlight of the day is the Deep Creek hot springs, sure are hot and it is very nice to take a soak, and I am sure the warnings of brain disease causing parasites in the water are overblown.  What with this and the beer it is past sunset when I get to camp, and dark when I collect some water from a nearby lake - next morning I find my bottle has... things... swimming about in it.

Horned Lizard.

Onwards, still mostly by water, now I follow the Mojave river upstream, through an otherwise dry landscape, the domain of odd cactuses and equally odd horned lizards.  I make good pace, up the river then along windswept ridges, drawn by the prospect of a real bed and more or less real food - for today, the route crosses Interstate 15, and there's a service area with a motel.  Shame it is a mile off route, including a hairy crossing over the highway on a bridge with no provision for pedestrians, but I make it, and also find beer and Mexican(ish) food, so all is good.  Apparently some of the walk to the motel is a short section of the old Route 66 - can't say it is terribly exciting.

From here, another twenty-five miles, pretty much all uphill, making for a bit of a slog in the desert heat, and much of it through a grim, lifeless, post-burn landscape of grey ash and charred stumps of trees.  I keep on, my body is working well enough, and at least as I climb the air grows cooler, and eventually I get into living pine forest - now of course it's time to take a side trail and plunge two thousand feet down to tonight's destination, Wrightwood.  The trail notes say that 'most hikers will want to walk on to where the trail crosses a road and hitch into town' - I am still confused.

A not very thrilling bit of Route 66.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pacific Crest Trail : Idyllwild to Big Bear City

Miles this section: 107
Miles completed : 273

On the lookout at Tahquitz summit.

Idyllwild is really rather nice, beautifully sited among pine clad mountains, and with a lot to choose from in terms of restaurants.  I predictably go for a large burger, then back for a burrito for lunch next day, then make use of my cottage's barbecue to cook many sausages.  So much meat.  I can only manage coffee on my way out, then a brutal climb, some four thousand five hundred feet up the south ridge trail and over Tahquitz peak to rejoin the PCT.  This takes all morning of course, not ideal when my plan is for another 18 miles... think I was misled by the trail notes talking about a different, easier trail out of Idyllwild - but of course that would have meant skipping some of the PCT for no good reason, the horror!  It is worth the climb anyway, superb views from the top and then a fun walk at high altitude, snow still lingering on the trail in places.  I see no other PCT hikers, guess they mainly go the other way... though when I do meet some in the afternoon, several have taken a ten mile detour up San Jacinto Peak.  As for me, I'm six miles behind plan at the end of the day.

Snow on the trail.  I wonder if there will be much more?

Onwards and, as it turns out, downwards, I descend back into desert country, all downhill so easy walking, I aim to claw back four of those miles and camp at a park boundary.  It's a long way mind you, and though I'm still in good spirits at 5pm thanks to some awesome trail magic (gifts left by the trail for hikers - in this case beer!), from here the route climbs steeply again.  My pace slows, but I see no good place to camp so push on past sunset, eventually finding somewhere - just a short way from that boundary, I discover the next morning.  I also experience mild dehydration, having used my last water the night before... only three miles to a substantial river as it turns out, but I don't enjoy it much.  I fill all my bottles, then of course walk alongside water all day... Mission Creek is quite impressive, braided in a way that reminds me of New Zealand, although there isn't actually much water flowing.  Then I camp by a smaller creek, in an area so crowded with tents that I have to excavate a space using a rock.

Mission Creek.

Day four out of Idyllwild, I climb through another burnt area, this time the fire was more intense and more recent, even the soil is charred and ashy.  Makes me wonder why the last one was still closed off.  After a few miles I see living trees again, and also a few white specks falling on me - is that blossom?  No... hail, or at least somewhere between that and snow.  Some form of snow continues to fall all day, gradually carpeting the land, it's certainly pretty and makes for fast walking - I hadn't realised but the heat of the desert was slowing me down.  Now I make up all those lost miles to get back on plan, pitch the tent on a flat bit of snow and cook up some warming beef curry.

Camping on snow - not recommended.

Camping on snow is kind of cold, who'd have thought... I survive, think I might want some more cold weather gear for the Sierras though.  From here, it's only seventeen miles or so to Big Bear City - not much of a city though it does have an airport.  Apparently the place to go is Big Bear Lake a few miles further from the trail, people seem to be hitching a lift there... I realise my alternative of walking three or four miles off trail is more effort, but not much compared to walking to Canada.  Still, there's not a lot in the 'city', other than my motel I find a cafe and grab a burger before it shuts, and some beers to take back to my room.  Maybe I'll walk to the lake and look for a bar tomorrow...

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pacific Crest Trail : Warner Springs to Idyllwild

Miles this section : 56
Miles completed : 166

The trail winding its way through the desert.

Warner Springs doesn't have much in the way of houses, but it caters for my needs pretty well - there's a community resource centre where I camp, wash my clothes and myself, in both cases a bucket is involved.  There's a store where I buy dubious sausage, and best of all the local golf course lets hikers in and provides me with beer, burger and pizza over the course of my stay, plus some fine pancakes on the morning of my departure.  I walk out through pleasant wooded valleys, seems the town is something of an oasis amidst the desert.

A welcome water cache.

But before long I'm back on sand, the heat sufficient to melt the chocolate I removed from my bounce box in town (yes, this time I've been organised, boxes of food are following me through the US post system).  It's evocative country for sure, I half expect John Wayne to ride around the corner leading a posse, or maybe to see Captain Kirk battling a rubber skinned alien atop one of the boulders that litter the landscape here.  Instead I just meet more hikers, mainly hanging around the water sources, which remain few and far between.  It's nice to get back into the wilderness, camp at Warner Springs was a bit of a scrum, out here I can get some peace and quiet at night - generally high up, the gradual climb of the trail getting me up to nearly six thousand feet at one point.

Burnt forest.

No big problems so far, probably helps that I'm not carrying much food, this being just a four day section, in fact it turns out I have too much, on the morning of day three a short detour takes me to the Paradise Cafe for more pancakes, after which I'm not hungry for a while.  Still ready for my dinner that evening, I cook up a two bean chilli which is almost real food, rather tasty I must say though it does take an hour to cook.

Shortly into day four and I walk into a section that has recently opened following a long closure after a fire in 2013, the blackened husks of trees bearing witness to the devastation.  A few miles of trail remain shut so I divert around, including a few miles of road walking - American hikers gravely warn me that this will be very dangerous, and I really should hitch-hike instead.  Somehow I survive, then a surprisingly steep bit of trail takes me into Idyllwild, a charming mountain resort where I have a room booked, turns out to be a little log cabin just for me, such luxury.

The perilous road walk to Idyllwild.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pacific Crest Trail : Campo to Warner Springs

Miles this section : 110
Miles completed : 110

Striking a pose by the monument at the start of the trail.

Some excitement is provided on our arrival in Campo by one of my colleagues from the bus, he has left his phone on it... but we're right outside a store and the lady inside is able to call ahead and recover it.  Meanwhile I decide that as it is only 5pm or so I may as well walk the mile from here to the Mexican border where the trail starts, and then begin the thing a day early.  This goes without a hitch, nobody checks my permit, I take photos, including one of the solid metal barrier stretching away in both directions, and then start along the trail.  Seems to have a lot of footprints on it...  Soon enough I am back in Campo, store is still open so I buy beer, in cans that are, as with so many things in this country, huge.

Class of 2017 - or, a very small part of it at least.

First proper day, nineteen miles through what is supposed to be desert, but is actually pretty green, with plenty of water in the creeks - has been a wet winter I gather.  Easy walking, the path is well made and well trodden, a foot wide ribbon of dirt leading through hills and valleys, mainly flat but sometimes a gentle up or down - the trail is of course graded for horses.  Only real problem is the heat, I can cope though, and I manage not to panic after rounding a corner to find a large rattlesnake crossing the path in front of me.  More scared of us and all that...  The walk goes quickly enough, I'm at Lake Morena for 5pm, and there's quite a welcome, a group calling themselves the Wolverines are handing out free beer and burritos at the campsite - in previous years they ran a 'kickoff' event, but as the trail grew in popularity it became a victim of its own success.

Enjoying myself so far.

The walk continues, more green desert, including wading a couple of creeks, and more snakes, one slithers right past my foot as I eat my lunch.  I detour to Mount Laguna to buy candy, and also get fine coffee and a rather odd pancake - pretty much an omelette to be honest.  The slopes remain gentle but still I gain height, up to over five thousand feet, it's cold and there is a gale blowing, interesting when the route is along the rim of a great valley, the bottom of which seems unfeasibly far below.  Also fun is putting my tent up with wind still blowing, a real test for the €22 tent from Bordeaux this, and the alloy poles I've upgraded it with.  At one point the thing flips upside down with me hanging on to a single guy rope, but nothing snaps.

The tent coping with the wind.

There are certainly a lot of people doing this hike - the thirty or more in the 'class of 2017'' picture from Lake Morena is just part of one day's group.  I often hike alone, as is my wont, but meet the same faces, or sometimes new ones, at campsites, at breaks, and the various water sources.  The latter become important as I get into real desert, sand underfoot, dry, yellow grass, cactus the main source of green.  Some kind people have carried stacks of gallon water bottles out to a couple of points, without them this thirty mile stretch would be tricky.  As it stands I reach Warner Springs on schedule, for a successful first section.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pacific Crest Trail : Getting to the Start

The only photo I took in LA.

The PCT may be over two thousand miles long, but as with Te Araroa a year or two back, it's a much longer journey just to get to the start, beginning with a transatlantic flight that takes me to Los Angeles smoothly enough.  Then a two mile walk or so to the metro station, maybe there was a shuttle bus but I saw no signs... not a long walk, but it's annoying the way that even at minor interchanges I have to press a button then wait some time for a go light - don't want a citation for jaywalking on my first day here...  Next, an hour on the LA metro - interesting experience, it's as if you took the London Underground and removed all the commuters and tourists, don't think I'd want to be here late at night.  My one night in the city is at a hostel (nice enough if shockingly expensive) in the Koreatown neighbourhood, which I must say is rather nice.  Seems to be built with humans in mind as well as cars, there are people walking dogs, going to restaurants (many of which - restaurants and people - are Korean).  I even find a sports bar for a beer or two, all good.

San Diego.

Next day, a bus ride away from Koreatown, as with the metro the bus seems only to cater for poor people, though not the poorest - after travelling through the soaring towers of the financial district we enter downtown, where many of the sidewalks are covered with the tents of the homeless.  Strange country this.  Just a little further and I'm at the Greyhound bus station, an hour or so early but I while the time away with an enormous coffee - seriously, something like a pint and a half.

Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá.

The Greyhound takes me to San Diego, where my public transit odyssey continues with a trolleybus, up into the hills where I have a motel booked, rather a nice one as it turns out.  Pretty area too, which is good as I have to spend a day walking around it, mainly buying much food and carting it to the local post office to post off.  The 'push a button and wait before crossing' thing is getting very old.  One potentially big problem arises, my GPS won't boot up, think maybe it can't cope with the many route files I put on it?  I visit many phone repair stores hoping they'll have the right cable to connect to it and delete some files but no joy, finally walk a long way to an electronics superstore where they can, except it doesn't work, aargh.  OK, I do what I should have done before, figure out how to reset the device, which fixes it, yay.  And there's still time to head out for the evening, drink my last few beers for a little while, and eat an enormous pizza.  What with this, the giant burger last night, and the massive waffles at breakfast I am getting fat...

The bus to Campo.

Last day before I'm due to start walking, and one last panic as I find the water bottles I've bought don't fit my filter, the screwtops are too small.  Well, I need to do some last minute shopping anyway, and thankfully there are suitable bottles available.  More shopping, for gas and bug spray, then one more trolley to the El Cajon transit centre.  The 894 bus from here should, with any luck, be the last powered vehicle I get into for a while... Well, after ninety minutes or so the Spanish speaking locals get out, and me and a couple of other hikers have twelve more miles to Campo where the trail starts.  But that will have to wait for the next post...

Photos to go with this post can be found here.

Pacific Crest Trail - Introduction

Avid readers may have noticed the occasional hint in recent posts that I have another grand adventure coming up, and indeed I am now about to set off, so thought I'd write a small introductory piece, rather than fill up the first post from the trail with explanations.

So then - the Pacific Crest Trail, it stretches some two thousand, six hundred miles from Mexico to Canada, through the US states of California, Oregon and Washington, and along with the Continental Divide and Appalachian it's one of the three great American trails.  The route goes through deserts, national parks, and the high mountain country of the Sierras and Cascades, including a skirt around the highest peak in the contiguous US, Mount Whitney.  Recently popularised by the book, and later film 'Wild', the trail now sees some three thousand hikers attempt it each year, so many that the authorities have brought in a system restricting it to fifty starts each day from the Mexican border...

Why this particular trail, and why now?  Well... the first long trail I became aware of was the Appalachian, which I still hope to do one day, however looking into that led me to the PCT, which looks rather more of a challenge - if I only do one of the three, this has to be it.  2017 is a good year for it too, there will be a total eclipse this August, and if all goes to plan I should be more or less on the line of totality, in the region of Mount Jefferson, which sounds pretty awesome.

A lot of preparation has gone into this - I had to attend the US embassy in London to apply for a visa, I've obtained various permits, booked flights, buses and hotels, bought a lot of equipment, and done plenty of planning - in theory at least I know exactly where I will start and finish each day of the five months or so it should take me to walk the thing.  Of course, best laid plans and all that... but if the worst to happen is me failing to stick to my schedule I'll be happy - has to be better than getting eaten by a bear.