It might sound a bit ignorant but I also didn't know there would be such high mountains. There are days we gain and lose thousands of feet. I guess I assumed southern California was flatter? Training for the Sierras I suppose!
Once the legs were going strong I took off and made it to Nance Canyon right as the rain started to fall. it was only after noon but rather than hike in the rain I decided to stop for the day. I set up my tent just as a few other hikers came by, eyeing my spot. Sure enough the rain started falling and didn't stop all night. Oscar tucked in..
I woke up to the familiar clanking of tent poles and the hiss of deflating air mattresses that's common at 5am along the trail. By 6am I was in my way up another mountain, again surrounded by incredible views. I did 13 miles by noon and walked into the Paradise Cafe on hwy 74. The place was scattered with hikers with their faces buried in burgers.
From the cafe the trail gets a bit strange. Due to a massive wildfire a few years back there is a massive closure of the PCT, and there are varying opinions on how to go about detouring.. This might take a bit of explaining. Because the PCT is closed, you can't hike it. Two hikers were fined $2,500 each for hiking through the closed section last year, so it's not an option. There are a couple detour options including a network of alternate trails, a road walk up the highway to Idyllwild, or a combo of the two. Reluctantly I chose to follow the mostly-confident group that was leaving the cafe and road walk for a while. For 10 miles we followed the road, landing us all at the end of a 20+ mile day at the Hurkey Creek campground just south of Idyllwild. I kept up and felt great but knew my feet and bothersome tendon would be screaming the next morning!
Sure enough the next morning I tried to follow the others up the mountain bike trails but after most of a mile I had to fall back. My legs take some warming up and I wasn't going to stop the group every 50 feet to watch me massage my legs. I didn't expect the mental impact of watching a group of people charge off away from me, doing something I clearly could not do. I waited until the group was out of sight, pulled out my tyvek seat and settled in for a nice little hissy fit. I called my dad and ranted about how pissed off I was I couldn't keep up and how my leg hurt, etc. It took a good 10 minutes before I calmed down and with a new wave of determination took off after the group to catch up.
Bad move. The group was long gone and without a map or a clue I quickly got off track, then turned around and got tangled in the mountain bike trail network. Using GPS I walked back to the campground and regrouped. I tried to hitch and when no one picked me up I took off walking up the road. About 2 miles from town, sunburnt and contemplating pitching my tent in the highway shoulder, I finally got a lift.
This is the time in my hike when I had to make a choice. Even though it's not the actual PCT, up until this point I had walked every step of it and now it looked like I was going to miss some even if it was a highway. I had previously been hiking with some people who said they were "purists" (people who refuse to miss a step of trail and will risk anything to make sure they make a continuous foot-path from one end of the trail to the next) and these people considered my 2 miles of highway hitching "cheating." After much thought I decided I was not a purist hiker. I vowed to take every available step of PCT I could, but if there is a fire closure or a break in trail I'm not going to worry about a mile or two here and there. Little did I know at this point that it would change a bit soon and become impossible, but the decision was made. No one will literally hike every step of the actual trail, and already everyone who hiked with me that day chose to skip 4 available, yet inconvenient, miles of the actual PCT that were still open before the closure. And if we're just going for convenience why not hike US-1 all the way to Canada? Its surely much straighter? I guess my point is that everyone is defining what their hike needs to be and at the end of the day I am still going to call myself a thru-hiker if I make it to Canada. By the end of the trail I will likely have missed 20 miles of detour miles but will have hiked over 75 extra miles of optional sidetrips including summiting Mt. Whitney and several Yosemite hikes among other optional hikes, not to mention an extra hundred or so town miles.. Anyhow, I'm not judging others hikes, but I am confident and pleased with how I've defined mine. Ok, that sums that up ;)
So.. I made it to Idyllwild and went to the campground to relax for a day!
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