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Stopped at: Roadend at Gobber's Knob, mile 359.9 Miles today: 21.7
At 5:30 am, George woke me up as he was heading off. We were both planning on stopping at McDonald's off Interstate 15 and then moving to Guffy campground. George was too much of an early riser for me, and I was planning on leaving at 8:00 am since I got here at 9:00 pm last night.
The sun was to my back as I started before 8:00 am to Interstate 15. The first 30 minutes was a typical hike as far as weather was concerned, but then I walked into the clouds I saw crossing the mountains last night as I descended to Horsethief creek. It began to get cold and wet and I could see the clouds I would eventually fall into.
Descending the mountain with some mild ascends in the mix, I was a shadowless figure among the mist with moist shoes and wet shorts. Parts of the forest in this area appeared as though it went through a fire. The plants must have loved today's weather as dew greeted every plant.
This morning was cold like previous days were warm. By the time I reached the bottom of the trail, my hands were almost numb. This sky looked as though the cool weather would remain for most of the day- around 60-70 degrees. This might be might lucky day because there was a 22 mile waterless stretch after Interstate 15. I reached the highway 138 leading to Interstate 15 and roadwalked the distance to the McDonald's.
It was 10:29 am, and I was the last person to order the big breakfast deluxe with coffee before the menu was changed to appease the early lunch crowd. This was only the 2nd time I've had coffee in the past 15 years, and I barely drank half a cup. The breakfast was good and greasy. The fountain machine was in the lobby and I geared up 3 litres for the waterless 22 miles ahead (but I suspected there was a water cache along the way because of the many road crossings). If the day wasn't cool, I would have tolerated another litre.
After McDonald's I was a bit confused about where the trail restarted again. Highway 138 headed to Wrightwood, and Wrightwood was the town. Should I follow Highway 138? That couldn't be the trail. The databook stated there was a couple of Southern Pacific Railroad crossings, and there were tracks nearby.
Walking off the highway, I went down to the railtracks and walked the same direction of the tracks hoping to intersect the trail. I spent 2 hours walking under the overcast skies and found no traces of PCT markers. Intuition and experience told me this was wrong and I should cross the terrain back to Highway 138.
I must have walked 2-3 miles on Highway 138 around where I got off the trail. Still no traces of the PCT. I reasoned, "I might have missed a marker somewhere, and I'll have to backtrack the trail." I was very agitated about losing the trail and didn't like to backtrack, but backtracking was the common sense thing to do in this situation. Walking the trail back towards Crowder Canyon, I found the missing sign pointing a sharp left. Apparently, I had overlooked the sign because I had expected to find a freeway ahead, and when Highway 138 came into view, I just followed beaconed in the freeway as the correct direction. One other hiker's footprints indicated he also made the mistake. In fact, these were the same footprints which made the correct turn at the abadoned outhouse to Highway 173 two days ago, and they looked like the might be Marlon's because they were fairly large.
I had almost given up finding the trail and considered hitchhiking directly into Wrightwood. This would allow me to skip the 22-mile waterless stretch, but within me, I wasn't truly ready to allow myself to skip sections. I was afraid once I did it, the potential to skip again was higher.
The sign led to the actual Crowder Canyon with running water. The trail then crossed a road, which leads to McDonad's 0.4 miles away, before going under Interstate 15 and crossed some railroad tracks. I took the wrong route to get to McDonald's this morning, and was not far from the correct path once I reached McDonald's- that is, I arrived at McDonald's from the wrong side. After 3 hours of aimless walking, all the anger and frustration left me like the burden of guilt after a confession. I was now back on the PCT!
Before the underpass, there was a familiar sign explaining the rare toads which inhabit the natural refuge. I had read about the underpass before from other people's journals. Graffiti lined the other side of the underpass. I can understand people having pride in hiking the PCT, but PCT paintings on public property was still vandalism. On the other hand, it's a little classier than the usual "name was here on this date" or "I luv this girl or that guy" messages.
At the first mountain top, one of many for today, I met a day hiker in jeans and shirt going the opposite direction. He said, "I hiked this area weeks ago and the temperature was around 106 degrees." Because of the overcast skies today, the weather was now in the 70's, and I was extremely fortunate to arrive at this stretch in cool weather. Unfortunately, the hikers behind me will not be as lucky to get such cool conditions during one of the most difficult 23 miles of the PCT. "I parked my car down over there," the man stated as he pointed to a red car in the distance, "and there's a water cache not far from it." (((The man was in the area taking a class.)
My intuition was right, there had to be a water cache during the 23 mile waterless expanse. Having a cache at that point, would require travelling about 15 miles to the next water source at Guffy campground. When I looked at all the peaks to climb after the water cache, it didn't look very appealing. Because I felt strong during the cool weather, I considered reaching Guffy by midnight.
The candy bucket at the water cache by the Trail Ratz was pillaged clean; however, plenty of important water was available in Ozarka 1-gallon bottles. The Trail Ratz have left plenty of caches along the trail at important junctions (only the one at San Felipe Creek was unnecessary since there was a cache nearby). It must cost them a pretty penny to bring all the premium water for the hikers. I left a note in the log book encouraging hikers to continue. Maybe I'll need some encouragement one day on this hike.
Suprisingly, I stormed up the mountains with complete resources. I finally stopped at 7:15 pm to give my legs a rest. At 7:30 pm, I started again, but my body felt stiff as a board, and it took 5 minutes to warm up again. Guffy campground was definitely out of the question, and the new goal was to find the first flat area to make camp.
The search for a small flat are eluded me up near the top of the green moutains. I kept walking and walking until darkness. There was finally a flat area at Truck Road 3N31, and I was almost dead from over 20 miles of trail hiking (not including the 3 hours wandering off the trail in the early afternoon). It was a great place to stop, but a van coming down the dirt road saw me as I was searching for the continuation of the PCT. Having someone seen me here late at night me made a bit paranoid about staying. "What if he's a serial killer and comes back during the wee hours of the morning." What could be more frightening than having an animal disturb your rest during the night? Having a stranger disturb your rest during the night.
I moved forward. At the end of Gobber's Knob, I meant to stop, but there was a vehicle in a corner, and they were probably car camping for the evening in their RV trailer. Maybe there was a flat space just up the trail where I wouldn't have to scare anyone.
Finally, after trekking for another 1.5 miles in the dark, I found a rocky flat surface about 20 feet off the trail and decided it was large enough for the tent. I was really beat at this point having nearly walked the entire day, about 15 hours on my feet with 2-3 of rest in between.
Night hiking was rather slow (maybe 2 mph at best), and I was going along some rocky ridges and had to be careful about falling off the side like so many dead trees had done. By the end, I had netted about 21 trail miles and could have easily reached Guffy campground had I not been lost. Nontheless, today was a great day!
