From Big Bear to Wrightwood.

So we hope to gradually work back up our miles, not wanting to start on 20 mile days like before Warner Springs. Funnily enough it was easier to do lower miles than we thought. After 13.5 miles on the first day we were exhausted (yet on the very first day we easily did 20 miles, not sure how that works).  Shuffled around avoiding dead trees to fix a suitable campsite and were asleep by 7pm. The next day we meet up with Scrub and Pippin, then we're joined by a guy selling 'medicinal' marijuana to fund his PCT hike. We respectfully decline (would you want to come across a bear or mountain on while not on complete control of your faculties?) and move on. We go below the tree line and start getting back into those desert conditions as we head closer to Cajon Pass. A nice shaded spot next to an ice cold river for lunch, where we meet Skip(who carries a supermarket's variety of food) and Siesta.  Scrub does an amazing impersonation of Hacksaw, we make 19.5 miles that day, camping next to Deep Creek.

The next day we make our way along the edge of Deep Creek Canyon, with some wonderfully steep drops and very little room to place your feet at times. I run out of water about an hour before the source so tI get a little dehydrated but Rebecca (or should I say Concrete Babe at this stage, my trail name is Captain 'Murica at this stage) kindly shares some of her water. Making it to Deep Creek we find it packed with people as it's a bank holiday weekend. So we water up, eat some food and chill in the shade for a bit with Skip and Pippin, briefly dip our feet in the water and head out. We only make about 15 miles that day, and foolishly camp near the river after the Mojave spillway. People like driving their ATVs up that river at night. And in the morning we find the water source not very appealing, mud flavoured with swirls of gasoline. We have a filter but even then... Fortunately some kindly holiday makers give us some ice cold water from their cooler box (we also find a large water cache a couple of miles on. A lot of people seemed to get lost at that point as the trail becomes very vague, I'd just like to thank Brock and Jordan for waving us towards the correct path.

We started pretty late in the day and we were keen to get some night hiking in. I'm glad we made that choice, because one thing I can say about the desert section is that hiking at night makes for a generally better experience. You can get a little disorientated but as Rebecca said, spotting the PCT signs was like cats eyes in the dark using head torches, kind of like in Brownies looking for ... Things. I'm not sure, all I remember is she said she got a badge for crossing the road. She can now safely navigate roads and assist others in doing so, and boy did she assist me in Europe on the roads. I don't think I'd been instructed on road navigation like that since I was about 5 years old. But night hiking was fun, it helped that we came across two caches with fresh fruit in them. Like treasure! It was the most fruit I'd had in a week, an orange, banana and three nectarines. Rebecca saw a bat perched on a rock, there were quite a few fluttering about. I kinda felt like a fruit bat, but grounded, and with a better developed frontal lobe... Hopefully rabies free too. Cresting a ridge we came into view of Silverwood Lake, it was pretty. There were night fishermen doted about the waters, their lights bobbing about, I could almost imagine they were lanterns. At about ten thirty the moon rose over one of the hills and lit up a corridor along the Lake's surface, a police boat flashed blue and warned the fishermen to be good. We tried to take a photo but the camera just couldn't handle how awesome it was.

We camped down at the next level spot, it's about 11:30pm and a Park Ranger cruises past slowly. We're only about 13 miles from the McDonalds in Cajon Pass, after about 5 hours sleep we emerge and with a determined set to our faces (but of course stopping for a polite and pleasant conversation with Rocket Llama) we march off to our destination, determined by our shrunken bellies. The night before we'd thrown our meal out in disgust (it was basically plain rice, we ate the jerky) and eaten the rest of our breakfasts instead. The day was hot, again, come on Southern California mix it up a little. We meet Cream Tea at the next water source, Rebecca's pleased to meet another Brit and converses on familiar things. Tea, scones, Shakespeare, all that. But we can't hang about too long, McDonalds is calling. It must be fed almost as much as we needed to be fed. It needed us like we needed cheeseburgers. We make it to a spectacular view of the pass, but all our eyes can see is the motorway that we know runs past McDonalds. I think we're two miles away, but Cream Tea corrects me, we're still four miles off! The speed of that descent to Cajon Pass needed to have a Guiness World Record representative present. 

McDonalds. We ordered two large meals and eight cheeseburgers, almost 3000 calories each. Unlimited refills. We spent almost three hours there. We couldn't hike on, The Best Western had discounts for PCT hikers, so we booked a room, king sized bed, cheap laundry, close to Del Taco. An Oasis in the desert. We somehow find room for Burritos later and watch Antz, then an odd film about birdwatchers with a surprising number of big name actors. The next morning we demolish the all you can eat breakfast taking a cheese horn and breakfast claw for later. With that, some trail mix from the hiker box and a half pound burrito packed away we head for Wrightwood. Only 27 odd miles, but over 5000 feet elevation change. Uphill. We see our first Poodle Dog Bush, and as we were told it stinks of marijuana. I'd say if you smoke it you'd probably die, as just touching it can land you in hospital. Hung out with Brock and Jordan at the next cache, which had comfy chairs and a cool breeze. Met Safari who was trying to make Wrightwood in one day, he showed us a video of the angriest rattlesnake I'd ever seen trying to bite him just a few miles back along the trail. Glad we missed that.

After a very uncomfortable uphill hike we camp on a ridge overlooking Barstow and San Bernardino, both cities joined by the red and yellow lit motorway that cuts through Cajon Pass. It was a nice view that night and the next morning. It was only seven miles to Wrightwood the next day, down the Acorn Trail through a nice suburb and straight to ice cream. Here we are now, in a cabin with Pippin and Rocket Llama about to post our bounce box to Tehachapi then off eighty five miles to Agua Dulce. Happy trails. 

 

Big Bear

I just spent no small amount of time writing up a fairly descriptive entry about Big Bear using Blogsy, an iPad app, then as I don't currently have an Internet connection I thought I'd save it and move on to my next entry. It didn't save anything. So screw you Blogsy. All you need to know is Monty helped us a ton, sorted free accommodation at Big Bear Hostel in exchange for a little work each day, we had milkshakes in the end, I tried and failed a pancake challenge, we got drunk at a dirty cowboy bar, a South African guy called Soup Nazi threw pancakes at Rebecca, she then mauled a roast chicken, she brought new shoes and her heel got better. On the way back to the trail I ended up in the back seat with a drunk guy (at 8am) who was hiking, we had a very intense conversation with a few tears shed. And not because the guys legs were swollen to about four times their normal size. He was still hiking on them!

 

How many burgers does it take to hurt your heel? (the week betweenWarner Springs and now)

We've been off the trail for at least a week now. Rebecca's heel, we think it was the Achilles tendon, turned out to be a little more serious than two days rest.

So we found ourselves stuck in Warner Springs, a town that seemed to have nothing but a school! Community centre and a Post Office. Oh there was a mighty fine casino ten miles out of town. But no buses have run through it for years, not since the golf course closed down back in 04 (ok so that golf course comment was just so you could read it in a southern American accent, it's probably not true). Jack ( retired volunteer) offered to take us ahead to rest in Idyllwild, but we hear it's well overpriced. Big Bear City is recommended as a more affordable recoup-spot, but there are no buses in or out of Idyllwild either! So we're sitting there worrying about getting to Big Bear, trying to figure buses back to LA to go on from there to Big Bear, even considering camping in Warner Springs and surviving off burgers and pancakes until the heel gets better. Then as if called Warner Springs Monty pops by and mentions offhandedly that he's going to Big Bear to barbecue for hikers! And before we can eat our fourth burger (we'd already eaten three each) he's driving us along with another hiker, Jodie, back to his with another hiker for dripping barbecue chicken burgers and a real bed! 

So we offer what help we can to Monty, helping clean his place and prepare/pack his car for the feeding of the hikers. The night we stayed he showed us the National Geographic documentary on the PCT, in which Monty himself started (he's walked it twice), and we topped it off with a bit of Groundhog Day. It took us maybe 3.5 hours to get to Big Bear, we'd planned about 8-9 days of hiking on the trail for the same distance. An amazing sunset accross the mountains, never have I seen land turn such a deep violet. Then we meet Sarge at Big Bear Hostel and bed down, reassured that everything would be sorted in the morning... Not before Rebecca insists we hobble out together in search of milkshakes, crutches and an injured foot would not discourage her. We joke about her injuring herself because she pushed herself so hard for the last 8 miles before Warner Springs, burgers caused the injury. Tasty, tasty burgers. We never did find milkshakes.

First resupply (day six)

We hiked the last 8.5mi to Warner Springs this morning, the thought of fresh food, fatty and meaty spurred our steps. Never has meat, eggs and pancakes tasted better. Juice, coffee and cookies. Sorted our bounce box and resupply at the post office and even got a ride to the nearest atm (10mi away in a casino), because our debit cards are coming out as credit cards here so they couldn't give us cash back. Currently we're in a community centre that does food, showers and laundry (at a price) but they have free internet so I'm using that up. A bit worried because Rebecca's Achille's tendon is giving her trouble. We might take another day to rest it and do lower mile days. There's nice burgers here too. And the most wonderful showers.

 

Not even shade can save you (day six)

Got up at 5am and set off at about 6 to try to avoid that desert heat, gets damn hot around 8am though. We saw a couple of deer on the trail! They just bounded off down this near sheer cliff face to the valley below, amazing to watch how deftly they navigated the slope. made it to a water cache around 11am and just dived under shade, some girls ahead of us hiked out around 11:30 (crazy!) but we rested until mid afternoon. Even in the shade it was too hot, Greg came by and said it was about 43-44 degrees C. 

We stayed until about 3:30 with our legs up. Only about an hour out from the water cache we encountered another rattlesnake, but this time it was lying right across the trail and wouldn't move. No matter what we did it would just lay there, we thought it might be dead as we saw ants crawling on it and it wasn't rattling or moving. The trail was pretty steep with thick scrub either side so we thought we'd dash past it, I thought I'd better make sure it was dead before we dashed past so I got a stone and skimmed its back, which finally got it moving (but not off the trail). This sent us skiming back down the trail. We saw two small bulges moving inside it and realised it must be digesting something, which might be why it wasn't moving or rattling. We ended up bush-wacking our way uphill of it to pass by (I was a little nervous because I couldn't see much around our feet). I felt pretty bad about the stone, I hope I didn't injure the poor thing. I guess I acted rashly because I'm not comfortable with snakes or how they act, I just know they can travel fast if they want to. Yelled at Greg to stop just before he stood on it because he was too distracted as to why we were up in the bush rather than on the trail. He was pretty stoaked. Made it to Barrel Spring by night fall and camped out, some other hikers were drinking beer around a fire but we were too pooped and just set up and crashed.

 

Smells like a desert (day five)

Saw some conservationists drive up for a yoga session in the mountains. Damn South-Cal hippies, but I did try a little yoga and it does feel good on the trail. I guess that makes me a hippie too. We had a (subdued) party at that water source, got out some lime margarita flavour sachets and just went to town on that water, brushed our teeth. You know, the works. Met a nice Canadian guy Greg who's lugging a 50pound/22.6kg pack! But he was just taking it easy, around 10 miles a day, just seeing how far he'll get. A nice guy who really loves the hike (he comes from Vancouver island which apparently has the highest concentration of mountain lions in the world, but he's never seen one!). 

Day 5 was the first day it truly felt like a desert, it was hot. It's either hiking on uneven rocky ground or sand, both suck. Every step on the trail risks a rolled or broken ankle. We get to scissor's crossing (crosses a highway) which has a wonderful water cache under the bridge. We wait out the hottest part of the day, meet back up with Greg, Bow, Scrub and Tribhu (trail names) and had a yarn. Signed the register (there's trail registers all along the PCT to keep track of people I guess) and did some yoga/stretches. Headed off at about 4pm and just across the road we find trail magic in the form of peanut butter, crackers and pre-made pasta meals (we were bummed because we weren't gonna have quite enough food to last to Warner Springs). Headed up for a couple more hours and made camp (dry but we packed lots of water) in what looked like some odd war zone, nice views but every bush/tree was a blackened skeleton from past forest fires (makes me feel better we're cold camping).
 

The day we dry camped (day four)

The weather cleared and after a nice microwaved breakfast burrito we headed off for a 21mi/33.6km day. Some amazing views of the desert (now that we could see more than 30 meters), and a nice rest in a shady picnic area with a desert fox dropping by for some snacks. He was not having any of my snacks. They're mine. My precious. Got passed by Tribhu (we all thought it had something to do with trees and scaring people, tree-boo is what it sounds like), and we get congratulated about 40 times by a large group of elderly day hikers. Not for doing the PCT, for being from NZ and the UK.  They seemed excited for us. Later we decided to skip a water source and dry camp (no water sources nearby) so rationed the water, not the best but we got through and only had to hike 4mi to get to the next source in the morning. 

 

Mount Laguna (day three)

Cold and miserable we power hike the remaining 5mi (8km) to Mount Laguna, rent a cabin with a couple of other hikers and settle down with some American Candy and chilli beans. It had a shower and a gas stove!! So we dried all our stuff, Rebecca's sleeping bag seemed to dry well and we beat it a few times to separate the down. Picked up a lighter sleeping bag liner for Rebecca ($50!), the guy in the store took our names and hometowns and took a photo to put on the PCT Facebook, or personal use... I hope the former. We  watch some wonderful TV featuring day hikers getting lost near where we're hiking. You know, the kinds of stories that fill you with confidence. Bow also introduced us to the wonders of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups at this point. Cheers Bow. 

 

The wettest Desert (day two)

The hike between Lake Morena and Mount Laguna was a hefty climb, approx 2000ft/600m to 6000ft/1800m. And it just got colder and wetter. We ended up emergency camping for fear of hypothermia. Got dry and warm (thank God for those amazing down sleeping bags)... but our hasty camp backfired when in the morning everything was soaked. Even part of Rebecca's sleeping bag, which really worried us (down does not like wet). It was that damn ground sheet which pooled the water, we've since got rid of it. Also did I mention we decided to cold camp (no fires/stove) for the first 700mi? So you rehydrate food with cold water, less weight and they have a whole bunch of fire bans in Southern California which includes alcohol stoves. While it thankfully minimises the fire risk, it unfortunately minimises the flavour.  

 

Escape from Mordor (day one)

Up at 4:30, sun block and Vaseline on, some oatmeal and Pecan Pie in my belly and we're off for the Mexican border. 6am at the trail head and it's foggy, a border patrol officer has tailed us to make sure no one is jumping back in the car from over the border. He sits and watches us the whole time. We were hoping to touch that big fence but we'd have to climb a smaller barbed fence and didn't want to look like we were smuggling drugs... or guns... or people. We just wanted to look like hikers, because border patrol have guns and helicopters and stuff. Anyway, the trail angel left and we sort of hung around nervously for 10 minutes with Bow, realising we were now officially on the trail. And off we went.It got hot quick. Which makes me sweat. It didn't help that I kept thinking every bush held a rattlesnake, every rocky overhang hid a mountain lion, every hole held scorpions or tarantulas. And there were a lot of small suspicious looking holes in the trail, many with massive spider webs tunneling into them. But we mostly encountered ants and flies. Although just after a warning sign we came across our first rattlesnake! We didn't actually see it but boy could you hear it! I actually thought it was a burst water pipe at first! He was in some scrub to the right of the trail and started up just as Rebecca walked past, so me and Bow were now separated from Rebecca by a deadly creature, how dramatic! I admit I was quite nervous, but we skirted past on the upper side of the trail (not before Bow tried to get a closer look) and we were off again. Saw some Poison Oak, the day got even hotter too. Made it to Lake Morena (20mi/32km) at about 3:30pm, at which point it started raining. It didn't stop for two days. 

San Diego

We took a Greyhound from LA which took about 2.5 hours and set up at a much nicer hostel (Hostel on 3rd), had an amazing super-size burrito, nachos and beer which made us feel better. We found San Diego to be a much cleaner and nicer looking city. Finally sorted our gear at an REI store, met a couple of nice folks who were very interested in the PCT, one even gave us a ride back into town and took us to a home-cooked-style Mexican place for carnitas (amazingly cooked pork), which he paid for! Then he showed us some nice spots in his car, Juan was his name. Good Guy. 

Also a trail angel agreed to pick us up and take us to the trail after staying at his place! I think it was a regular thing for him, he said he 'invented' PCT trail drop offs in the 90s. So he picked us up from our hostel around 4 and also picked up another hiker, Bow, from the airport along the way. Now this guy was in the military, so he's got a view on the world. I think this came out when we mentioned deserts, and out of the blue he mentions how he wondered how people in Afghanistan even live with it being so dry, it was to his understanding a "blasted wasteland". I replied "maybe irrigation?" to which he mutters under his breath "I don't give them the credit to irrigate"... it went quiet for a bit and I changed the subject (a little aside; I think it actually was the Soviets who developed irrigation in Afghanistan for cotton production, I think it's the reason there's that massive lake in central Asia that's shrinking).

So we get to this guys place, and he has some mad dogs which he spanks. It was weird. As weird as it sounds. But yea his dogs were friendly. He put on the class of 2012 PCT DVD, raving the whole time about the production value (it was damn well done) and brought us some Reece's Pieces (m&ms that have sweet peanut butter stuff instead of chocolate, very nice) and pink lemonade. Watching the DVD from last year was good to mentally prepare, but it also felt overwhelming to see the whole thing condensed into a couple of hours. I even lost a little of my appetite. This guy Bow was from Olympia, Washington (the last State the PCT goes through), and his pack was light. Like really light. It was then that we both realised we needed to ditch a lot of stuff. My pack was about 20kg and Rebecca's was about 16.5kg, incl. food and water (we stocked about 5L of water each, which ended up being too much for the beginning). We ended up leaving a couple of kg of stuff with Bob. It was a nervous night, that feeling when there's nothing left to do except what you've been planning to do.

 

Mount Doom (LA)

Lets just say our first two days in LA were less than impressive. For a start our hostel threw us on blow up beds in a hall with a see through sheet for privacy rather than the 3 bed dorm we booked. This was after of course they tried to put us on the back foot by saying they almost cancelled our booked because we arrived after 10pm (which makes me think they did just give our beds away). But at that stage (remembering the sleepless week we'd had preparing prior to departure) we were so exhausted we just collapsed as we had a big day navigating LA the next day. 

There are a lot of people who loiter in LA, they just sort of wander aimlessly. It was kinda concerning because I didn't know whether they were homeless, had lots of spare time or were waiting for the opportune moment to mug us. Maybe the heat just makes people hang about, I know I wish I wasn't running about in those temperatures. 
Anyway, we were frantically trying to finish our last bits of organisation such as acquiring supplies (Walmart! didn't make it to the REI in Santa Monica) and bits of gear when we return exhausted to find the hostel had taken the liberty of collecting our things and throwing them in the hall. They apparently thought our stuff was some friends of theirs. After much yelling we managed to get two uncomfortable futons in a closet (honestly I didn't think you could fit even one person in there), but also got them to agree to refund half what we paid, but they would only do it on check-out (suspicious). But we weren't the only ones, a group of four Germans turned up to find they only had 3 beds, and a group of girls turned up to find no beds for them (all these people had pre-booked) and the guy threatened to call the police when they got upset and wanted their deposit back. The morning after this we tried to get our money (while also trying to sort our re-supply packages) but no one was there! Eventually a guy turned up but said there was no cash on the premises. An hour or two of furious deliberation later he refunded it to our credit card (the machine also had no receipt paper)... seeing as our credit card is now also giving us trouble we still don't know whether that has gone through. We were very glad to leave LA.

NB: The hostel was called The Moonpad, never ever go there. Also we checked our credit card and the refund went through. Still a horrible place to stay.

Leaving Mother England

 

So we've been thinking about hiking The Pacific Crest Trail for a while now. It's been on Rebecca's mind for years. For those of you who aren't familiar with the trail here's a link to the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) website. For those of you who can't be bothered (I can definitely sympathise) here's a picture of the Western US with the trail marked out;

It's about 2,660 miles (4,281 km), goes through 5 of the 6 eco-zones in The States (no tropical stuff), and reaches over 13,000 feet (it goes 10 meters over 4km above sea level, I know this because every damn travel insurance company only went up to 4km for standard cover). If you're interested in more info read the PCTA site or Wikipedia.

Despite thinking and planning this for so long, leading up to the hike we felt wildly under-prepared. It didn't help that we were denied or visa the first time, pushing our stress levels to even greater lengths and forcing us to semi-plan an alternate hike the length of Japan just in case we were denied the second time. Let me just put in here that those at the US Embassy could use a couple of lessons in international relations, common courtesy and polite behaviour. Never have we been treated so badly, we were expecting to at least be able to sit down and explain our situation. Definitely not the case, less than five minutes in a line at a booth being talked at by a lady who lacked any connection between her ears and her brain. It was like she didn't even want to hear what we had to say, she just wanted key phrases like plenty of cash, commitments at home, definitely not working and of course not a terrorist. She just wanted to hear what she wanted to hear, it almost felt like the truth was of no real consequence!

After that debacle we went in separately and re-worded our explanation to suit the two or three minutes we were allowed to explain our 6 months in The States. This time they were happy, I think the first time they believed we didn't have enough money and we might try to work or stay longer or something along those lines. So we stressed our commitments outside The States and that we would be staying with Family/Friends or camping. It still cost us 400 pounds all up. And of course just as I was about to leave the booth the guy added another little stress bomb; we could be denied at the point of entry or have our stay reduced by the Customs and Border Protection Officer. So we had to sweat and stammer with shaking knees a second time. We didn't actually 100% know we were going to do this until we walked out of LAX.

Then we had gear, insurance, credit/bank cards, GPS, personal locator beacon, knowledge/information, resupply, mileages and the 'simple' planning associated with travelling to a foreign country for 5-6 months to sort out. We also needed to work until really close to leaving to fund this sort of venture. Rebecca quit about 2 weeks before and I quit about a week before leaving. Lets just say there wasn't much sleep in that last week. Somehow we sorted almost everything we needed to before getting to The States, it wasn't perfect but it would suffice.

On top of this Rebecca was leaving her family and friends to move on to NZ with me, but with all the preparation we barely got to say a proper goodbye. We'll be back before long though. I need to try clotted cream tea and scones from Cornwall and go to Cheddar Gorge anyway. So we'll be back. Soon I hope. I also hope to see some of Rebecca's friends in NZ! They're always welcome on my couch (or should I say settee?).

But despite all this we found ourselves racing to the train station on the morning of the 30th of April, a hasty goodbye and thank you to Carol (thank you as well Jim! I feel horrible that I didn't catch you in the morning before you left for work!). It was at this point a little realisation of what we were about to attempt crept in, two parts excitement and one part apprehension. We then caught The Underground to Heathrow, which seemed so quiet and small for one of the largest airports in the world... ran to the gate after a meal at Giraffe (we uh, miscalculated our departure), Rebecca almost threw up on the plane from that little dash (that's how good the nachos were). The Air NZ crew showed the care and courtesy I wish we'd been shown at the US Embassy, then we settled in for 10 hours of rest and films/TV. Boy did we need it, as things started going wrong almost as soon as we landed in LA.