Snowy and Washed: PCT Week 3

One of my biggest fears when hiking is having to stop due to an injury. I’m incredibly stubborn, so I cry and complain my way through 20 miles, but quitting smoking isn’t usually in my playbook. With the pain I had been experiencing in my foot, I had a very real fear about the possibility of this injury stopping my walking. I will never be able to see the Sierras, I will have worked all this time to save money for nothing, I will not be able to do what I enjoy most.

Of course, I am my own worst enemy and will often scare myself into ridiculous thought spirals like this. Cactus, ever the level-headed one, continued to gently remind me that we crossed these bridges as we came to them, not miles before. So I nervously waited around the morning of our day zero for my appointment with Blaze, a physical therapist focused on hikers. We had our telehealth session, she told me some things I could do to manage the pain and suggested a change of shoe model, and we went to the equipment store.

The guys at the equipment store in Idyllwild were wonderful. They helped me pick out a new backpack as mine just didn’t fit well enough. I also switched to a pair of Topo Traverses, as Blaze suggested they would provide more support than the Pursuits I had been using. Cactus was able to trade in a pair of Darn Toughs that blew up (something almost unheard of) for the wider model they recently released. After a hefty bill, we headed out to lunch again with my friend Gummy Bear.

We chose a place called Idy Sushi because they served food that suited all of our dietary needs. The sushi was delicious, although expensive, and shortly after our meal, Spice unexpectedly appeared and joined us. I ended up talking to the chef, telling him about FarOut and suggesting he list his business to attract more hiker traffic. We talked about how hikers love to carry condiment packets and then he handed me a handful of Ziploc bags, soy sauce packets, and a giant grocery bag full of packets of random Korean ramen noodles. I was addicted to ramen for days!

A bag of expired ramen from the sushi chef.

That night was a bit restless for Cactus, and as we packed up and ate breakfast, we talked about whether we would try to summit San Jacinto that day or the next. We were worried about the threat of an incoming storm, where snow was forecast above 7,000 feet, so our plan was to get down to the valley where I-10 is as quickly as possible and let the storm hit us in the form of rain. However, just as we were leaving, Cactus got a migraine and we had to drastically change our plans.

We walked to the campground in town and paid for a tent site so Cactus could lie down for a while. By noon, he was feeling well enough to walk, and Grizzly Gramps stopped once again just as we were preparing to call a trail angel for a ride. It took us back to the trailhead and we hiked back up the side trail, connecting back to the PCT at 2 p.m. The temperature was dropping, so we decided to camp right at the base of the San Jacinto trail and head to the summit the next morning.

San Jacinto Desert

The next day was my worst day on this hike. I hadn’t slept well and as soon as I left the city I always felt like my backpack was full of bricks. From where we camped, it was a little over 3 miles to the top of San Jacinto, and it took us over 2 hours to get there. Once we did, we were met with billowing clouds covering most of the valley view. This immediately soured me. We didn’t have to do this stupid climb, we decided to do it, and it took enough energy for me to feel like I deserved a nice view. On top of that, it was too cold to wait and see if anything would clear up.

On our way to the other side of the mountain, I tripped on a rock and my face landed on the trail. I sat there and cried for a few minutes, completely inconsolable. I was cold, I hated my gloves, my heels still hurt, my legs hurt like hell, and I felt betrayed by San Jacinto. However, Cactus worked his magic and sat with me until I could calm down. I told him that was the only time so far that I had fully considered quitting. From there, the day only got worse as we headed down the mountain. We walked for a full 11 hours that day, just trying to find a suitable campsite. In the end we camped on a slope and I had another terrible night’s sleep.

There are no views from the top 🙁

Our morning went pretty well after some coffee and breakfast. We hiked 12 miles mostly downhill to get to the highway, where a friend of mine left us a vehicle to borrow for the day (best magical trail ever). We drove into town, restocked at a Walmart, ate a bunch of In-N-Out burgers, and booked a spot at a KOA to try to escape the wind. At the very least, putting our tent stakes into the ground instead of loose sand was a welcome pleasure.

With too much food in our backpacks, as always, we left my friend’s truck the next morning and began our hike around the Mesa Wind Farm. Shortly into the day, we got our first taste of rain. We knew it was coming and thought we had triumphantly evaded the snow everyone warned us about in Idyllwild. It was only supposed to rain for about an hour, but of course it was endless. It would stop for a moment, then start again, and by around 4pm I was over it. We set up our tents earlier than we had planned and soon after the clouds cleared completely.

Two unhappy hikers stuck in the rain

Our next section was the infamous Mission Creek. A few years ago, a storm washed out a large portion of the trail that runs through a canyon along Mission Creek. The section was talked about as “route finding,” but it was more about walking along a rocky shoreline and crossing the creek for about 10 miles with intermittent boulder fields. Luckily we were able to find the trail once it recovered, but it was a sketchy scramble up a crumbling cliff.

After this, the trail still had quite a few small landslides, so we crawled over fallen trees and walked up steep slopes of loose dirt. About a mile from our intended campsite, it started to snow on us. We quickened our pace, wanting to stay warm, and finally reached what was marked as a campsite on FarOut… only to find that it had also been razed. The snowflakes grew heavier and I began to shiver. My gloves were wet, my fleece was wet from when it initially started snowing and I needed to change into dry clothes.

The snow falls softly on us

Cactus finally found us a lumpy spot that was at least big enough for the tent, and we set it up as quickly as possible. We also tried to eat quickly and cover ourselves with the quilts. I slept in every layer I had on that night and the temperatures dropped enough to partially freeze the water in our bottles. We kept having to hit the snow on the tent from the inside to keep it from falling on our faces. Finally, the snow turned to something else (sleet? hail?) and ice formed on the tent. We both fell asleep pretty cold, worrying about trail conditions the next day.

To our delight, the Sun started melting things pretty early the next day. We ran into Big Bootie Ho and Blue Bunny, who told us they got lost in the canyon and climbed up a steep slope to get back to the trail. We had a pretty long water haul that day, so to avoid dry camping we decided to go 18 miles to a campsite near a creek. We walked quickly and the miles seemed easy. My heel was doing surprisingly well after all the pounding the day before, but I was certainly ready for the day to be over.

Snowbird Trail Magic!

A mile before reaching camp, we came across a magical trail. A former PCT hiker, Snowbird, was set up on a dirt trail with a propane griddle and offered to cook us some burgers. We sat there and ate three each, enjoying good conversation with him and some other hikers who arrived. We stayed for about an hour and then left to find a nice flat spot to camp next to a stream. It was cold, but it was nice not to have to cook anything. We went straight into our bags, happy with how the day ended.