Days 24-28
What a whirlwind the last few days have been.
We took one last group of hikers out to Paradise Valley on Wednesday morning, before returning the rental car down the mountain in Hemet.
I decided to keep the Paddles ‘N Jess Express sign as a memento. We caught a bus west to Perris, where we were picked up by Anvil’s wife, Special K.
She was sassy and wry, just like Anvil. We bitched about excessively co-dependent hiker groups (known as ‘trail families’ or the even grosser ‘tramilies’), the confusing hellhole that is US government websites, and modern life in general. I like Special K a lot.
When we arrived at her family home in Dana Point we were greeted by her mum, Jody, who was thrilled to have us. Jody treated us like her own kids, and insisted we borrow her car and help ourselves to the fridge.
All I’d done to earn this generosity was have a chance encounter with another hiker in Idyllwild. I was overwhelmed by this family’s kindness.
We later met Special K’s dad, Leonard, and her adult brothers Elijah and Carter. They were the kind of family who actually like each other, and voluntarily spend time in each other’s company. Their house was a home. I wanted to stay.
We later caught up with Kiki, a 2019 thru-hiker I met the last year I hiked the PCT. I’d posted on a PCT Facebook group asking if anyone wanted to go for a practice hike in Los Angeles, and she’d driven all the way up to take me on a tour of Griffith Park and the Hollywood Sign. It was great to see her again.
Jess’s foot improved. She graduated from the big ol’ boot back to her trail runners. We took a test hike around Dana Point, which went well. Then we tackled a steeper route at the “Top of the World” in Laguna Beach, which also went well.
Jody and Leonard took us out for a Thai dinner the night before we got back on trail. The next morning, Jody drove us the two hours back to Fobes Ranch Road, where we’d left off. On the way we crossed paths with Special K, who’d spent a few days up in Big Bear with Anvil. She brought back the microspikes and ice axe I’d loaned him, which I would need for the next section.
An hour or so later, Jody dropped us back at the road where we’d left the trail. “Bye mum!” Jess said as we hiked off, only half joking. We would both miss her and the whole Van Zanten clan.
We’d expected to hike all four miles of Fobes Ranch Road back to the PCT, but luck was on our side. A pickup truck came trundling along, and pulled over after we held out our thumbs. Two young California dudes were out on a fishing and camping trip.
They cleared a space in the bed of their truck for us, between a loose pile of firewood and a bunch of other camping equipment. We held on as we lurched over potholes and washouts. We were thrilled not to be walking.
We were evicted from the truck a couple of miles later, when our new friends reached their destination. We thanked them and began our slow trudged up to the ridge.
Strapped to my back was my latest gear acquisition: an ultrathin yoga mat from Gossamer Gear that weighed just 75 grams.
My constant back pains require me to lie down every couple of hours – a filthy habit in the dry and dusty desert. I was grateful to have something between me and the ground.
We set up camp at Fobes Saddle, mile 166.6 – where we’d left 11 days before.
Day 29
Today’s miles: 8.9
Total miles: 175.4
Today was our toughest day so far.
We planned to do just nine miles, aiming to ease our bodies back into daily hiking.
Those nine miles felt harder than the 20 we did into Julian.
Winter storms had flattened much of the forest, leaving massive trees strewn across the trail.
Most had to be climbed over or clambered under. Many were treacherous.
Snow chutes forced us to strap on our microspikes. The trail regularly petered out, leaving us to navigate steep scree fields. My ankles ached.
We grinned and bore it through the morning. The grins disappeared after lunch. I got jelly legs. My back started to complain. We talked seriously about skipping the rest of this section. Then our conversation turned to grunts and sighs.
We met a hiker called Southpaw. “I’m hoping my hiker legs come in by tomorrow,” he said.
We stumbled into camp after a final obstacle course that included a steep and treacherous snow bridge.
Many hikers at the camp were equally shattered.
Tomorrow is Tahquitz Peak, which according to the PCT guidebook, “commemorates a legendary Cahuilla Indian demon who lived hereabouts, dining on unsuspecting Indian maidens and, when displeased, giving the weather a turn for the worse”.
Then Saddle Junction, where the Devil’s Slide leads down into Idyllwild. We’d planned to hike through to Cabazon but we may not have the energy.
Mac and Cheese tonight with a cherry chocolate mousse scavenged from Jody’s box of goodies. After sunset we scrambled up onto the rock ledge behind our campsite to get a view of the lights of Palm Springs.
Jess’s foot held up well today. We’re both happy about that.
Day 30
Today’s miles: 4
Total miles: 179.4
In my years of hiking I’ve never had two bad days in a row on trail.
There are sucky days. Painful days. Freezing days. Howling days.
But they have always been followed by a day of rest, of sunshine, of even trail.
And so it was this morning, when we emerged from our tent into the icy wind to see the sun hitting the snowy slopes at the edge of our campsite.
All the sweat and tears of yesterday were in the past. Jess was not in the throes of agonising foot pain. Spirits were high.
We set off early (for us), knowing that snow lay ahead. We wanted to walk over the top of it while it was still frozen, rather than postholing into the slush.
A few more gnarly blowdowns forced us to scramble up and around the ridge, before we descended to its lee side.
When we did, the forest of fallen trees was replaced with another challenge: snow. It was daunting, and exciting.
Jess had never hiked on snow, and had been waiting for this moment since we started the trail.
At the first drift we snapped our microspikes and made our way gingerly across.
The first stretches were some of the scariest. The trail was nothing more than a thin line of footprints stretched across a steep, snowy traverse. The height was dizzying. One wrong step could see us slide off the mountain, as an unfortunate hiker did in 2020.
Then there were the snow bridges. Stretches of seemingly hard-packed snow with the unmistakeable sound of running water beneath them. Holes in the snow revealed a stream of fresh snowmelt.
The terrifying thing about snow bridges is you know they will collapse at some point between now and the end of the thaw. You just hope you’re not the unlucky hiker standing on it when it does.
We ploughed on, following other hikers’ footsteps in a rough approximation of the trail. We hiked the four miles to Saddle Junction in about four hours.
Our original plan had been to hike past Saddle Junction, around Mount San Jacinto, and down to Interstate 10 and the town of Cabazon, where we would resupply.
Doing so would involve traversing Fuller Ridge, which promised many more miles of steep snow. It had been a conversation point for weeks in Idyllwild. Every hiker wanted to know the conditions, whether it was safe, whether they should skip.
The alternative is Black Mountain Road, a boring but safe gravel track that leads from Idyllwild up to Fuller Ridge Campground, at the end of the traverse.
Jess and I had wavered back and forth. I didn’t particularly want to do the ridge, but I knew she was also feeling a sense of accomplishment after yesterday’s struggle. If she wanted to keep pushing herself, I didn’t want to be the one to stop her.
“I think I want to do Black Mountain,” she said, when decision time came. She said she had been terrified by some of the earlier traverses, and was tired of fearing for her life. We both cried. I was proud of her.
So we took the 2.5-mile descent on the Devil’s Slide trail into Idyllwild. I was suddenly giddy at the prospect of an unexpected town day. Hot food! Wine! Shower and laundry! Wine!
I used my Zoleo GPS communicator to text Ella, the Idyllwild trail angel who had generously put us up in her cottage the previous week.
“There is a problem with the cottage,” she said. “But we can put you in the cabin”. And so Ella and her husband, Andrew, picked us up from the foot of the Devil’s Slide and drove us to their AirBnB.
It was a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cabin from mountain movie central casting. Pine-clad walls, a fireplace, a teddy bear on the bed. We were endlessly grateful.
We showered, laundered, laid about for a bit, then headed into town to resupply. Given our early stop, we’d decided to skip Cabazon and hike straight through to Big Bear, 80 miles away.
We stopped at the post office and mailed our ice axes back to our friend Enia in San Francisco.
Then we tackled the supermarket, and the seemingly endless list of foods we would need to make it six days through the California desert.
Somewhere between the breakfast bars and the mac ‘n cheese my back began to scream at me, despite the 1300mg of paracetamol I’d already given it that day.
A dull throbbing emanated from my tailbone and began to spread through my hip and down into my left leg. Sciatica.
I’d experienced this on and off for the last three years. I’d really been hoping it would fuck off by now.
We wheeled our overloaded trolley (how would we possibly pack all this stuff?) over to the pizza shop, where we ordered dinner.
I ended up in line behind another hiker using a pair of crutches. “Did you get those from the thrift store?” I asked. He had. They were Jess’s crutches, which I’d bought down in Hemet just 10 or so days ago. We were both glad to see them helping another hiker.
My back continued throbbing as we ate our pizza and downed a beer, then a bottle of wine. Andrew picked us up and drove us back to the cabin.
The sunny mood from this morning was gone. My back wouldn’t stop yelling at me, even when I laid down. Only a third dose of paracetamol would shut it up.
I worried whether I was doing permanent harm to my back by doing this. And whether I’d already aged out of the PCT, just five years after I discovered it.
“If you need to rest your back tomorrow, I’m happy to take a zero”, Jess said.
