Nicholas Tierney - PCT Day 16: the descent from San Jacinto and into madness

Date: 2023-05-27
Pct day: 16
Start: Mile 186
End: Mile 205
Distance: 19 Miles
Start name:
End name: Water Faucet
Wake up: 06:00
Start hiking: 07:30
At camp: 20:45
In bed: 21:30

Key moments

had a lazy morning start and just lay in bed until about 630, which was really nice
my Seattle friends, Amelia and Adam, were also down for a late start, and we set of together into the mild madness of finding the PCT in the patchy snow - the trail would reappear more frequently as we got lower in elevation, but it was a bit of route finding again, which was a bit of a mental exercise and I was glad to be with some experienced mountaineers, hopefully I’ve absorbed some of their know how.
Travelling through snow takes longer and zaps me of mental energy
We eventually popped out at a nice flat campsite that about 3 weeks ago was nearly entirely covered in snow, but now just had a couple of small snow banks.
These snow banks provided a small but nice snow melt stream
We continued to make the large descent off of the shoulder of San Jacinto down. The PCT is graded to have horses on the entire track, and so as a result there are a lot of switchbacks to ascend or descend
While this is a bit better on the joints, as it is a gentler decline, it also means that it take much much longer to descend as it happens over a longer distance.
Our descents seemed to magically take much longer than usual - and so began what felt like a descent into madness
Came across a rattle snake rattling away at me - scared the absolute shot out of me but their rattle is a pretty cool sound. We waited for it to get off trail but it didn’t so we (that is to say, Adam, the fearless), extended a trekking pole the whole way out and gently tapped near the snake and it moves off of the track, rattling away.
We managed to dodge a storm - getting minor hail and rain, but our friend, Trevor, was about 15 minutes behind us and got completely drenched
I did a cold soak for my lunch and dinner today - and I gotta say, I think this might win me over as a fun thing to do instead of use gas fuel. It just tasted really good! And it was fast!
After some sugar and chicken rice, I felt ready to take on an extra 6 miles down to the final campsite before Cabazon. Where we can get in and out burgers
we all walked down into the night to get down to camp, with about an hourn of total night hiking