- Date: 2023-05-20
- Pct day: 15
- Start: Mile 176
- End: Mile 187
- Distance: 11 Miles
- Start name: campsite 176.4
- End name: campsite 187.5
- Wake up: 04:15
- Start hiking: 05:20
- At camp: 16:55
- In bed: 19:40
Key moments
- woke up early to get a move on to push for summiting San Jacinto - the first big mountain on trail at 10,800 feet - about 3300m or so
- We ended up getting into another track and then navigating back onto the trail by heading towards a landmark - my friends from Seattle are experienced mountaineers and were very happy to be navigating on the snow. I felt very happy to be with them!
- travelling in the snow is taxing and takes much longer, we were putting on our micro spikes, which are nifty rubber straps that have chains and spikes attached to them that you put on your show to give you better traction on the snow and ice
- you’ve got to watch out for holes in the snow - which form next to rocks and trees, since these get heated up by the sun and transfer heat springs the rock/tree creating a hole that you can accidentally plunge into
- There are also snow bridges, which are when snow packs over streams and creeks, and while they can help save you a stream crossing as you can walk over them, they can break when you walk over them, if they have already started to melt, which can be very dangerous.
- Snow is cool, but it really requires you to be on the ball, and that’s awesome but taxing
- Some random dude on the trail tried to give me a trail name but it didn’t take : “orange” or “ranga” (my pack is orange, really original mate)
- The trail would have these large blow outs of snow on the trail so the trail would sometimes disappear and toy would walk over the snow
- after a lot of steep walking up snow, We made it to the top of San Jacinto! So many views I haven’t seen before, it was just gorgeous
- As it was a weekend, there were a lot of people on trail, and there was a very amusing conversation of some people I think from LA taking photos “stick your butt out girl, turn to the side just a bit, turn your chin over to the right, that’s it, it’s all about angles” and so on for 20 minutes as they took photos. It was all gold.
- The descent was faster but also taxing in a different way to ascent - I also had to adjust to the snow giving way as I stepped on it and you kind of plunge down the slope - thanks to the help of my Seattle friends they said that sometimes it is was easier to just go a bit faster. So i pretended it was a sand dune I was going down and then I started moving a lot faster. Obviously you can’t run down an entire snow slope, as there are tricky navigation point but it was really fun
- The ice axe came out and was a very useful tool to help descend slopes. Such a neat thing.
- the snow made our descent a bit trickier to find, and we ended up back on the PCT with a crossing over a large stream. The best way over was via a log, which was honestly a bit spooky at first but it was the path. One of my Seattle friends might be an elf and happily trotted across the log, even taking my bag over to make it easier for me, for which I was very grateful. It was a scary moment crossing the log - but it turns out micro spikes make walking on wood very secure, so I took a deep breath, and knew that if I let this wait any longer it’s build up too big in my mind. I know I can do this. I know that I’ve done longer log crossings, it’s just that this one might have had slightly higher consequences. A few sure steps and I was over. Relief. My god. Haven’t felt that kind of rush since some of the good old rock climbing days. I saw another hiking friend I met on the 2nd day appear after I did the log crossing, it’s so fun to bump into hiking friends out here, sometimes you don’t see each other for days or weeks and then you see them again, it’s great.
- We had another short mile to camp from here, and filling up water at another water crossing (no log of doom) we were surprised to find that this snow fed stream was full of random bits and pieces of leaf and soil. This makes using the filters we use hiking a bit tricky as too many bit chunky things clog the filter , which you can fix, it’s just a bit of admin
- We got to camp just before 5pm and we were quite exhausted. We had done a bit over 11 miles, not exactly a huge day distance wise. But it had been an epic day.
- I kept thinking through the day how the Sierras will probably be a bit similar to this (they have had an all time high snow year) - all the extra snow making the rest of the trail really slow. This was a bit disheartening at first, but now after a meal and being in my sleeping bag, I think I could handle this for a few weeks. But we shall see what the people ahead of us are going through. Not much point making plans now - if I can make it to Mike 700, to Kennedy Meadows, where the Sierras start, that is a huge victory. And maybe I decide to skip some sections if the trail conditions are good.
- But right now we are all really keen to get back to the desert
Plan from here
- hike maybe 14 miles or so, the next stop is Cabazon, which has apparently both a Chipotle and an “in and out” burger place. Very exciting! I plan on eating a large amount of fast food there before resupplying and heading back out on trail. So the more miles we do tomorrow the faster I can have my first in and out burger
Animals sighted
- ravens
- Chickadees?
- Squirrels
Gear thoughts
- need to investigate snow baskets for my hiking poles
- A better leash for my ice axe
- My ice axe is now called Sting
Physical condition
- good - one thing about a day in the cold snow is that your feet get a chance to get iced for a whole day.
- My right blister seems to have settled down
Thoughts and Observations
- we are fifteen days into the PCT, there is so much ahead of us
Quotes of the day
- “oh we didn’t have our oatmeal today! Oh wait we ate it this morning”
#pct #pct2023 #pctclassof2023
