Big Bear Lake

Here I am in Big Bear Lake, taking another zero. Why? Well, I guess I shouldn't have opened my big mouth about being all healed and doing great physically. We all have many new blisters or at least very sore feet, and a strong desire for another day off to heal. Plus, it's been snowing again and we were happy to escape that bit of bad weather. We never had any snow ourselves, but it has been very cold.

Still, the last few days have been pretty good to me, far more positive, mentally and physically, than the days leading up to Idyllwild. For starters, we began with some amazing luck. See, we'd gone into Idyllwild via the Devil's Slide Trail, a 2.5 mile trail that leaves you at a trailhead at some park at the end of a little used road: meaning, roadwalk. We'd been trying to psych ourselves up for this total of 4.5 miles back to the PCT, miles that didn't count towards Canada. K-Bomb and I were the first ones ready to go, the first ones out the door. Truly, I hadn't even made it fully outside when I heard a woman say, "do you guys need a ride to the trail?" Astonishing luck, saved us 2 miles of walking some steep road. We piled 6 hikers plus gear into her SUV.

This good fortune resulted in K-Bomb and I having enough time to summit San Jacinto Mountain. It was a 6.5 mile loop off the PCT, which means we'd miss 4 miles of the actual trail. But I'll be blunt: I'm no purist. I don't care about walking every little mile of the PCT. I'm walking to Canada. If I do it on my own two feet (no hitch-hiking to skip parts) then it counts. So on up we went, up to 10,800 feet or so. Even with the altitude, I'm pretty sure I was sucking wind far harder on the climb out of Pearisburg, VA on the AT, than going up this mountain. Not bad for a guy with a heart condition; I'm so far very pleased with how that's been treating me out here. We had to traverse a lot of snow, and the spur trail to the summit itself was lost, we just went straight up over the snow. The view was 360 degrees and perfectly clear, looking out to many other nearby ranges, several with snow on them, and down 9000 or more feet to the desert floor. We stayed only briefly, then went down.

Getting down meant more bushwhacking. The trail after the area of the little summit spur was covered as well, so I told K-Bomb that we should just pull out the compass, shoot a bearing, and get back to the PCT the quick way. It would also avoid a bit of a loop to the south, which the official side trail does. Shortcuts, right?

Well, it worked, sorta. There was much "boot skiing" over the snowpack, trying to avoid trees and rocks. It was great fun, really. But in the end it was tiring and the topography seemed to be getting far harder to get over, huge boulders and such. We found the stream we'd been looking for, though, followed it a bit until we found the side trail, and ended up following it to the PCT. The whole day was pretty tiring, complete with soaked feet. Still, I was glad we ended up summitting the mountain; we'd figured against it and only decided to do it at the last minute.

So I mentioned wet feet. I had new blisters by the time we made camp. Then the next day didn't help much. We had miles and miles (and miles) of downhill, switchbacks from 9000 ft to 1000 ft. None of our feet took it well. We ended up at the Mesa Wind Farm and camped there, relaxing and doctoring our feet. Ninja and Drop and Roll had joined us by this point, they're sort of hiking with us as a group. We all continually find it amusing how much we talk about our feet, how we all watch each other pop our blisters... I actually had an audience the other evening, as I prepared to pop a huge on on the outside edge of my foot, then one on the same foot's heel. The latter squirted out like a fountain, warning everyone back. And, I have a toenail MIA. It was there when I put the socks and shoes on in the morning, but when I took them off on a shoes-off break, it was gone. At first I thought the giant blister under it had just seriously deflated, then I looked closer and was like, "wait, where the fuck is my toe nail?!" Musta been that barefoot ford of the Whitewater creek. K-Bomb keeps saying I'm going to find it months from now after the trail, floating around in my food bag.

Ninja referred the the PCT as "dirt and pain," which we all had a good laugh over. It's sorta true, yet somehow we all love it. For myself I'm realizing how much better I am at pushing myself through pain and adversity than before. I feel stronger as a man in that sense of inner toughness. When before I might have wanted to just sit down because my feet hurt or I'm tired, it's now far clearer to me that it's better to just keep moving.

Finally, yesterday we woke up from the frigid night, dreaming of town some 20 miles away. We had an early start, easy miles, and cool (cold, almost) weather. We cruised all morning, though Ninja, K-Bomb and I did get lost briefly; while following a forest road for a while, we missed a turnoff. Still, we ended up getting to the road by 3, a pretty solid pace. For the last 4 miles or so, after our last break, I put myself in a trance with a simple breathing technique: two steps breathing in, two breathing out. The trekking poles help set the rhythm. My vision sorta blurred over and contracted to just the trail and K-Bomb's feet, most thinking stopped, the pain in my feet was gone such that I felt like I was just floating along, and the hour and a half or so that it took to get to the road felt like 20 minutes. Of course I have no idea about the landscapes we walked through, so it's a trade off.

At the road was some trail magic, and also a ride from the hostel we were going to, all in the space of about two minutes. The trail provides. Sure great to be indoors, as the weather continues to be freezing and it's currently raining out. We have showers, much food, movies, coffee. We all love the hiking, the mountains, all of that, but all of that makes us also love town more too.