Today: 16 (7 PCT miles, 9 other dirt miles)
Left PCT at milepost 242.2
Total: 265
At 2am there was a beast to FEED! Sarah & I are not morning people on trail. We typically sleep till the sun blasts us out of our sleeping bags with its rays of fire, but today we are on a little secret mission. There has been great debate in the hiker world as to the closure of this next section of trail. Rumor has it the trail is ready to be opened after the Lake Fire but some sort of politics are keeping it from being officially open. Some were sending reports of walking through the whole closure with no problem, others reported encountering rangers and paying hefty fines for being there. Most hikers were shuttling around this trail section from Cabazon to Big Bear, but Sarah & I are not about to skip miles. Some hikers are doing a super long and sketchy roadwalk around the whole section, also not appealing. We want dirt. So Sarah schemed a way to walk through a minimal amount of the closure, 7 miles, then hop off on the earliest side-trail and make up our own sort of alternate route of random trails and forest roads up to Big Bear. I’m all for the adventure, so here we are at 2am. I am hungry the minute my alarm goes off. We pack up quietly, stuff a few snacks in accessible pockets and tip-toe past our neighbor.
The headlamp-lit trail appears to be in good condition. There are no closure signs along the trail, it appears as if it was meant to be open. Sarah’s headlamp goes out so I give her mine and stumble along behind her in the dark. I would consider myself more of a klutz than a ballerina and it was frankly quite amazing my feet were the only things hitting the ground! We stopped for a few quick snack breaks, desperately trying to fuel the body, but kept moving through the hunger trying to make it out of the closure by daybreak.
Somehow through all the stumbling in the dark we transported ourselves from the desert of white water preserve to a forest! Definite burn area, but the trail was in good condition.
Sunrise found me STARVING but still enjoying the still beauty of an empty forest coming to life 🙂
By 6am we had made the 7 miles through the closure without sighting a single soul or closure sign! We hopped off on the side-trail, my conscience relieved that we were unquestionably legal now 🙂 Absolutely starved and exhausted from a less-than-solid 5 hrs of sleep the night before, we plop down on the bank along the side of the trail and finally eat breakfast! Or 2nd breakfast? Sarah cozies up in her sleeping bag to doze in the crisp dawn, I’m terrible at napping but soon find myself waking up to the sun on my face 🙂 What a lovely surprise!
Slightly refreshed, we trek on down our new route. Side-trails, forest roads and some cross-country, we are the only hikers doing this and we’re loving it! At 10am Sarah stops abruptly, throws her pack down by a tree and announces that she has to eat NOW! I don’t share her urgency in this moment, but having been hungry since 2am I have no complaints about another snack break! The only problem is our meager rations that have to get us all the way to Big Bear *SIGH*
We snack, keep trekking, enjoying being the only sign of human life out there, and sarah points out a bear track! This foot was bigger than my foot, we have a big friend out here 🙂 The tracks follow the dirt road for awhile, disappear off into the trees, come back, leave…I was having great fun tracking the bear as we strode along singing all the songs we could think of about bears!
Then at one point where the tracks came back to the road, there were baby tracks too! There was a little more urgency in Sarah’s step after that, we didn’t stop to marvel as many things 🙂
By 1pm we make it out to the highway and Heart Bar Campground-water! Yay! The campground host was quite friendly and generous, telling us to stay as long as we wanted, so we hung out in an empty campsite and took more naps in the sun 🙂 I can’t remember the last time I took TWO naps in one day. And the day’s only half over! haha
We wake up starving again, cook a second lunch then tackle the mountain climb on the other side of the highway. It feels like this whole day has been a desperate attempt to catch up on rest and calories and it’s just not working. We have gained a bunch of elevation already, and climbing this hill now is just exhausting. We chat and dream about all the food we want to eat, the bottomless fries at Red Robin, the milkshakes, Taco Bell, pizza…by 4:30pm we arrived at Wildhorse Camp. Would be quite a lovely place to camp actually and boy are we exhausted! But feeling the hunger and seeing the miles still between us and our boxes of food in Big Bear, I really want to get closer. I think Sarah would have preferred to just camp there, but I thought we would feel so much better if we just finished the climb a couple more miles to the top of the ridge and sleep closer to town aka food. We compromised, had 1st dinner at Wildhorse, then took off up more of the mountain.
I did not realize what the trail was going to do. After climbing up the hill following a little creek, we turned off a dirt road onto a trail that went STRAIGHT UP the side of Sugarloaf Mountain. There was nothing sweet about this massively vertical slope. We struggled up about 10 steps at a time, missing the nicely graded PCT every step of the way. I wanted to be at the top so bad, but my legs would start screaming for a break after 10 seconds of scaling this sugarloaf. Sarah was struggling too, I started feeling bad for dragging her up this at the end of such an already brutal day. Her muscles have a legit neurological reason to be refusing to work, and here I am pushing those limits to the max. I just want to be at the top! I just want to be horizontal. I just want to eat food.
My mind finally wins, I stop listening to my legs and just drag one in front of the other until I am ON the ridge! I throw my pack down on the flat ridgetop that will be a fantastic bed for the night, and collapse next to it. Knowing no amount of brain power can make her legs move anymore than they decide they want to, I go back to the edge and cheer Sarah on as she conquers this blasted Sugarloaf like a CHAMP!
There is a nice view from the top! A few pictures are enough for tonight, though. We have more pressing desires than gazing at beauty this night. Needs to be horizontal, needs to eat food 🙂
2nd dinner is in order, the 6th meal of the day. I think hiker hunger hit today! haha From the moment a starving beast was awoken @ 2am this morning, I knew today would be a struggle. At 6pm, the beast is absolutely beat. It was a losing battle trying to catch up on sleep and food, but our secret mission was a success! That night hiking was suicidal though….not gonna plan no more of that anytime soon. So brutal. All day. Fooooooooooooood
sherpadventures 