Some new pictures along the PCT

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Day 25 Wrightwood

Brrrrrrrr, what a cold morning. We were in no hurry as we had only 5 miles to reach the road and hitch to Wrightwood so we waited for the sun and eventually left our sleeping bags. We had breakfast with the colonel and left camp first. There was so much wind, it was so glacial to walk. This morning I really wished to be in the Mojave desert. I know I will wish the opposite when we’ll eventually be there.
We quickly arrived to the road with Beowolf and the Colonel, soon followed by Moonsoon, Williwaw and Ian.
We waited maybe 15 minutes and there was no traffic on the road so Beowolf, Moonsoon and the Colonel lost patience and starter to hike down the 5 miles on the road to town. 2 minutes after they left a car pulled down with three other hikers who had stayed in town yesterday and were heading back to the trail. Good luck, Dylan drove us back and it appears that his father Jeff is a trail angel, so he offered us to stay for the night! Great timing.
We obviously waved a our three friends while passing them.
You know Lafontaine’s fable about the turtle and the hare, that’s it!
Dylan dropped us in town to the Evergreen Cafe where we had a huge breakfast with Ian and Williwaw. Ludo took the Mountain Man and I the Mountain Woman.
The three other guys eventually arrived and we all enjoyed our breakfast.
Everybody is so friendly in this town. People were talking to us a the cafe and encouraging us. Then we went to the hardware store and the grocery store and we were offering rides and people were offering us their help. So nice but we were all set. We met another hiker whom I don’t recall his name, he used to be a tennis player and had participated to Rolland Garros, the qualification part.
Then we called Jeff who took us to his home. His last name is Fleury, that’s French.
We invited him to have burger for dinner and went to the Yodeler, a biker’s pub.
We were eating at the terrasse when an other hiker ran into us. It’s Acorn. Ian started with him. He ate dinner with us and all went back to Jeff’s home. It’s nice to meet new faces and listen to their stories.
Then an hour later Medicine Man, another hiker arrived. Hiker gathering tonight!

Day 24 and it climbs

We had a wonderful night in the comfy bed of the best western. We ate breakfast at 6am and we ate an impressive amount of food, basically everything they were offering, scramble eggs with beef party, waffles, yogurt, muffins, fruit coffee and juice. We needed to stock up energy and calories for the long day. It was fun we walked with four other strong men, well we were more following them and only catching up with them when they had a break. The colonel, Williwaw, Beowolf and Moonsoon.
The hike was beautiful and thankfully cool as we climbed all day more than 5000 feet (you need to divide by 3 to get meters) we had a beautiful views and arriving to the top we were able to see the landscape of the last 2 weeks we hiked with the mountains from big bear and even Mt San Jacinto far in the horizon. It gave us a strong sense of accomplishment.
We had a short stretch through an infested puddle dog bush area. I renamed it puddle dog bitch. It’s a plant that gives terrible rash if you touch it, same as poison oak or poison ivy.

We met Ian at lunch break, he is half Canadian-American, so we talk with pleasure about Montreal and Canada. He is very cool and has a sweet shirt two flags sewed on it, the American one and the Canadian one.

I felt a bit sick after lunch, not sure if it was due to the peanut butter tortilla or if I was dehydrated, but I felt like if I was hangover with a slight nausea and a head ache. We carried on more slowly and after several breaks it went away and I was feeling better. Maybe it was the altitude but I doubt it as we were not over 9000 feet.
Still we were pretty sore at the end of the day with a good 23,5 miles and a huge elevation gain.
We camped with the strong men, also known as fantastic 4 and we had a good laugh. Everybody went quickly to bed at 7:30 pm as it started to be freezing cold. It’s going to be a cold night up there. There is still patches of snow around the trail, but nothing on it, totally fine and safe to walk.

Day 22 23 at kick off

Kick off was really cool. We get to meet lot of people and see familiar faces. We had great fun. It was also nice to chill out in the morning not to rush to start walking.
We volunteered for two hours to help the organization with traffic control. At the end of the 2 hours we were very cold but glad to have helped and participated a little. We attended some conferences one about flora and fauna, one abou the snow condition and the best one I found about bears. On the afternoon we had a great laugh watching the gear contest. People were presenting funny gear, or hand made ones.
Chef Paul cooked burger with a team of volunteer for all the participants (more than 500). And at night we saw a really beautiful movie from a guy that walked the PCT in 2011. “As it happens”.
as it happens TV

We managed to find a ride on Sunday. Lionheart, a girl from northern California that has done the pct in 2013 and 2009 offered to drop us off at Cajon Pass where we stopped last Thursday. She was really cool and we had a nice chat.
We stayed at the Best Western with a lot of other hikers. After booking the room, Ludo realize that the IPhone has fallen from his pocket and his probably in lionheart’s car. What a bummer! And we only know her trail name, we don’t have her contact details nor her real name so we can look after her on FB.
As we were telling the other hikers to see if somebody knew her better, we got a call from reception desk. Lionheart was waiting for us with the IPhone, she realized we left the phone quite quickly and came back to bring it back. Thanks again you are awesome. And that was definetely some trail magic moment. Especially that we use our iPhone all the time for navigation, checking the water report, the elevation and using the gps to localize ourselves.

It’s so good to sleep in a real bed even if I feel that we don’t really deserve it as we haven’t walk for half of the week. It’s weird it even feels like we’ve stopped walking for more than 3 days.

Tomorrow back to the trail. We will have a massive day of 22 miles and 1600 m to climb. It’s good that we are well rested.

First day at the PCT Kick Off 2014

We woke up quite early this morning, at 5.00 am, to go to the Kick Off in Lake Morena. As usual, Papa Smurf cooked us tortilla for breakfast. After 4 hours driving from Big Bear, we arrived at destination. It was so nice to be there again and to see back all the hikers that we had met the days before. As PCT thru hikers, the campground was free, food and drinks as well. We followed a conference about how to prevent injuries and an other one about how to get prepared for snow condition up in the Sierras.
We were so glad that Bipolar made it to the Kick Off, same as for other hikers. After dinner, there was the PCT film festival. About an hour and a half of short movies, all done by PCT hikers 2013 and trail angel Chipmunk. A lot of fun!
Now it’s time to go to bed, as Monty (from Warner Springs) asked us to help tomorrow morning at the registration tent of the PCT Kick Off.

Day 19 and 20 down to Cajon pass

We left the hot spring by 7:40 on Wednesday morning and there was already naked men bathing in the cold morning.
We walked 21miles this day and saw plenty of small snakes, at least half a dozen. We had our lunch break with 3 other hikers, Squirrel and Early Bird who planned to walk 30 miles and Bipolar, a funny chatty outgoing guy.
We only had 5 miles left and it was easy and beautiful just along Silverwood lake. We stopped at 4:30 in the afternoon, so nice to stop early and still advance more than 20 miles. We wanted to swim in the lake but suddenly there was a lot of wind and the water was cold so we washed ourselves in the toilets of the picnic area.
Bipolar was staying too at the picnic area. We were a bit afraid to get kick out by the ranger but he let us camp there. We had a nice evening with Bipolar and we offered him hot tea and chocolate as he doesn’t carry a stove.

As we wanted to have a really early start on Thursday we decided to cowboy camp on the picnic table so we would be quicker to tidy everything and start hiking.
That was a bad idea. We had a really cold night and very humid so close to the lake.

We walked up at 5 completely frozen, packed all our things and we realized that we lost our sawyer filter, so we unpacked everything but still didn’t find it. We probably forgot it at the last water source when we were filtering the water. Too bad, at least, we don’t need it for today and we’ll buy another one at kick off.
So we started at 6:40, that’s the earliest we managed so far. It was going up for the first 3 miles and it was a good thing as it helped us getting warm. After the first 7 miles we met Bipolar on the trail. He had a really early star at 5 and was taking a nap. We hiked the remaining 7 miles to the highway 15 and the McDonald’s together and it was fun. He reminds me of our friend Brad, only 20 years older.
We were glad to arrive at the mcDonald’s and hungry too. I’m not the hugest fan of McCrado burgers but honestly this one was very comforting, first time I order a second burger and a mcFlurry.
We said goodbye to Bipolar and start hitching back to Big Bear City. We managed in 4 different rides and 4 hours and the funniest hazard is that the last car that stopped was Papa Smurf’s son! What a coincidence.

Tomorrow we’ll go to PCT kick off for 2 awesome party days.

Day 18 Hot Spring

The day went well. Nothing really special. We kept cruising for 22,5 miles. We had our lunch break by a nice river and while we were washing our feet and legs Ludo found gold in it. Well it’s shiny, we’re not really sure If it is but we like to think so.

We saw plenty of BAPOWs as our friend DB like to call them. (bad ass piece of woods) some of the dead trees were almost as large as I am tall.

By the end of the day, Ludo’s feet were very painful with 2 blisters below the heel.

The highlight of the day is definitely the hot spring. There is plenty of hyppies and naked people but it’s such a pleasure to have a bath in a natural hot spring, especially for the muscles.
I don’t know if it is the hot bath, all the naked men around me or hypoglycemia but when I wanted to get out of the spring I felt really dizzy and I had trouble reaching the tent. I sit down for a while, ate a Cliff bar and a handful of nuts and I felt better.

Day 17 California cruising

We had a late start this morning at 9:40. We had an amazing breakfast with an egg and sausage burrito, potatoes and a yogurt. Then Papa Smurf drove us back to the trail intersection. We had left for 5 minutes when Papa received a phone call from his son asking him to come back because his puddle dog was bleeding a lot. So what happen his that his caniche dog was biting a bone and his son wanted to take it off as it was a bad bone. Peach, the puddle was angry and trying to bite the son. The thing is that his son had a bigger dog, 3 times the size of Peach. So the big dog bit back Peach in order to defend his owner. There was blood all over the porch but it wasn’t a big bite thankfully and the bleeding stopped. So an hour later after taking care of poor little Peach, Papa Smurf drove us back. We helped him fill up the hiker cache with water bottle and pepsi can. He also said a prayer for us so we have a safe trail.
Then it went all smooth, cruising in the trail. We did 19 miles without even suffering. We had beautiful views over big bear lake and the mountains behind. The last 5 miles were in a totally burnt area with dry hills on the horizon and only burnt dead trees.
We camped in the only area where a few pine trees had survived. We ate dinner with Slow Bro and his friends Cathy and Bob, share stories. I also tried Cathy’s hammock and it’s very comfortable.

Big bear city

We wake up surprisingly in shape with no muscle pain after our huge day. It was freezing cold though and our fingers and feet were frozen while eating breakfast and cleaning camp.
It was only 10 miles to the road and we contacted Papa Smurf, a trail angel who offered us to stay at his place. On our way down the trail we met 3 young hikers from Ashland, Oregon who offered us a ride to town as their mother was waiting for them at the road intersection with a big RV.
We arrived a couple of minutes before them and there was a French family parked there so we discussed while waiting for them. They offered us pain au chocolat! And we also got bananas and lemon pie from the mother of the youngs.
That’s a sweet return to civilization.
We got a nice welcome by josh, Papa smurf’s son who drove us to Carl’s junior and to the supermarket for our resupply. We were also able to have a hot shower and do our laundry at their place. So thanks again Josh, Mt Mama and Papa Smurf.
We were also planning for the next days as we finally decide to go to the PCT kick off party next Friday and saturday, back at lake Morena, next to the Mexican border.
Hopefully we’ll get a ride to go back there and have fun for 2 days.

Pictures from Idyllwild to Big Bear City

This gallery contains 26 photos.