This is part 26 of the “Why We Hike” Series
Saturday, June 20th / 18 miles / 2,366’ gain
Doble Trail Camp to Holcomb Creek
Again, Kelly hardly slept at all during night because the base of her big toe was throbbing so badly. She took something like 9 Aleve in about 10 hours. Having just completed a 24 mile day, we ended up sleeping in an hour later than we originally intended and woke up instead at 5 am. We both needed it.
It had been really windy all night and it continued throughout the morning. The wind kept the clouds from building and kept the skies clear for the day. The trail took us along the ridges just north of Big Bear Lake and every time it crossed over to the south side we got nice views of the lake.
Regardless of where we were at, the trail was really beautiful and had us walking through some lush pine forests.
It was a weekend so of course as we approached Cougar Crest Junction we ran across dozens of day hikers hanging around. I was distracted enough to miss our trail turn off, luckily I once again jut happened to glance down at the GPS and we only had to backtrack a few hundred yards. The funniest part was finding this HUGE sign for the trail turn off that we had missed.
As we crossed over Delamar Mountain, we descended into the Holcomb Canyon we entered a huge burned out area. We kept hoping with every turn that we’d be able to see the end of the miserable scorched earth; it was actually pretty depressing after all the beautiful pine forest we had just traveled through.
We eventually made it to Little Bear Camp; it had been burned out but recently rebuilt. I thought it ironic that there were a slew of alcohol stove burn marks on the table, the kind favored by so-called eco-conscious long distance hikers.
The camp was way too ugly to stop at so we moved on for another half mile to a place along Holcomb Creek that had survived the fire untouched with shade and protection by large trees. Again, there was enough time to gather another thick bed of pile of pine needles for under the tent.
Continues here: Deep Creek Hot Springs