This is part 25 of the “Why We Hike” Series
Thurs., June 18th / 5.3 miles / 812’ gain (Prep & Drop-Off Day)
For this trip, a lot more time was spent preparing our food. First, I worked out all the kinks with freezer bag cooking (FBC) that we were having by freeze drying our own recipes instead of relying on the Knor pasta and rice products. Through trial and error I taught myself how to make the dishes come out more or less perfect, even if Kelly had some misgivings.
Second, we loaded up half the food into a 5 gallon bucket and did a recon trip up to Silverwood Lake to see if there was any place to leave a resupply. After being declined by the administrative office and the camp host, the guys at the front gate readily agreed to hold our cache. This was a load off our minds and more importantly, our backs!
The Jeep was dropped off at our destination, Mill Creek Summit in the Angeles Forest, which is a mere 45 minutes from our house. Luckily with Jaz out of school and not leaving for her summer job at the pack station for a couple of days, we were able to sweet talk her into giving us a ride to the trailhead where we had to bail off the PCT on our last trip. As part of our payment, we took Jaz to lunch at the Star Café. We haven’t been there in so long. It was real nice to splurge on such a luxurious lunch together. This would be the last time we would see Jaz before she leaves for Virginia Lakes. She got us to Mission Creek Camp at about 4 pm so we decided to put in a few miles, Zach was very distraught that Jaz wasn’t coming with us and yipped at her pitifully as she drove off.
We got on the trail and immediately regretted our lack of exercise and abundance of comfort food we gorged on over the last 2 ½ weeks while Zach was recuperating from the torn pad. The good news was that it felt really good to get back on the trail, Zach however was really happy to be in the mountains and the miles went by quickly.
We stopped to make camp after about 5 miles, along a ridge where an old Jeep road used to follow. The evening still felt pretty early so we spent a little time gathering pine needles to “pad out” the area under our tent, hopefully it would make for a nice soft bed to sleep on. The FBC dinners lived up to expectations and even Kelly had to admit that our meals were really good.
Friday, June 19th / 24 miles / 2,542’ gain
Mission Campground to Doble Trail Camp
Despite all our efforts, Kelly didn’t much sleep which caused me to lose sleep as well. So it was a good thing that the trail markers were getting bigger!
After the problems with the booties screwing up Zach’s feet on the last hike, Kelly decided to create her own design.
Today was the first “on trail” trail day and the dog had his booties on for about 12 miles. They looked good and seemed to be working well although he kept sitting down, so we thought something might be wrong with his paws. We couldn’t figure it out – his tail was up, he was full of ‘piss and vinegar’, and he wasn’t limping. My best guess was that his toenails might have been hurting him – I had forgotten to trim his nails before we started but didn’t have anything with me to do the job.
The day started off nice and cool and with over 8,000 feet in elevation, the odds were that it would stay that way. What a change from previous days on the PCT! Our first milestone was the 7 miles of ups and downs to get to Onyx Summit, along the way we passed by a small ranch that provides trained exotic animals to television and film.
There was a grizzly bear in a cage near the trail pacing back and forth, occasionally grunting. Being low to the ground, Zach hadn’t seen the bear yet, I looked down at him right as he caught its scent. Wow, Zach’s bugged way out of his head and he jump up and spun around to look behind us. Poor guy, I’m pretty sure he thought a monster was coming after us.
While looking at the distant mountains to the southwest trying to see Mount San Gorgonio, we missed where the trail turned off a dirt road. Luckily I happened to look down at the GPS and we only had to backtrack a few hundred feet.
We stopped at Arrastre Trail Camp for water and were really disappointed by how much trash was left lying about by campers. While we were at the camp, a couple of day hikers – Jim and Jim came through. We kept passing each other throughout the day as the one of our groups were taking a break. They were section hikers also but doing the PCT in much smaller bites. Clouds built up later in the day, threatening us with the possibility of rain.
Most of our distant views were of the Mojave desert as our hike north turned to the west, starting the long southern California traverse.
By the time we got to the Highway 18 water cache all of our feet were hurting a bit from the 20 miles – I think we were all feeling the effects of allowing ourselves to get out of shape and almost no sleep from the night before. Also by this time Zach’s long, sharp nails had cut some holes in his new booties. We were really tired but the afternoon was still early enough to put in a few more miles to get away from the noise of highway before we stopped for the night.
4 miles up the trail we made Doble Trail Camp, a nice little campsite with good water. Kelly and I really enjoyed this hike – such a nice change after all of those desert days! Zach had his tail up the whole day.
Continues here: Holcomb Creek