This is part 30 of the “Why We Hike” Series
Wednesday, June 24th / 13.1 miles / 3,533′ gain
Wrightwood to Vincent Gap
Sleeping in the Pines Motel was wonderful! It’s amazing how much your attitude to take on the heat and deal with foot pain can change after a good night’s sleep! We meant to wake up early – or rather, Kelly did, but after loading up on pizza and 2 big glasses of wine the night before, we ended up sleeping in until 6:30.
After such a decedent sleep I was even able to talk Kelly into going out for breakfast before we left. (she had reluctantly agreed but I think she was really happy about it afterwards) The Evergreen Café was very nice; a friendly lady served us 2 HUGE breakfasts. At first we thought, there is no way we can finish all of this. But we did!
Feeling very satisfied, we left the café and started our trek through town to Acorn Canyon Trail which led back to the PCT. This trail was a brute! It had 2,000’ elevation gain in about 1.5 miles! On the other hand, it sure led us into some beautiful scenery – now THAT is more like it! I think I’ve mentioned that we are not big fans of the scorching hot, boring desert scrub, right? Zach definitely approved of the new terrain, too. His tail was up most of the day and he seemed to have renewed vigor.
Our first water stop was the Gruffy Campground, where I left Kelly and Zach to nap on a picnic table while I made a nasty descent down the north side of the mountain for about 300 yards to a spring. Since there was a small structure there, the first thing I did was to look inside it to see if there was a water access through a pipe. This is where I encountered rattlesnake #2, a huge and slow moving fellow who politely slid into the thick overgrowth as I was stepping over him. There was no pipe and my exit out of the building was much quicker than my entrance! I kept a wary eye out as I moved in the area after that.
The PCT followed the crest of the mountains through this section, offering us views both north and south of the San Gabriel mountains.
Early in the afternoon, as we were making our way around the top of the ski slopes in that area, Zach started to have problems with his feet. We had to make a lot of stops to try and correct the problem. At one point I had an idea of using superglue to attach some leather to the pads of his feet, but one and a half hours later we abandoned that experiment after we discovered that superglue reacts with something in the tanned leather. Turning leather into smoldering little black chunks was amusing but useless. We spent quite a bit of time with all of these stops and didn’t get very many miles in.
Crossing over into the Angles National Forest was strange, we were entering an area very close to our home and one we knew well but coming from so far away made it feel like a new experience.
Kelly was a little unhappy about our low mileage for the day but the fact was that her feet were much worse off than Zach’s It looks like she will lose the big toe nail on her right foot, the toe nail next to it, and the tiny little stub of a pinky toe nail that was just beginning to grow back from our first section hike.
At the end of the day we stealth camped by the side of the trail about 2 miles before Vincent Gap. This would allow us to get an early start up Mount Baden-Powell while avoid the high winds that Vincent Gap is known for.
Continues here: Three Points