Day 18
Miles:17.2
We hit the trail again today after spending a few zero days in San Diego. It seems that the most recent storm has put hiking on hold for many. However, we were anxious to get out on the trail again. So we set out from hwy 74 early in the morning.
The early morning views never seem to disappoint.
We spent the morning enjoying a pretty leisurely pace.
There were quite a few fallen trees. Most were off the trail.
After the recent storm, we wondered where some of our fellow hikers were today. We ran into Fred (who we saw briefly at Trail Angel Mike's). He was turning around to head back to Idyllwild after a windy, miserable night. He updated us on the status of some of our fellow thru-hikers. Oddball and Copernicus attempted to make it over Fuller, but were unable to make it and had to turn back. They are waiting it out in Palm Springs. We think most of the other hikers are waiting it out in Idyllwild. Some even skipped this section all together. We did run into one other hiker, Waldo. He seemed enthusiastic about trying to make it over Fuller.
We had some trouble finding water today (surprising considering the storm we just had). We skipped Cedar Spring and hiked down to the water source near pct mile 163- eagle spring. It was awful! We didn't even attempt to drink it.
But instead of backtracking to Cedar, we decided to hike to the next water source, Scovel creek. We had to hike a half a mile off the trail to get to it, by that point we were pretty thirsty. It was flowing, but not very much. Also, we had so many ticks on us today! Probably, at least ten ticks each!
After getting water we continued on up a huge climb. It is pretty windy up here, so when we found and awesome campsite that was sheltered from the wind, we decided to set up camp even though it was a couple miles short of our original planned campsite. We used our new jet boil to cook some pasta, mashed potatoes, and hot coco! It is so awesome to have an easy hot meal at the end of the day. Great new gear purchase! We enjoyed our dinner along with a spectacular sunset.
Tomorrow we will see how far we can get, they say traction devices and ice axes are recommended for roughly the next 15 miles...we have micro spikes but no axes with us. We've heard whispers, but up to this point haven't seen the snow that bad up here. tomorrow morning we will get to see what's on the other side of Apache Peak...
-Twist
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