Day 7, 15.08 miles

I woke up right at 5am again and started hiking by 5:40. Last night got sooooo windy, I’m glad that I crammed my tent up right behind some small trees that acted as a wind block. I figure I would get an early start and pound out the miles to Warner Springs before it got too hot out.

I was basically camped at the tippy top of the long, 17 mile incline, and now it was time to come back down! The morning was beautiful. It got light and warmed up way quicker than I was expecting so I soon stopped to change from my beanie/headlamp/base layers, into my shirt sleeve day hiking set up.

I love this one

So my brand new iPhone has been doing this weird thing where sometimes there are a bunch of vertical red lines on the screen. It can usually be solved by turning the whole phone off and then back on, but it’s pretty annoying when I’m trying to take a quick pick of something that may either move or change quickly. Below is a picture I took, then had to restart my phone before taking the picture at the top of this blog entry:

See the red lines? Weird huh?

Anyway, in the first few miles I hit another milestone! Mike 100! I have hiked 100 miles in 6 1/2 days! :) now I just need to do that again 26.5 more times to reach Canada! Wow. That’s a lot.. 

Mile 100!! No one there to take a full picture of me

(And yes; those are weed-printed gaiters, haha)

The trail continued down and down and emptied out into a series of long, flat open prairies. I knew we were getting close to eagle rock, and was having dejavus of Claire and I hobbling towards the great rock formation.

Here it is! It really does look like an eagle huh? Unfortunately no other hikers were around to take an awesome photo of me, so this picture of Claire and I in 2016 will have to fill that gap:

Leaving Eagle Rock the trail climbed up a bit more, leaving the open prairies, nd started winding down through a lush riverside wonderland for the last few miles into Warner Springs. It was this section last time that Claire and I were finishing our 18+ mile day with multiple injuries each and plenty o blisters! We were pro-hobblers!

I entered Warner Springs by 12:30 and was pretty proud of my time! 15 miles in under 6.5 hours!! I headed to the Resource Center where they host hikers and provide amenities like bathrooms, epsom foot soaks for $3, and free bucket showers. There’s also a small hiker store there to buy any food you need. 

Many hikers send themselves a resupply of food, and decide they don’t want a lot of their food so it all ends up in the hiker box. Unopened peanut butter jars, pounds of fresh trail mix, tuna, sunscreen, cliff bars, a Teehee’s best dream!

Also, as you can see from the picture, a TON of hikers buy new, bigger shoes here at Warner Springs, and ditch their old, blister causing pair. And that’s exactly what I did this time :)

Mary aka Pillsbury, and her husband Charlie Brown, run a gear shop out of an Airstream trailer called Two Foot Adventures. They weren’t here in 2016, and Claire and I couldn’t upgrade our shoes until Idyllwild, 70 miles North of here! 

I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to drop $130 on new shoes this year, because I started with 12.5’s which is the size my feet swelled up to in 2016. I figured they shrink back over these two years since and they’d swell and grow back to the same size, but all these toes blisters and now heel blisters and side of the feet arches lead me to believe that I’ve grown/am growing into size 13! I went with the Altra Timps instead of new Lone Peaks, they have an even wider toe box for my big old toes, and they have a few more mm’s of cushion between you and the ground. The Altea Olympus is the next cushion level up, but they are so high off the ground that many people complain about filled ankles.

Mary and Charlie Brown set me up with a box to send my old shoes home in and I gave them some money to ship it out tomorow for me at the post office. This way I’m not throwing them straight into the hiker box and I still have a nice pair of shoes when I’m done with the trail! I also purchased some luekotape, and some Injinji toe socks to help with my toe blisters, I’ll show pictures of them probably tomorow.

Next, I headed back into the Resource Center to inquire about a bucket shower. When I told the lady I had hiked through here in 2016, she told me to look for my name in the old trail registry. 

Check it out!!

I also saw a bunch of old friends that we had made that year like Chips, Guac, Orion, and many others! I sent the picture to Claire and then grabbed a towel for my bucket shower.

Getting those dreadies clean 

Ah, that felt GREAT!! As I was coming out of the shower and was about to return my towel, there was someone offering rides to the restaurant at the golf course. I quickly took him up on it since I was quite hungry, and I wanted to avoid hobbling the otherwise required 1 mike walk there.

Ross with his 2 year old Arlo

We ended up eating together and talking about all sorts of things. Ross volunteers his time to taking hikers to and from the restaurant and post office and Resource Center in town. As his main job he works contractually in IT. And as his OTHER volunteer job, he performs off-road recovery in his sweet off road rig. (Like when someone in an off road vehicle gets stuck off road somewhere, HE comes for an off-road off-road reuse.)

Arlo  is SUPER smart and well behaved for a two year old, and he enjoyed his Apple juice and chicken fingers, while we enjoyed our Adult Apple Juice (IPA’s) and I had a massive bacon cheeseburger with fries :)

Alright, now for some bad news, haha. Ross took me back to the Resource Center where I was able to sneak in a $3 foot soak 10 minutes before they closed. After washing up, I was able to actually see and feel the damage to my toes. I popped 3 new blisters that I got over the last few days, but found that my right pinky toe is most likely infected. This makes sense as it has been the worst blister so far and the painful blister has recurred in a slightly different area each time, either not quite healing and closing, or just being more irritated with every mile. 

I also have this blister-like pin in the ball of my left foot just below the third and fourth toes. The funny thing is there is no blister there, although there are some all around. Some googling online leads time to believe I might have Morton’s Neuroma. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but basically my foot fascia is putting pressure on a nerve in my foot and it really really hurts, even when I just touch it. And unfortunately I can’t relive the pain by popping anything or taking ibuprofen :( 

I hope this isn’t it, but the location of pain is the exact same and those two toes have the stinging and burning feeling at times even though they don’t have actual blisters on themselves.

So, long story short, I’m going to sleep in tomorow morning instead of waking up early, and check the damage on my feet. I’m hoping that things get better with rest and that the toe infection isn’t serious.

Thanks for reading!