Day 23, 20.71 miles

Whew what a day!! I feel like all my posts start like that, but they’ve all been long days! I left Big Bear 5 days ago, and 4 of those days have been 20+ milers, with yesterday being a 25+! I’m loving this!

What I wasn’t really loving was last night camping situation. After McDonalds, some nasty clouds were rolling in and the wind was picking up. I’m glad I set up my rainfly, because the winds howled all night and rain pelted my tent in random spurts. I did however sleep pretty much straight through the night since I had such a long day! This morning everything was in a mist..

My day started like this

And then went to this

It was foggy for the first 4 hours of the day, I thought that maybe my whole day would be like this and it would just get colder and worse. I was moving at a pretty quick pace although my shoes and feet and legs were soaking wet. Close to 11am I saw some break in the clouds. I also saw Shadow!

Shadow 

Slowly, I started breaking out of the clouds and towards some sunlight!

This a new burn from 2016, after Claire and I had already passed through, so I hadn’t yet seen it quite like this. There was poodle dog bush everywhere!

Surrounded!

“Dead” pine trees actively growing new pines on the old branches! I had never seen this before!!

Up and up and up we climbed, until we were all the way above the clouds! Since my rain fly and tent and shoes and socks and feet were all soaked, I stopped st the first flat spot in the sun I found, and lucky me it had a great view!

My dry-out and lunch view

Man, I could not apply sunscreen fast enough, it soon became real hot real fast! At least I was way up high and soon after lunch had left the burn area behind. There were many tall pines to provide shade when needed.

Sorry, I took so many pictures above the clouds!

I mentioned that we went up, but DANG did we go UP!! About 7,500 feet up! I took a look at this day/section back in the 2016 blog, and Claire and I ALSO did a 20+ mile day in this very section! We were CRUSHING it back then too! :)

I’ve been leapfrogging with a hiker named Happy all day today. I met him back at Deep Creek Hotsprings. We have a very similar pace and I love his positive mind-set. They don’t call him Happy for nothing! I’ll try to get a picture of him in here soon.

We both arrived at Guffy Campground at around the same time. In 2016 this place was so cold and windy that Claire and I pushed on down the hill a bit to the next camping area. This time it is so great up here! There’s such a great view! The sun was setting just behind some mountains to our right, bouncing off the hills to our left, with clouds below us filling in the whole middle area. The picture below doesn’t do it justice!

Campground view

Well, it’s been a great day!! Julian made it down to Wrightwood today, and I’m planning to meet up with him in town tomorrow and hike out with him on Monday! I’m only 5 miles away from highway 2 to hitch into Wrightwood, and I’m already super excited for the breakfast I’m going to eat, whatever and wherever it may be!!

Thanks for reading!!