Day 31, 19.73 miles

I woke up around 7, packed everything up and headed down to la Casa for breakfast! They were having pancakes and they were so good! They had some apple butter and a few different syrups. So good! They had a volunteer shuttling people back to the trail, and Julian and I jumped into the next car available (maybe the 3rd trip of the morning).

The morning actually started off a lottle foggy, but as we were climbed out first big hill, we soon broke out of the clouds. There was one moment where you could see half the sky and they other half was a grey mist moving east.

So cool!!

The morning was beautiful (as always), and it wasn’t very hot. There was a nice breeze rolling through and the trail followed the ridge for awhile. At one point, I caught something in my peripheral, at about shoulder height. It was a 5ft gopher snake!! I thought it was a rattler for a few seconds and dang it scared me...

Blegh....

We soon started walking through a new burn area, (the reason why this portion of the trail was closed in 2016. It was really really beautiful and I’m glad I got to experience it this time!

There was a small trail side spring that many people had stopped at to fill up and rest. It would be kind of a lame little trickle, but someone had sacrificed a bottle top to make a sweet funnel!

:)

Julian

Lots o’ Poodle Dog Bush

From the burn area we suddenly entered a beautiful grassy hillside. Lots of shade and trees all around! Beside the trail side spring, the other water sources of the day were pretty sketchy... There were 3 in total and two of them had dead rodents floating inside. Julian and I decided to push for a source 10 miles after the trail some spring. It was apparently much cleaner and more reliable. The only problem with this source was it was pretty far off trail. But, using the app I downloaded on my phone, (Guthook), I was able to make a little alternate to it so we didn’t have to backtrack! 

The PCT is red, moving from east to west. At the yellow marker, we split onto a mountain road. I added in the black line on my phone to represent our dirt road walk. There was a nice rain-catching cistern where that blue water drop is. 

Road walk

A great water source! (No dead rodents)

We’re camped at the little tent site icon on the screenshot above. Many other hikers went on the PCT all the way to the campground junction to come to the water source. Since we did a little road alternate, tomorow we just get to hike the campground trail back to the PCT!

There’s quite a bit of other hikers here. It was a nice distance to go right out of Casa de Luna. There’s about 20 miles to Hiker Town tomorrow where we will start the hot, flat section of the hike along the LA aqueduct and across the Mojave desert! We’re super lucky with this upcoming weather, with highs in the high 70’s instead of 100’s.

Thanks for reading!