Day 37, 16.50 miles

Blegh this morning was so cold! Overnight a crazy huge cloud/mist had come over the whole area. I was glad I set up my rainfly last night. Yesterday was a huge day, so naturally, I slept in and didn’t leave camp until ~7:45! New record for longest sleep-in!

The day started, (and mainly remained), as depicted in the photo above. It was a long, slow going, uphill climb with wet grass all over soaking my legs and freezing cold feet for half the day. I only took 2 pictures before noon, because there was really nothing to see..

Blegh..

Ok, maybe there was one exciting thing in the first half of the day...

Mile 600 Woo-Hoo!!!

Two miles after Julian snapped this picture of me, we rolled into Robin Bird Spring. It was there that we saw a bunch of other hikers that we had met yesterday. It was still so cold and miserable in the clouds, almost noon. I had planned to make a very short stop at the water source, but soon a fire was being made and I absolutely HAD to stay! 

Starting far right in the picture above and moving clockwise:

Mougs (I met him as Chris on day one of the trail!), Julian, Tumbleweed, the two sets of legs are a couple from Portland who’s names I forgot), Huck (in the green), Squirrel, and Stallion. 

We took off our stinky shoes to try and dry out our stinky wet socks. Mougs got his too close and burnt a nice hole in one sock! Julian had some meltage on the side of one of his shoes. We barbecued Slim Jim’s, gummi-sharks, and Starburts. The large party eventually hiked off together and Julian and I stayed behind with the couple from Portland for a few more minutes by the fire and to completely douse it upon leaving.

Mougs socks were evaporating 

Slim Jim roast

I cannot wait...

It was very very cold once we started moving again (compared to the warmth of the fire). We climbed up and up and eventually burst out of the clouds! I was so happy, I thought we would be in it all day!!

We got to our next water source, Lander’s Spring, theoretically the last water for 42 miles... There are two fairly well maintained water caches, and in between each is a water source off-trail where seepages can be accessed by digging. Im not going to rely on either water cache, but at least I have the seepages as back ups. I also only have a max capacity of 4 liters. Digging for dirty pooled water isn’t my first choice, but we’ll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings...

Leaving Lander’s Spring Julian and I followed an OHV trail that looked like it headed back towards the trail, instead of backtracking the 0.3 miles to meet back up with the PCT. (Yes, I’m THAT lazy). We were going to just camp at Landers Spring since it was already late in the afternoon, but found a sweet spot just off the OHV road before it met back up with the PCT.

We decided that a “short” day today would be fine. We have about 42 miles to Walker Pass where we’ll spend the day in Lake Isabella (32 miles West from the trail) to resupply, and then head back out. This way we can hike ~20 each of the next two days and then hitch in Tuesday morning, giving us plenty of time to get to town and do errands and get back out to trail!

Thanks for reading!!