The Hunt For a Souvenir Lighter

May 16: I woke up early to hit Big Bear first thing in the morning. I hiked about five miles to Highway 18, where I spotted two hikers trying to hitch a ride into town: Cash and Danimal. They said they'd been there for a couple of hours, unsuccessful in hitching a ride. That didn't sound very promising. I had a backup plan, however, which involved the liberal use of the cell phone I bought for my hike. =)

The first call I tried to make was to my sister, Tierra, who planned to drive out to visit me in Big Bear. If she were close, she could pick us up. It was probably a little too early for her to be in the area, but it didn't hurt to check! Alas, she was just leaving Riverside at the time. She wouldn't get there for another hour or two. But I wasn't done making calls. Oh, no.... I also had the foresight to write down the phone number for a hostel in town that offered free rides to and from the trailhead. I didn't really want to stay in the hostel, but for a free ride.... yeah, I'd consider it. =)

So I tried calling the hostel, and they said that they were pretty busy at the moment, but that they could pick us up in about a half hour or so and recommended that we try to hitch a ride instead. Okay, at least I knew we could get us out of there within a half hour or so. I wrote down contact information for another hostel in the area, and decided to try calling them to see if they had shuttles for hikers. They didn't, but recommended I try hitchhiking since most hikers didn't have any problem getting rides from that location. All the while, Cash and Danimal continued trying to hitch a ride from every passing car.

Before I even finished hanging up on my latest call, a car pulled over offering the three of a ride. =) That must have annoyed Cash and Danimal--I hadn't even been on the side of the road for five minutes, and hadn't even stuck out my thumb yet, and after two hours of trying to hitch a ride, I got one from their hard efforts. Somehow, I found this rather amusing. I called the hostel during the ride into town to tell them we got a ride and no shuttle was necessary.

I got dropped off at the Motel 6--I wanted a room for myself rather than sharing space in a hostel--and immediately took a shower and started doing laundry. An hour or so later, my sister arrived, and I had a chance to get online and catch up with e-mails and bills.

We went out for lunch at Sizzler, then Tierra drove me around Big Bear to resupply. It was very convenient having her and her car around. Big Bear is spread out over several miles, and it's terribly hard to get everywhere a hiker needs for resupplying on foot. The post office was miles away from the hardware store, for instance, and the hardware store was nowhere near any supermarkets. So Tierra shuttled me around.

One special item I needed was a lighter. Every long distance hike, I've always carried a stupid little tourist souvenir lighter for lighting my stove, burning the ends of rope to prevent them from fraying, or start fires or whatever I need. On my Appalachian Trail hike, I took the train to Atlanta and picked up a souvenir lighter during a layover in New Orleans. During my Florida Trail hike, I picked up a souvenir lighter in Key West the day I started my hike. On the Pacific Crest Trail.... I had a plain, boring old lighter. I wanted something touristy written on it as a souvenir of my hike.

I was so convinced I could find one in Big Bear, I gave my lighter away the evening before to a hiker who somehow ended up without one, and kept bumming for lights every time he stopped for a break. "Keep this one," I told him. "I wanted to buy a new one anyhow."

So Tierra and I went in search of a souvenir lighter. We went into gift shopes, convenience stores, and a bunch of other places, but nobody had any. Several recommend that we visit the liquor store, which we did, but again, no souvenir lighters. Two hours later, we finally cried uncle. I still needed a lighter, though, so I bought another plain, boring old lighter with a solid, light blue color, almost idential to the one I gave away the day before. *sigh* Someday, I'll find a souvenir lighter for the trail, but it astounds me that such a tourist trap as Big Bear had nothing. It was very disappointing.

The rest of the afternoon, I spent typing up these blog entries for your reading pleasure. =) Tierra left that evening, taking her laptop with her, so I resorted to watching television the rest of the night. Including, I'm ashamed to admit, the season finale for Desperate Housewives. The intrigue! The backstabbing! It sucked me in. Then I went to sleep.

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears.... Really!

May 15: Today was filled with interesting sights, but nothing particularly noteworthy actually happened, if that makes any sense. The weather was cool at heights around 8,000 feet above sea level, and the occasional patch of snow could be found covering the trail, but they were small and not even noteworthy except for their complete lack of noteworthiness. =)

At one point on the trail, I found an envelope enticing hikers to open it. I was a bit leery--a practical joke of some sort? But it only contained a register along with a page about the history of the area and notes about a water cache just up ahead and a food cache a little further past that. The registry entries were hard to read due to the crappy pen, so I contributed a new pen to the register. I'd been carrying two of them since Campo, and it was about time I lightened my pack a bit.

The water cache was a water cache, but the food cache..... OMG! What a wonderful place to discover! The hostel in Big Bear, it seems, set it up, with all sorts of fruits, snacks, cookies, drinks. And they even provided a couch--a real, honest-to-goodness couch with cushions to sit on. A frame was hung from a tree--a 'television' of sorts, but it appeared broken since only the Wilderness Channel came in clear. Some hikers stepped up on an ice chest to get their photos taken with the frame around their head. And they even had a newspaper for reading. And toilet paper.... if other tasks were necessary.

It was a wonderful surprise. I heard rumors of a couch on the trail somewhere, but I assumed it was a joke or just one of those rumors that get started but end up having no truth in it. But no, the couch really does exist, and it's incredibly comfortable to sit in. I stopped for a few hours, chatted with other hikers, and even read the newspaper.

Regarding the newspaper, I learned that Barbara Walters had a valve replaced in her heart or something to that effect, which I only note because the night before, I had dreamt that Barbara Walters had died. For the most part, hikers go to sleep at sunset and rise at sunrise, which means I've been getting a good, solid ten hours (or sometimes more!) of sleep per night. I think my head gets bored with all of that sleep, however, because I remember far more dreams when I'm hiking than I ever do in the "real" world. A month can go by in the real world where I don't ever remember a dream, but I seem to have a lot of dreams on the trail, and I remember a great many of them. And for some bizarre reason I can't explain, I dreamed of Barbara Walter's death. Then, later that afternoon, learn she's undergoing a heart valve replacement. Not death, but not really far from it either. Hmmm.....

Now about those lions, tigers, and bears. The trail approached a fence, which isn't too uncommon, but then I noticed a tiger pacing on the other side of it. A tiger?! What the...? Getting closer, the trail followed the fence, where I found more animals including bears (a grizzly, even!) and a lion. This zoo of sorts didn't show up on any of my maps, and I didn't really know what to think of it. I didn't see any people around, and it didn't look like a zoo. What is this place? I'm still not entirely sure. One bear appeared to be scratching its back on the chain link fence enclosing it, and the cages seemed awfully small for such large animals.

Later, I heard from hikers two different stories about the animals--the first being that they are retired circus animals, and the second being that they are available for rent to use in movies, TV shows, or commercials, or whatever they need. Which is true? I have no idea. Maybe neither of them.

I also heard stories of hikers who got near this zoo and set up camp in the dark of night, not realizing such large animals were nearby, then spent the night scared for their life after hearing the lions roar. I could imagine that would be a little disconcerting!

Near the end of the day, I set up camp on an open hilltop about five miles short of the highway into Big Bear. It was a wonderful little location, and I ended camped by myself. Most of the other hikers I'd seen during the day wanted to camp closer to the road. I'm not sure where they camped, but I had wonderful 360 degree views and watched the sun set.

Wet Feet

May 14: Mission Creek isn't an especially large creek, but at some sections, it's difficult to cross without getting ones feet wet. When I passed Billy Goat going southbound the day before (he's something of a hiking legend, and I had met him a few summers back while doing trail work with the WTA, although he wouldn't have remembered that), he told me that we'd have to cross Mission Creek 21 times. So I was fully prepared to get my feet wet, and have them wet for most of the day.

Apparently, I'm the only person who got that message. Other hikers I caught up to seemed shocked at the water crossings. It was easy to lose the trail at times as well--the creek moves around from year to year, wiping out parts of the trail. If you can't find the trail immediately, slogging through the rivershed without the trail can be tough going. Getting lost was never a problem--just follow the creek upstream. It was figuring out where the trail went that was tricky. It would always show up before too long, however.

I counted thirty (THIRTY!) crossings of Mission Creek. I'm not sure how Billy Goat got through with just 21, but then, he is the king of hiking. He probably has some tricks up his sleeve that I haven't learned yet.

Being deep in the canyon was a welcome change from the day before since it meant that I was largely in shade nearly the entire morning. My mood was much better today, though ironically, many of the hikers I passed had the opposite feeling. Perhaps because they weren't expecting such slogging through the river like I was.

Along the dried riverbed, some hikers drew graffiti into the dirt. This one made me laugh. It's simple, but hard to argue with. Usually hikers obsess about food and running water, but I guess one still had his mind on other matters.... (No, really, it wasn't me that wrote the message, but I do agree with the sentiment whole-heartedly!)

I took a long three-hour lunch break at Creekside Camp, which was shaded by trees and actually got so cool, I pulled out my sleeping bag to wrap around myself to stay warm.

I pushed on, though, planning to stop at a trail junction with the CRHT trail. There was no water there--no mosquitoes!--and I hoped the lack of water would help get me out of the herd I was hiking in. It didn't work, though--six others ended up stopping at the same place I did. Still, the herd was thinning with each passing day. The trail had also climbed to about 8000 feet once again here, which was definitely a lot cooler than the lowlands by I-10. Small patches of snow dotted the area, so even if there was no water, it could be had easily enough.

It was a great place to camp, though. Life is good! With good weather in the forecast, I didn't bother with setting up my tarp.

Charging the Windmills

May 13: I was one of the last to leave our camp near I-10, but I still got a fairly early start. Only Dan was left, or Danimal, as he was sometimes called. He looked dead in his sleeping bag, with an empty beer can next to him.

"Hey, Dan," I asked, "You there?"

He flopped around a bit, and I felt better knowing that I wouldn't be leaving behind a dead body.

"Looks like you had a wild night," I said to him, pointing at the beer can.

He squinted at it, then replied, "Fuck! Something else for me to carry out!" He seemed to wake up a bit, looked around, then continued, "I don't even remember drinking that."

Bummer. Carrying a beer around, and now having to carry a beer can around, and not even getting the enjoyment of remembering how it tasted.

Anyhow, now that I felt that Dan was well enough to be left on his own, I hit the trail. I reached Interstate 10 after a half hour of walking, at around 7:00 in the morning, and was already sweating bullets. It was gonna be a hot day.... The trail crosses under several bridges by Interstate 10 for trains, traffic, and who knows what else, but someone had left a couple of coolers with drinks, water, and a register which I stopped to make use of. The register was the first chance I had to figure out where all my early trail buddies were on the trail--or rather, how far ahead of me they were. It looked like most hikers had skipped Fuller Ridge completely, doing the road walk instead, and that gave them an extra couple of days ahead of me. At this point, I figure I'll never see them again unless they take a zero day or two up ahead on the trail.

The trail went by some scary-looking properties with junk cars and gave me a bad feeling of Alabama. I could even see three dogs running loose in the streets, and I hoped the trail skirted around the neighborhood rather than through it, which I'm happy to report that it does. But I didn't feel all that comfortable walking through the area either.

Then the trail went up into a wind farm. We could see the wind farm for the last 20 miles of trail, but we finally reached them, allowing us close up views of those giant turbines. A sign pointed out that water and shade was to be had at a nearby building, but I didn't need water and wanted to push through as much as possible during the morning before it got really hot, so I passed up the shade as well. Later, I would learn they had Klondike Bars available for thru-hikers, at which point I promptly regretted not stopping. =( Ice cream sure would have been nice.....

The wildflowers seemed to be wilting and dieing in the heat as well. It was the first time I really noticed wildflowers well past their prime, and this section of trail had a severe lack of shade. It was exhausting, but I trudged on, finally stopping under a tree for lunch.

The heat put me in a rather foul mood. I just wasn't feeling very perky today, and hiking just felt like a job. Blah.

Another couple of miles down the trail, I had a brief respite at a river crossing--impossible to cross without getting ones feet wet--and I charged through not caring that my feet were getting wet. It felt nice. Several other hikers had stopped there for an extended break as well, soaking their feet and swimming in the river.

I finally stopped at a campsite along Mission Creek for the evening, where I ate dinner with Swazey and Dinosaur. By the creek, the bugs seemed worse, and after battling off a few mosquitoes, I pulled out my mosquito net and went to sleep. I need to camp further away from water and get away from the mosquitoes, but in this steep valley, I didn't have much of a choice.

The Long Drop to Civilization

May 12: Our first night after Fuller Ridge was cold, but nowhere near as cold as the previous night. None of my water froze, but I had kept one bottle of water in my sleeping bag with me just to be on the safe side. My shoelaces didn't freeze. And the wind gusts were nearly non-existent. Life was good. Definitely a chill in the air, however. It wouldn't last long, however, as dropped nearly 7,000 feet in elevation to Interstate 10. It would likely become very hot.

The first hiker I met on the trail was Double D--or maybe he just spells it DD?--which is short for Dumbass Dan. I'm not sure I'd have admitted to that, but everyone certainly makes a dumbass decision every now and then. He seems like a friendly fellow, who works at REI in Colorado, but we didn't talk all that much since we hiked at our own speeds. The only reason I even mention him in this blog is because, somewhere along the way, my bag of tent stakes fell out of my pack. Much of this section of trail is overgrown and I guess a branch or something snagged my tent stake bag and whisked it right out of my pack, unbeknownst to me. I was hiking ahead of him, and at one point when I stopped for a quick snack break, he caught up to me asking if I was missing a blue bag with tent stakes. I started looking in my pack, and sure enough, mine was missing. Double D found it and figured it belonged to one of the hikers immediately in front of him, which included myself. So I was quite grateful to get my stakes back--even before I knew they were missing!

The trail plunged down all day long, sixteen tantalizing miles, oh so close to Interstate 10. But the lazy, winding PCT sure took its time getting there.

I passed several trail workers who were fixing up the trail. The section they worked on was awesome. Wide, easy to walk, and no bushes or plants snagging stuff from my pack. The section really needed work, and sure enough, they were out there working on it! They also offered us thru-hikers a Gatorade, which I much appreciated. =)

We also passed through a 28-acre area that had burned. This particular fire happened earlier in the week and closed the trail down for a couple of days, forcing detours for many thru-hikers. Wildfires aren't uncommon on the trail, but this one we found particularly sad because it was actually started by a thru-hiker who, as the trail gossip relates, accidentally knocked over his alcohol stove. I don't know the details of the situation, but I guess there wasn't enough water nearby to put the fire out, and he ended up using his bare feet to try to stamp out the fire. Which also didn't work, but burned his feet bad enough that he needed to be rescued by a helicopter. Another thru-hiker bites the proverbial dust. The million dollar question everyone wants to know is who is this thru-hiker? Nobody I've talked to has fessed up to knowing, but it leaves a huge black eye for all those thru-hikers following him.

Eventually, the trail came out onto a small, paved road, next to a drinking fountain in the middle of the desert. Yes, you read that correctly. A drinking fountain. In the middle of the desert. I can't make this stuff up. =) A security guard was there, counting thru-hikers passing by. He seemed friendly enough, but when I first saw him from a distance, I thought maybe it was a trail angel handing out cold drinks, so it was a little disappointing to know he was just there to count me.

However, another security fellow who drove up while I was filling up my water supplies from the drinking fountain told us that there was REAL trail magic another mile or so up the road. A fellow had set up a BBQ with cold beers and Gatorade, and had quite the setup going. So I anxiously pushed on, hoping to get a little of the food. Now that we were at the lowest point of the trail in Southern California, it was positively hot. Even late in the day like it was, and a cold drink seemed like a luxury I could not resist.

The trail angels were Dave and Lisa. The day before they spent nearly the whole day looking for thru-hikers to help but couldn't find anyone. This was Lisa's first time out trail angeling, and Dave said he had to assure it that, "Really, it's a lot of fun!" At least if you can find the thru-hikers in the first place. The guard at the drinking fountain said only three hikers passed through the day before. More than 20 passed through today. Somehow, we ended up in a herd of people. I really wanted to get away from the herd myself. I liked everyone well enough, but there were just too many people around. I like hiking with smaller groups.

But that made it a lot harder for Dave and Lisa to find hikers to help out the day before. There just weren't any! The large herd of us eventually formed up into a large group at the trail magic. During the day, we spread out as we hiked at our own pace, but nobody wanted to pass by the trail magic without eating some of the food, so it tended to group us up again.

They cooked up chicken which we used for chicken burritos--absolutely delicious--and had a great time hanging out and talking. Well, I mostly watched the going ons, but there was certainly plenty of talking by others.

Then two neighbors with a large dog showed up. The woman was absolutely livid, ranting about us "disturbing the peace" and that she was about to call the police on us for "noise disturbance." I was absolutely floored. I'd never seen anything like it before. The dog was huge, but actually seemed pretty friendly, as if he wanted to run up and have us all pet it. =) The husband seemed to agree with her, but was more reluctant to say anything, trying to encourage his wife to go back to the house.

The whole "noise disturbance" thing seemed absurd, though. We were a good hundred feet away from the nearest house, with the wind blowing the chatter away from the houses, and it was friggin' 6:00 in the afternoon. It's not like we were throwing a loud, rambunctious party at midnight and keeping everyone awake. I kind of doubt I could have heard our little group if I were indoors. Hardly the kind of thing cops would normally respond to. Not to mention that two security guards for the water agency already knew we were there and had no problem with what we were doing.

Then she complained about the fire from the week before, and that our little party was happening exactly where the fire trucks who responded to the fire set up shop. And it all made sense after that. It wasn't the noise. After the fire, she just hated hikers. We--as a group--threatened her home, and now we were taking up space that should be reserved for fire trucks in case they have to respond to any more of our problems. Except that there wasn't any signage that said we couldn't be there if we wanted to.

The couple and the dog went off. I have no idea of the lady did call the cops or not. If they did, the cops didn't bother to check us out. But as the sun started setting, our party was ending anyhow. In trail time, bedtime is sunset. It was bedtime for us.

We helped Dave and Lisa break up camp. I walked up to Lisa to thank her directly for the trail magic, and she was in tears while telling me to be safe. I was surprised--she didn't even know me--but she seemed unusually concerned about our well being. The mother in her, she said. It was very sweet, though. =) Then I thanked Dave, who took it much more nonchalantly, and headed down the trail. Dave told us that when he did this the year before, it was 107 degrees out. By comparison, we had it easy--nearly 30 degrees cooler!

Originally I meant to camp on the other side of Interstate 10, but our impromptu trail party slowed me down and I set up camp on the south side of Interstate 10 instead, along a flat stretch of trail. Most of us camped there, a couple miles short of the highway. I stopped as soon as I could hear the buzzing from powerlines ahead, not wanting to have that loud buzzing all night long, and far enough away from I-10 so the traffic wouldn't disturb me.

It was a nice place to camp. A bit windy, and the night was warm--probably the warmest of the trail so far--and I went to sleep, dreaming that Barbara Walters died. I don't know why I'm dreaming about Barbara Walters, and I never heard she had died, but I've been having a lot of strange dreams on the trail.

Shoelace Thermometer and Fuller Ridge

May 11: As if to test our mettle, the weather tried to break us. Twice during the night, strong wind gusts blew a stake anchoring down my tarp out and it flapped in the wind, laughing at me. I could hear the gusts before it would strike my tarp--waking up the trees in a blustery fit of rage--then crash down on my fragile tarp. It was a cold wind too, although the severely of the cold didn't strike home for me until after I woke up and found all of my water bottles frozen. Even the ones under the tarp next to me had partially frozen. But it was when I tried to put on my shoes and I found that the shoelaces had frozen solid that I knew it was a very cold night. I don't know how cold it got--I don't carry a thermometer, but even after I tied my shoelaces, they stuck up in strange angles, still frozen solid. As they thawed and drooped throughout the morning, I started referring to them as my "shoelace thermometer."

We packed up camp then headed out to the dreaded Fuller Ridge. Fuller Ridge is a steep, north-facing slope that was covered in severe amounts of snow. Or so we had heard. Fuller Ridge is what was striking fear into thru-hikers everywhere. Many thru-hikers, scared by the stories of dread and doom, chose to do an alternate road walk out of Idyllwild to avoid it. Today, however, was our day to conquer Fuller Ridge. We were still a couple of miles short of the ridge itself, but there was still plenty of snow to keep our route-finding skills in tip-top shape. As we left camp, we spotted a few hikers who apparently got a very early start to the day, including Mad Hatter and Tomer which really surprised me given how late in the day they started the day before. I didn't expect to see them so soon, but I was glad to know they had made it thus far okay.

At the beginning of Fuller Ridge, there was a snow-free area of land we used to rest, eat snacks, and prepare for The Ridge. Then a few hikers, including Cash, Timelord, and another hiker whose name I didn't get passed by. We had gone so slowly through the snow, we thought Mad Hatter was ahead of us somewhere, and I had made a comment that at least he couldn't get lost since he has a GPS, and Timelord, without even stopping to say hi, pushed through saying, "Mad Hatter is lost as fuck." Which made us all laugh, but confirmed that he was actually somewhere behind us rather than in front of us like we thought. We stuck almost directly on the PCT the entire time--it wasn't easy, but we'd find evidence of the trail through the snow--and tried to follow it as best we could. Everyone else had followed footprints and such down slope a bit, and they needed a bit of a scramble to get up to the start of Fuller Ridge. I guess we passed most everyone by sticking to the official PCT as best we could.

Cash and friends--I'm not sure why, but I somehow felt that Cash was largely the leader of this other group of hikers--decided to join in with our group since we seemed to be having better luck at staying on the trail than they were.

And the snow on Fuller Ridge was everything that was promised. It was deep. It was difficult to pass through. Ice axes came out, though I didn't have one myself. I depended on microspikes and my wits. Or at least my microspikes. =) Our now seven-member strong group lost the trail, completely and totally lost it at one point, despite two of the members having GPS devices. We knew we were somewhere well below it, but how to get back up to it was a challenge.

And somewhere, while lost in the woods, Hurricane and Dan stumbled into our group. Hurricane was cussing about all these footsteps leading him in the wrong direction--why he thought following footsteps was a good idea I'll never understand--but he was probably following our steps the entire way. Hurricane seemed concerned about the time, "We have to get moving! There's nowhere to camp here!"

More than once, we had to decided whether to follow a previous hiker's footsteps or to veer off on our own. My observation was that following footprints would either lead us out, or lead us to a pile of frozen corpses in the snow. The first would be preferable, but even the second option would certainly prove adventurous in its own way. (I should note, that a thru-hiker died near here after getting lost in the snow back in 2005. You can read a bit about that misadventure on Backpackers website at Lost and Found. Don't anyone tell my mom about that story, though!)

I grew increasingly annoyed as well, that our group had now grown into nine members. There is safety in numbers, but after a certain point, more people just means slower decisions, slower progress, and just makes it hard to keep track of everyone and that everyone is okay and accounted for. I wanted to split our much-too-large group into two (preferably sticking with my original core group including Hiker 816, Swazey, and Dinosaur), and let the other five work out their own route through Fuller Ridge.

That didn't happen, though. Trying to keep track that everyone was accounted for grew increasingly difficult for me, however, since we all tended to fan out. Some would go below a boulder while others would choose to climb up and over it, so it's not like we were even strung out in a long, easily counted line. So I finally stopped keeping track of anyone outside of our original core group. I generally stayed near the front with Hiker 816, and we'd stop occasionally to make sure that Swazey and Dinosaur caught up okay, then continue on without worrying about the others. They needed to keep track of each other. We just couldn't do it anymore ourselves.

Near the end of the Fuller Ridge, I finally caught sight of the trail. "I found the trail!" I exclaimed, then as I stepped onto the PCT once again, I yelled out, "I'm ON the trail!" It was an exhilarating moment! Until that moment, as one hiker might say, I was "lost as fuck." I wasn't concerned about my safety--I knew the general direction I needed to go, but it's somewhat comforting to see that trail under one's feet.

We all stopped at the Fuller Ridge campground at the far end of the ridge, and several other hikers eventually emerged as well including Mad Hatter, Tomer, and several others who I didn't recognize who were walking up from the road. They had attempted Fuller Ridge and went so far down the mountain in the wrong direction, they hit the dirt road which they then followed up to the campsite. In all, about twenty of us ended up camped there for the night.

And, I'm happy to report, that Mad Hatter set up his shark tent so I finally got a picture of it! Woo-who! Unfortunately, he ditched the giant wobbly eyes that went with the end so now there's only small patches of black velcro where the eyes should be, but it was still a wonderful photo op. =)

Fuller Ridge vet, signing out.

Back to the Mountain From Hell

May 10: The day before, I agreed to meet with Hiker 816 for the climb back into the snow. I felt good about him as a choice since he had a GPS device--a nice complement to my map and compass. And he seemed like a friendly fellow, even if he was a lawyer in the read world. =) I would have loved to have gone with Mad Hatter and Tomer as well, but they wouldn't go up until later in the day. They needed to pick up a mail drop from the post office now that it would finally be open (we arrived in town on Saturday after it had already closed), then Mad Hatter was having some leather work done on his pack to make it more comfortable, and that wouldn't be finished until noon. I didn't want to wait until that late in the day to get started.

Hiker 816 and I got a ride from the proprietors of the Idyllwild Inn to the trailhead at Devil's Slide, where we spotted Swazey and Dinosaur and the four of us decided to hitch our boats together. We went up Devils Slide at a our own pace--there wasn't any snow or problems on that section of trail, then stopped at Saddle Junction for everyone to group up and eat snacks. And rest. The climb up Devils Slide was long!

At the top, Dan joined our group. He sometimes called himself Danimal, which I found hard to say. Not because the pronunciation is difficult, but just because it seemed like a bad joke. He seemed a little less prepared for the rigors of snow travel than the rest of us, however, and I had reservations about him tagging along with us. But frankly, nobody should be traveling out on the snow alone. He really needed to come along with us or would need to wait to find someone else to hike with. Just as we were about to hit the trail, Hurricane came blowing in and joined our little hiking crew, now six members strong. Hurricane is from New Zealand, and I swear he sounds exactly like Russel Crowe. At least to my untrained ears. When I mentioned that to other hikers, they laughed and laughed and I think they thought I was joking. =)

The trail stayed mostly snow free for the rest of the day. There was a short section around an unnamed peak that still had snow as the sun rarely hit those north-facing slopes. Then, the last couple of miles of trail was largely on north-facing slopes as well. We lost Hurricane and Dan to some other hikers who set up camp earlier in the day than we wanted to do so, but they seemed in good hands. I was a bit glad to see our core group back to four people. We seemed to work best as a group of four. More than that, and decisions take longer to make and the hiking pace seems to slow down significantly.

The last mile or two, we started having quite a bit of fun in the snow. Swazey found a nice hill to slide down on his butt, while Dinosaur remarked that "clearly, when the rescue squad arrives, they'll see those butt slides and know we weren't in 'survivor mode' at this point." A little further on, while crossing an open area of untrammeled snow, Hiker 816 suggested that this would be a great place for snow angels. And I had to agree. It would be a great place for them, but I didn't want to get wet and cold playing in the snow.

But then I thought about all those hikers coming after me. They needed to see snow angels. They needed something to lift their spirits. So I dropped my pack and started making a snow angel. Dinosaur followed suit. And Swazey built a small snowman, perhaps six inches tall, in front of snow angels. Dinosaur found some twigs to add as arms for the snowman, and Swazey started having dreams of creating a "snowman army" of miniature snowmen. Hundreds of them, all across the open ground. It would have been awesome, but none of us had that kind of energy. But wow, that would have been a major talking point for people on the trail if we did so!

We finally set up camp, the four of us--Hiker 816, Swazey, Dinosaur, and myself--near Deer Springs Trail--on a patch of dry ground. The weather forecast called for strong gusts of wind (up to 40 mph) and a 30% chance of precipitation--probably in the form of snow at our elevation. The sunset was beautiful, though.

I set up my tarp next to a large boulder, hoping the boulder would help break the wind gusts predicted for the night. I managed to burn my mac 'n' cheese dinner, which seemed like it took me an hour to clean the pot from that disaster. The mac 'n' cheese actually tasted just fine, but the cleanup was terrible.

After sunset, we all headed into our respective tents and tarps. I wrapped up in my sleeping bag, and listened to the increasingly strong wind gusts outside, hoping it didn't get too bad.....