Patches philosophy is “10 before 10.” Ours is “sooner or later 10, whenever we can hobble that much.” I heard him scrambling around packing up in the dark—sick bastard. I took the opportunity to get up, pee, make coffee, and go back to sleep rolling my sippy cup all over myself. Cheap thrills abound on the PCT.
When I heard Ivy’s alarm go off at 7, I made Bunny wake up so we could eat our breakfast and pack up. We were actually able to get all packed up and hit the trail by a few minutes past 8. I saved time by not practicing my 3 point shot since we were heading to Paradise Cafe which has indoor plumbing. We just barely beat Ivy and Wolf out of camp.
We only had a little over 6 miles to go today since we have hiked over 36 miles the last two days. We need to average 12.5 miles/day to make our itinerary work, but we’ve got some extra zeros to make up (8 already) plus we’d like to shave a couple weeks off the end to get done by mid-September. Six is about all we can handle today, but we managed to eek out a bit more than that…306 to be exact, but I’m getting ahead of myself. All I can say for now is that we will not have a more productive day than this for quite a while.
Most of today was uphill, so it didn’t take Ivy and Dave long to overcome us and become dots. Bunny takes a good two miles to get warmed up in the morning. Walk 5 minutes, stop, my stomach hurts, I need roll-aids. Walk 5 minutes, stop, my lips are chapped,, I need lip balm. Walk 5 minutes, stop, I’m cold, give me my stocking cap and gloves. Walk 5 minutes, I’m hot, put my stocking cap away and give me my floppy hat. Walk 5 minutes, stop, the sun is in my eyes, get my sunglasses. Walk 5 minutes, stop, my stomach hurts and the roll-aids aren’t working, I need to pretend I’m in a Walmart parking lot and poop…This keeps going for the first hour of every day. I’m a patient man and I love my wife…must…keep…mouth…shut!
We made it to the road by 11. Our goal was to have a burger hoisted in front of our faces by noon, so we were right on schedule to hitch a ride and place our order. As we approached the road, we saw a guy in Native American garb walking up the trail from the cafe. This was Jason, the Viking, out posting herbal resources placards for hikers (420 legal in CA). He ran us down and said he was our trail angel here to whisk us to the cafe. We are his first hikers of the year. He also told us he was nearing 60 but “those above” have shared the secret to longevity with him. It’s the 49th element on the periodic table, Indium. We told him about Dave Asprey from bullet proof podcasts who has proclaimed he’s going to live to 180. Jason told us that’s a tough one, but he could guarantee 120. We agreed to disagree.
Jason did transport us to Paradise—not herbally. When we got there, we set our packs down by everyone else’s and tried the door. It was locked. This is how they ditch us. It was too good to be true that people would hike with us already. They paid the diner to shut us out within sight of the counter. I know how Moses felt after wandering the desert for 40 years and it’s only been 21 days for us. Oh the humanity.
One of the waitresses came to the door and told us they were closed unless we were thru-hikers. When she saw our packs, she told us to come on in because one of our friends has been here for hours and they can’t get him to leave. Patches no doubt. She walked us to a back corner where Patches, Ivy, and Wolf were all sitting. She told us they were having plumbing problems and couldn’t open to the public until the water was fixed but we could order anything we wanted as long as we didn’t use the bathroom. I had missed my practice round today in anticipation of porcelain but it’s worth a little backup now for a cheeseburger and fries. This, too, shall pass, just at a later time.
Patches had been doing some investigative work trying to find us a ride up to Agua Dulce—about 300 trail miles ahead. I tried contacting Kevin in Pasadena hoping to convince him to join us and maybe get a ride with him, but he can’t return to the trail until Monday. I then called the outfitter in Idyllwild trying to get in contact with Spoon who stopped by and checked on us when we spent the day at Pioneer Mail Picnic Area. He wasn’t working at the store yet. She told us there was a road walk around San Jacinto putting me in a position of having to make a lousy choice. I felt like Sophie making the choice of which child should live. The road was dead to me.
We hoped for Patches lead to come through. The waitress asked us if we wanted her to call Gus. We said yes. About 15 minutes later an old guy came into the restaurant and she introduced him to us. He seemed nice enough and was willing to take us if he could figure out where it actually was. We worked out all the details, finished eating, loaded the truck, and off we went. Gus asked us how old we thought he was. First guess 70, he indicated higher. We said 75. He said higher. We guessed again at 81. He indicated much higher. We let it go at that hoping that he still had ample reasons to live on.
Gus was in the Marine Corps. When he got out, his dad was working for DuPont here in Southern California and offered to let him live at home if he went to college and then would get him a job at DuPont. That’s how Gus ended up here in the early 50s. Instead of working for DuPont, he ended up becoming the sheriff of LA county from 1954 up until sometime in the 80s. When I heard this, I asked him about the Manson family. He showed me a picture of him with Manson in chains taking him to court for the trial. Like the vast majority of people, he was not a fan of Charlie. I had trouble recognizing him without a swastika on his forehead.
What was supposed to be a two and a half hour drive turned into a 5 hour ordeal. The traffic southeast of LA was miserable. We couldn’t figure out what the problem was until we had been in the traffic for a couple of hours and saw the poppy blooms on the mountains along the highway. People were actually just pulling to the side of the highway, parking their cars, climbing the fence, and walking up the mountains. Gus said he had never seen anything like it in the 60+ years he’d lived out here. The poppies were incredible.
We finally made it to our hotel a little after 5. We said our goodbyes to Gus and gave him a heads up that we would probably need him to pick us up in a Palm Springs in a week or two when we come back to make up the section we jumped. We then spent the rest of the evening doing normal town chores like doing laundry in hotel sinks, buying junk food at a gas station rather then walking a couple miles to a grocery store, and overeating pizza from the closest place to get hot food. We’re only here for a one night stand in Santa Clarita. Tomorrow, we hike in desert without snow.
EFG
Another installment from Bunny on our PCT journey: