We met Wolf and Blue’s for breakfast at Evergreen Cafe at 7:30. I was injured leaving the hotel room on the way to the restaurant. I got a fairly large splinter/thorn/tigers tooth wedged in the bottom of my foot. I was hobbled. Did Bunny show concern? Did Bunny care? Did Bunny have any compassion for me? It should be obvious to everyone that the answers to the last 3 questions are all the same and all a resounding “hell no.” She half heartedly looked at my foot without bothering to put on her glasses. She couldn’t see it so she just wanted to scrape my foot to get it out.
I lost close to a pint of blood under the table at breakfast. I hobbled back to the hotel to keep from driving the nail all the way down to the bone. I asked Bunny to get me the clippers or a pair of pliers so I could pull the damn thing out myself. She wanted me to wait until she went to the bathroom first. Such compassion! I grabbed a limb out of a tree to bite down on while I performed the extraction. I finished off the procedure by tying a tourniquet around my ankle. The blood eventually clotted up to the point that I could safely remove the tourniquet and put on my wicking socks. I was ready to go a full 20 minutes before Bunny.
Although I was potentially, mortally wounded, I took a package to the post office to bounce forward to us in Acton. I didn’t want to rush Bunny. She still had to apply lotion and brush her hair her 200 strokes before she could finish packing. I also mailed another card to Sam in army basic training. Even after this side trip, I gathered all the trash in the hotel (including the other 5 guest rooms) and ran it all to the dumpster. Bunny was almost ready now.
We headed out to the main drag to try and flag down a ride back to the trail head. The plan was that we would try to hitch for 10 minutes and if we couldn’t get a ride by then, we’d head to the hardware store to consult the town angel list to get someone to drive us back to the trail. After all, Route 2 is still closed to thru-traffic so getting a ride might be tough. The first 4 cars passed us by without even slowing down. Bunny pushed her way in front of me and said “this is woman’s work, just like cleaning the house” and stuck out her thumb. The first car stopped. I’ll never do housework again because she knows what she’s talking about.
I looked in the passenger window and recognized the driver. It was Devil Fish who we met at Bird Spring Pass before Tehachapi. We had heard he was in the area still doing trail magic. He maintains several water caches as well as giving hikers rides. In fact, he had picked up Wolf and Blue’s and ran them down to REI on Tuesday. He told us to rearrange the water bottles if we needed to and hop on in.
Devil Fish dropped us off at Inspiration Point trailhead at 10:15. We were only about an hour behind Wolf and Blue’s but we knew we wouldn’t see them. We had a short 5 mile trail walk before we got to Vincent Gap. It was at Vincent Gap where we had to make our decision—hike over Baden Powell, or take the road walk bypass. We kept eyeing the mountain as we were hiking towards it. There was a lot of snow even on the sunny side. We’ve studied the map a lot the last couple of days and saw that a lot of the trail is actually on the shady side of the mountain, meaning even more snow.
Blue’s had already decided he was going over. Wolf had decided to road walk. After our snow experience getting into Wrightwood, I was leaning toward the road walk, but if it looked like a lot of snow had melted, I might be persuaded to go over instead. Bunny’s hip was bothering her still so she was inclined to road walk. There hasn’t been a rescue off of the mountain for almost 5 days. The last few rescues weren’t even thru-hikers. They were unprepared day hikers. I’m sure we could handle going up and over, but, this is the most important point I can make, we don’t want to.
It’s about an 11 mile road walk and we climb to 7900’ versus a 12 mile trail walk in snow where we would climb to 8900’. We’ll make up the difference tomorrow when we are forced to detour around a 4 mile section of trail for the endangered Mountain Yellow Frog. We get to walk an additional 3 miles that we won’t get trail credit for so we’ll call it a wash.
The road walk started out okay. Actually, it stayed okay the entire way, but it was obvious to us that the road is not going to be opened up to traffic any time soon. There were still huge snow fields stretching down to the road for several miles of the walk. The entire up-Mountain side of the road is a wash. Crews have been working on cleaning off all the land slides, but there are going to be plenty more as the snow continues to melt. We could hear slides in the distance, but never witnessed more than a few small rocks tumbling down.
Walking on concrete took its toll on our bodies. My feet were really aching bad. It’s much worse than trail walking. Although it’s harder on our feet, the road is a consistently flat surface which saves wear and tear on Bunny’s hip—the old gal just ain’t what she used to be. Once we get her oil level (CBD) back up to full, she’ll be good as new as long as the standard of “new” is a bit rusty and creaky.
We took a few breaks along the road and filtered water from snow melt. We maintained a rate of better than 2 mph the entire way. As we got closer to Islip Saddle, we knew we’d have to carry water the last half mile. We filled up 7 liters to have plenty for supper, breakfast, and to filter for tomorrow. We were hoping to have the parking lot to ourselves (which we almost did).
There are no other hikers around, but this is the other end of the road closure. Cars kept coming up and turning around until almost dark. Just at dark, three vehicles came up and parked. The people inside went for a night hike up the back side of Baden Powell. I’m sure they’ll wake us up in the middle of the night when they come back to their cars.
Bunny and I set up our tent next to a couple of picnic tables. There is a trash can and privy in the parking area, so we are as set as we can be. I made supper while Bunny did the usual housekeeping chores. When she came out to eat, she refused to eat more than a few bites because the rice was not completely cooked. She made such a fuss about it that I threatened to not let her have any dessert. I caved though, if she goes to bed without her sugar fix, I won’t get any peace.
One thing we weren’t expecting tonight was the abundance of owls in the area. By owls, I don’t mean “Old White Ladies” as Bunny is the only one here. I mean the birds that our bothered by our presence and keep asking who is here. They won’t shut up. “Who? Who? Who?” I yelled Bunny Tracks but that only got them excited thinking they might get a free meal.
EFG