Never plan for an easy day. It’s just 12 miles. It’s all downhill (except for the 2000’ we have to climb first), but then it’s just a level walk at 8400’ for a couple of miles. Level and downhill. What can be easier than that? What else is at 8400’ on the shady side of a mountain? Snow, that’s what.
Of course, we started with the usual rusty mechanical walk that robots have after being left outside to rust for 40 years. Except I’m not talking about 40 years of being left outside. I’m talking about lying down in a tent overnight. And I’m not talking about a robot. I’m talking about a Bunny without her CBD oil. Either way, the end result is the same—a lot of creaking, the sound of gears grinding, and the incessant whine. No matter what else happens in Wrightwood, we have to find CBD oil!
We didn’t set an alarm last night because we have such an easy day. I woke up at 6:50 and started the coffee with the salvaged cooler water. It’s a good thing it was being used for coffee so we can’t see all the floating (yet sterilized) particles that were in the water. We had to settle for protein bars and jerky bacon with the coffee. No cold soak oatmeal or chia because we don’t have enough water for such luxuries. Plus, I think I am seeing Bunny sprouting quite a bit of fine green hair like a chia-pet. Maybe we’ll cut back for a few days.
Whoever camped next to us, we’ll never know. They were up and gone before I started the coffee. I think it might have been the sound of their footsteps that woke me up. A couple of hikers did pass by our tent while we were eating. I looked out to watch each of them go through the garbage that used to be trail magic. It had been weighted down with rocks to keep it from blowing away, but this also gives the feel that there might just be something good left which requires a thorough search before passing hikers’ hopes are dashed.
In spite of our late start, we were still on the trail by 8:15. This would have been one of our earlier starts on the AT last year. I let Bunny lead knowing that no matter how far ahead she managed to get in the first two hours, I’d be able to catch her with a 10 minute brisk walk. If she took a wrong turn, I’d be able to hear her joint sounds and be able to retrieve her before she got too far off track.
With the defective, slow moving, nearly broken down Bunny, we still made it to the top (7 miles in) by 12:30. That’s not too bad considering. But then the fun began. We found the trail leading directly to Wrightwood which we had been warned to avoid because it was an ice track. What no one had told us was to take the road at this point. The road that parallels the trail. The road that is on the south, sunny side of the mountain and not the trail which is on the north shaded side of the mountain. It took us over 2 hours to go 1.7 miles to rejoin the same road.
Admittedly, we don’t have a lot of snow hiking experience. We actually have more now than we want. There weren’t a lot of tracks in the snow (for good reason since most people were smart enough to stay on the sunny road). At very few points were our lives actually in danger. I say few because there were a couple. I did start to slide down a steep slope and was able to catch myself on a tree. Bunny remained surprisingly calm. I’m assuming she has, once again, forgotten that we don’t carry life insurance on each other—part of my design to make sure she has incentive to keep me alive. Or possibly, she was still mad at me because we had been arguing about the hotel reservation yesterday and she does carry grudges. Either way, she stayed calm as I slid away. Once I recovered, she just made sure to not follow my tracks.
Baden Powell is almost 700’ higher than where we were through all the snow. Once we made it to the road, I checked the map to see how much of the trail on Baden Powell was on the north side of the mountain. Enough that I’m willing to skip it if I can talk Bunny into a road walk. While I was looking at the map, I said “Bunny, what do you think of…” I didn’t have to finish the sentence before she said “skipping Baden Powell, I’m all for it. I’ve been worried about it ever since we crossed San Jacinto.” Purity be damned. I want fun, not a life and death experience.
Supposedly, 20 people a day have been going over Baden Powell. When we made it to the road, we discovered Rt. 2 is still closed because of snow. I’m willing to bet a large portion of those 20 people a day are road walking around Baden Powell. When we did make it to town, we ran into Sun Bear and he said they were hiking the road. We eventually caught up with Wolf in town, and he said he was going to walk the road. Only Blue’s said he was going over the mountain. He’s young. His body heals quickly. He’ll be fine in the long run.
You can see route 2 for a couple of miles as you’re hiking down to it. One thing popped out to me in my observation. There weren’t any cars on it. At this point, we had been told the road was open. When we got down to it, there was one other hiker (who had passed us on the mountain because she hiked the road in the sun while we hiked the trail in the shade). We started talking to her when we saw a car coming towards us. We immediately put up our thumbs and he stopped.
Matthew had been snowboarding down Baden Powell. He said there wasn’t much of a trail, but it was radical snow boarding (the surfer accent is a real thing in CA). He said all three of us could fit in and he would take us to town. He also told us that Mammoth Ski Area in the Sierra has extended its season to August confirming we are in no hurry to enter the Sierra.
When we got to town, he didn’t know where the Post Office was and he took a wrong turn which actually took us right to our hotel. He dropped us off at the door to our room. It turned out we had literally walked up to the highway, gotten a ride in less than 30 seconds that took us directly to our hotel. The trail does provide, and rather well. It was already 3:30 in the afternoon when we arrived. If we are going to get two town meals in before bed tonight, we’d better start eating and fast. Needless to say, we were successful in our food goal.
EFG