Pct Days 7-9

We battled 40 mph wind gusts as we hugged the side of the San Felipe hills to the most infamous water cache in the PCT. This cache is maintained by a network of trail angels that supply the 25 mile dry section.

We spent about 2 hours at the cache chatting with friends before braving the winds. Rachel has made a name for herself on the trail because she brought three pies from town to scissors crossing. It turns out another hiker was bogarting one of the pies and not sharing until someone called her out on it!

Our trail group found a nice ridge campsite and an eventful dinner included Andy who leaned how not to make Mac and cheese, Jason, Micah, Johan, and Ezra, who was impressed we dehydrated food. The wind continued to batter us at camp. That, coupled with the presence of Rooster, made for an early bedtime.

Pct Day 8

We woke up the same way we went to bed, listening to the crazy wind.

Thankfully it died down shortly after we started today and it was a pleasant stroll down the mountain talking with Johan. At our break spot, barrel springs, Ezra entertained us all with a lesson on the merits of Freud and demerits of Jung. What fun trail talk.

The rest of the day we traveled through the San Felipe Hills which included Eagle rock, a rattlesnake encounter, and a sore IT band until we arrived at the Warner Springs community center. From there, we walked to the post office to pick up a resupply.

There was a gas station next door with cheap Bud Light so we indulged. We hitched a ride back to the community center where we chatted with some other hikers and grabbed a bucket shower and did “laundry”. I wouldn’t say we are clean, but surely less dirty?

The community center is closed to camping this year, so we hiked another two miles to a flat picnic area with about 8 other hikers. Before the picnic area the trail travels through grass fields. A group of territorial cows grazed here and made sure they had the right of way in the trail.

PCT Day 9

We enjoyed a late start by drinking coffee and chatting with Sebastian and Nicki but paid the price with 3k feet of elevation gain in hot mid day temperatures. One bonus of the late start is we had the day to ourselves for the most part. We’ve come to think of our new friends as our trail family. And just like our real family, it’s nice to spend some time by ourselves. 😃

We meandered by some wild rosemary which masked our hiker stank. The trail became very overgrown around 5K feet and we tried to embrace the scrapes and cuts. It was worth it, because it led to our favorite campsite yet, a wind protected, flat site, with a western view of the neighboring ridge.