This morning I woke up around 4:30 AM and did some more writing. I got one blog finished and ready to post. And I got a daily short video uploaded as well. Then I began going through my stuff and getting my backpack situated for the day. Cori planned to bring me back to the trail right around 6 AM. Which is perfect because today is going to be a pretty long day.
There is some potential weather rolling in this evening. And I’m going to be up near San Jacinto today. So I definitely want to make it as far as I possibly can today. That way either I’m at lower elevation this evening, or at least I’m closer to Cabazon. Either way I would be in a better situation than doing a short day. Even if I wind up sleeping at higher elevation, at least I will be closer to lower elevation in the morning the following day.
Cori drove me back to the trail and I thanked her for everything. Her and Detour really helped me out last night. I definitely could’ve pushed on without charging or getting more food. But being able to shower, do laundry, and get a good meal in, is absolutely priceless. Especially in conjunction with the bigger mile days that I’ve been doing. The combination is pretty powerful and definitely has been keeping me going. I would say this balance is something I’m trying pretty hard to achieve.
The PCT sign at the trailhead by paradise valley cafe.
Once I was back at trail, I had a fairly easy next few miles. Then began climbing for the majority of the day. Luckily, somehow the climbing felt really gradual to me. I realize I’m quite biased because I was just on the Appalachian Trail. But even the steeper sections of climbs out here have felt wonderful. My biggest concern today was the potential snow up on San Jacinto. And the potential for snow coming in this evening. The actual elevation gain couldn’t have been further in the back of my mind.
I’ve been wondering if this season is considered a “super bloom” year. The trail has been so lush with flowers!
I passed a couple hikers early on in the day. But it seemed like everyone I talked to was planning to hike up to one of the junctions, then take a side trail to go into Idyllwild. I can’t remember if I did that in 2017 or 2022. But I definitely did one of those side trails to get into town in the past. Honestly though, I’m really glad I didn’t do that this time around. It is a much longer hitch to go from Paradise Valley Café to Idyllwild. But it saves you a significant side trail that adds a lot of time and elevation gain.
There were some really cool massive boulders as I made my way up toward the San Jacinto Wilderness.
Over the course of the morning, I listened to podcasts back to back. It was just one of those days. Yesterday I didn’t put a headphone in until 3 PM. Every day is a little bit different. Today I just wanted to entertain my mind and help the time go by fairly quickly. And honestly I was loving the climbs, and I was feeling really good as I made my way up. A few hours into the day I reached a high point. Then the trail leveled off for a while and had a brief descent as well. I think I went downhill for 2–3 miles in total. Part of me wished I could’ve just kept going uphill. It’s always such a bummer to go downhill only to climb right back uphill. But there’s nothing I could do! Once I got to the bottom and passed the next trail junction, the final push of climbing began.
The views today were incredible and started out immediately.
This would go on for the next couple of hours and was going to be the most difficult part of the day. Around this time, I also realized I should’ve probably brought more water with me. Last night Detour told me that there was tons of water sources on San Jacinto because of the snow melt. And I should’ve checked that rather than just taking someone’s word for it. Because there was only one water source between here and the top. And that water source was a steep half mile off trail. I don’t care how little water I have, I’m probably not going to do that.
Entering into the San Jacinto Wilderness. This is where the climbing really began.
Because of that, it meant I really had to start rationing water immediately. I think by the time I noticed when the next source was, it was over 12 miles away. And I had less than 2 L left. It wasn’t the hottest day, but it was pretty exposed and warm. Plus, I knew I would be drinking more water because of all of the elevation gain.
For the next few hours, I was climbing pretty continuously. But the grade was nice the majority of the time. One of the biggest obstacles of the day was all of the downed trees. They were their worst in the 5 miles which proceeded the junction to San Jacinto. Some of the trees were absolutely massive and took a significant amount of time to climb over or go around. That was because there was steep fallout toward the right of the trail, so you wouldn’t want to make a bad move. I could definitely see that this section of trail would’ve felt dangerous with snow. But up until this point in the day I hadn’t seen any snow at all. I was only just now approaching 8000 feet elevation gain, so I figured my time would come.
You can probably imagine how this section of trail could be dangerous when covered in snow.
I passed by the section of trail where the hiker Microsoft fell and unfortunately passed away. I believe that happened in 2021. I know it wasn’t the year that I hiked in 2022. When there’s no snow on the trail, the trail doesn’t seem that dangerous at all. Sure, if you tripped and fell, you could definitely die. But if you watch your footing that shouldn’t be a problem. Though, when there’s a lot of snow on the ground, anything is possible. Especially if you don’t have proper snow gear. This section of trail would’ve been very hazardous with snow and without micro spikes. It’s so incredibly sad to think of a hiker tragically falling to their death within the first 200 miles of the PCT.
Minus my lack of water, today was pretty dang perfect!
A little while after that, I passed by the “rock slide” area of the trail. It was just a section a lot of rocks and had fallen off the mountain and messed up the trail. But without any snow on the ground once again, there was no hazard at all. As I got closer towards the top of the climb, I finally saw some hikers. It had been such a quiet day. I was wondering if I was going to see any thru hikers. I wasn’t sure if people were possibly concerned about the incoming weather and were going to stay in town. But unfortunately, I really don’t have that luxury. I’m avoiding unnecessary days off if I can. If the forecast had been significantly worse though I would have. Obviously I don’t want to risk my personal safety. The hikers that I saw said that they were struggling with the climb, which makes a lot of sense because it was a ton of elevation gain.
Heading up one of the final large climbs of the day. This was about 5-6 miles prior to the junction to the San Jacinto summit.
Down by Paradise Valley Café the trail was around 5000 feet. And the high point today is just over 9000 feet. But, the trail doesn’t just go uphill. It goes up, down, up down, all day long. One section alone descended 1000~ feet, and then climbed right back up afterwards. In total, I probably will wind up climbing somewhere around 9000 feet today.
The hikers I passed by were also going to be taking one of the side trails down from San Jacinto. But would be going down tomorrow. It was just nice to see people at all though. A little while after that, I ran into a trail runner. He was moving pretty quickly and was actually out on trail inspecting the conditions for his wife. She wants to come and hike this section on horseback. I’m very glad that he came and scouted it before she came out. Because this portion of the trail would not be safe to travel on horseback. There are way too many down trees across the trail. And there are not good routes around the trees for anything more than a person.
I wound up hiking pretty close to the guy for a while. But I think he just wanted to enjoy the trail on his own, so he wound up falling back. By this point in time I was parched. I was really hoping I would come across a section with some water from snow melt. But that never wound up happening. Every time I checked my phone, I was still wildly far from the next water source. By the time I was 4 miles out from the water source, I was insanely thirsty and could tell that I was pretty dehydrated. I could feel it in my face in my eyes. I felt ok, just a little bit uncomfortable from the thirst.
I loved how rocky and exposed the climbs were today.
I wound up finishing off all of my water and was going to push through the next 2 miles without any. As I made my way there I got dang lucky. I passed a pile of snow which was melting quickly, causing a very slight stream to form. It wasn’t flowing like a typical spring, but there was enough flow to use my toaks cup to fill my bottle. Sure, it took a few minutes. But I was unwell. So I sat there and took about 5-10 minutes to fill up 2 L of water. I drank one liter super fast and it was ice cold from the snow. As soon as I drank that I felt completely fine. I realize I hadn’t gone long enough without water to significantly hurt or impair myself. Just long enough to be pretty thirsty and uncomfortable. I also had stopped eating because I was out of water. I didn’t want to eat some dry snacks and have nothing to rinse it down with. So as soon as I got more water, I ate a ton of snacks. Then I was feeling fantastic. The rest of the day seemed more feasible than it previously had. At this point I was a few hours away from where I was camping for the night.
I was still kind of debating how far I wanted to go. There is a camp called strawberry camp, which has a privy. That sounded great. But, if bad weather winds up rolling in, I would like to be a bit further along the trail. The next camp after strawberry camp is actually at an even higher elevation. The only benefit to going further would mean that if it snowed tonight, I would have less mileage to do tomorrow. And it would be pretty much all downhill. So I was leaning towards staying at the further campsite which sat around 8,600 feet. It would be a potentially colder place to camp. But then I wouldn’t really have any elevation to do in the morning if there was snow on the ground.
As I got closer to camp, I wound up passing a couple more hikers. It was so nice to see people after having such a quiet day. Today is definitely the least number of hikers that I’ve seen in the entire time I’ve been on trail. They were also planning on going to strawberry camp, but I told them my debate because of weather. It seemed like they’ve been out for a few days and they hadn’t checked the weather recently. But, weather is quite unpredictable out here. At this point in the day, it seemed like nothing was going to roll through. I just couldn’t say for sure.
Because of the recent snow, the trail was so unbelievably lush.
When I continued going past there, the trail wound up having a lot of big patches of snow. It was definitely the most snow that I’ve seen all day. I’ve went through a few patches closer to the top of the last climb. But nothing that lasted for more than 10 or 20 feet. Now I was going through some pretty long patches of continuous snow. Luckily the snow was very firm and I wasn’t post holing whatsoever. It is pretty funny to think that I flew here from New Hampshire within the last week to get away from snow. And here I am hiking in snow!
This section in particular had the most snow. This was near 9,000 feet, before the trail descended down to the strawberry camp.
Luckily most of the snow patches were in areas which didn’t have major dangerous fall out. Otherwise spikes would have been necessary.
I think a lot of people don’t realize the PCT varies so much in elevation, even in the desert. One moment you could be down at four or five thousand feet. The next moment you could easily be up around seven thousand feet. I think of this section of PCT as a “mountain desert”. It’s not all Mojave style desert out here.
This sign was right around strawberry camp.
When I did finally pass the next water source I filled up a bit more. That way I had extra water for the next couple times. Then I wound up passing by strawberry camp and continuing uphill to the next campsite. There was only about 4 miles to go past there. Which meant I would probably get to camp before dark. And it would be a 36 mile day!That means tomorrow is only going to be a 22 mile day. What a delight! I have a lot of writing and editing to get done. So I’m very excited to have a short day tomorrow.
This rock was so cool! I imagine it is hollowed out from ancient glacial melt flowing across it.
When I was going up the last climb of the day there was absolutely no snow at all on the southside of the mountain. But of course there wound up being a lot of snow after I descended. It was pretty late and would be getting dark soon. The trail was packed in snow and kind of difficult to follow at times. The hardest aspect of the snow was the fact that there are so many hikers out here navigating without checking their map. It seemed like a lot of people weren’t pulling their phones out to use FarOut. I followed footsteps a couple times which went a completely wrong direction. That can definitely get confusing. After a while, I just kept my phone out and ignored the footprints. Then I was able to get up to the top and get out of the snow.
The snow let up as I climbed higher. Then I watched probably the most incredible sunset of my entire life. I know I say that pretty often, but this one was something else. All of the clouds had dropped perfectly over the valley below. It looked like a massive puffy lake. Then right over top was this gorgeous pink and red sunset. A photo didn’t do justice to what it looked like in reality. I couldn’t resist taking my time and enjoying it before camp.
The sunset tonight was exceptional. What a way to end the day!
This picture depicts the clouds a bit better. They were thickly packed beneath the rays of the sun set.
Around this time the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. I checked weather using my garmin. Which said it’s not going to rain until tomorrow afternoon. I’m pretty excited and hopeful that is true. If that is true, then it won’t matter that I’m camping at 8600 feet tonight. Sure, maybe it will be a little bit cold. But that would be the least of my concern.
I ended up finding a really nice tent site just as it got dark. At first, I thought I had made a bad move. It was super windy up there! But after walking around for a few minutes, I found a site which was blocked from the wind. It wound up being pretty perfect. I got set up quickly and was in my quilt by 8:30 PM. Because I’m going to be in town tomorrow, I didn’t put any pressure on myself to do video work or writing. I’ll have plenty of time to get caught up tomorrow. All I needed was a good night sleep. So I did my stretching, ate something, and called it a night.
If you enjoyed this blog and would like to support my hike by buying me a soda or a snack along the way, there is a “Tip the Author” button below! It links directly to my Venmo. Any and all support is incredibly appreciated!
