The next hundred miles

If there are any entrepreneurial readers of this blog, here's your tip: Warner Springs doesn't have any amenities to speak of. What it does have is a seasonal swarm of locusts called PCT hikers that are voracious consumers of goods. You heard it here first.

The community center that the residents so kindly opened to serve this plague of nature-loving fools is located in a large "portable" building (if you went to school in California in the 80's and 90's, you know the type) between the town's only K-12 school and the baseball fields. "Camping Okay" beneath the two oak trees and No Alcohol permitted on the premises. The portable houses three computers, wifi (password: stayinschool), several bookshelves crammed with paperbacks, a bunch of tables, a washer/dryer, sundries store, al fresco showers out back, and Colette to run it all in the afternoons (or Mary Coletta, as she was christened about 80 years ago). There was even a mystery volunteer who baked a new type of cookie for all the hikers every day. Our lot was blessed with 13 dozen oatmeal-pecan-butterscotch. Warner Springs is clearly populated by saintly retirees that have taken this ragtag bunch under their wing (and one lech who offered to scrub Alyssa's back when she inquired about the showers). http://i.giphy.com/11q2f8tniG9Rwk.gif

A week of sweaty hiking and limited food/beverage options quickly turns to desperation, so a neighborly gent ferried a few hikers eight miles to the nearest store to procure beer, then turned his back and left us to create our own public house. We hopped the chainlink fence, stayed clear of the downed barbwire, and gathered in the non-school property dirt lot to drink some Tecate (Cinco de Mayo!). Names were exchanged, blisters counted, home states/countries listed, and friends quickly made.

We departed Warner Springs the next morning, the air significantly cooler than it had been the first five days, and clouds beginning to push in from the west. Winding our way through more Live Oak and Sycamore shaded canyons we began what was to become a ten-mile climb, eventually leaving the shady coolness of the creek bed for the exposed and dry chaparral of the higher elevations. The weather continued to cool - even in the heat of the early afternoon, the breeze had a definite bite to it. 

Some ten waterless miles after leaving the creek, we finally arrived at Mike Herrera's Place, a house perched high up in the hills and way off the grid. The Herrerra's family made their fortune manufacturing industrial-scale tortilla making machines. They built this off-the-grid house as a vacation getaway, but when they aren't using it they generously let PCT hikers use it as a stopover on an otherwise waterless and barren stretch of the trail. 

Greeted by a sign that said "hikers welcome!", we walked down a path made of mill-stones from the tortilla machinery to be hailed by other hikers and a guy at the grill asking if we wanted cheese on our burgers. Beers were in a cooler. The weather was quickly turning windier and colder, and we were promised chicken enchiladas for dinner, so we opted to stay. The promise of a warm RV to sleep in instead of a tent sealed the deal. 

The next morning dawned warm in the 80's vintage motor home, and freezing cold outside. We reluctantly put on our packs and began the day's hike. The wind hadn't abated and the temperature kept falling throughout the day. Our feet finally decided to make camp about five miles before the road (twenty miles down the trail) at the bottom of a narrow canyon. We cooked and ate dinner in the tent, the clouds racing by overhead. 

We woke up to the sound of precipitation on the rain fly, and upon closer examination discovered a layer of rime ice covering the tent. At that moment the fat snowflakes began to accumulate rapidly. 

Neither of us were looking forward to hiking (or camping) in a snowstorm, so we decided then to hike as far as the road and hitch a ride into Idyllwild. This would bypass about 20 miles of the PCT that was closed due to a 2013 fire, so we didn't see it as too big a "cheat". The only problem would be getting a ride in such awful weather. Luckily, a minivan piloted by a former thru-hiker-turned-trail-angel was waiting at the junction to take us the 18 miles into town. 

The snow was falling even more heavily when we pulled into the supermarket/post office parking lot, and the internet resources said that there were no vacancies at any of the hotels. The Internet, it turns out, is not the place to find a room in Idyllwild. A serendipitous meeting with the proprietor of the Idyllwild Gift Shop turned up a vacancy at a small place just down the road. It turns out that there isn't an app for personal communication in small mountain towns. 

The next day we began the long walk up the "hill", as the locals call it. The "hill" is 10,833 foot Mt. San Jacinto, and we intended to summit it. The melting snow had turned the trails into cold, wet marshes, which soon turned our boots into cold, wet marshes. There was so much slush all you needed was cherry syrup and a paper cone. Onwards and upwards we climbed. At 7,000 feet we broke through the blanket of clouds into brilliant sunlight. Fourteen miles, three crying spells on Alyssa's part, and 6,000 feet later, we reached the summit, tired but triumphant.  After enjoying the view of Palm Springs to the east and the unending cloud tops to the west, we hiked down a couple of miles and made camp as the sun set. 

One freezing night later, we were refreshed and ready to tackle the 20+ mile, 9,000 foot decent into the San Gorgonio pass. 

The air steadily warmed as we descended the flanks of San Jacinto. First through fir and pine forests which slowly gave way to Giant Sequoia, then scrub oak, then chaparral, and finally Sonoran desert. Through interminable switchbacks we plodded, the distances on this mountain incomprehensibly vast. We would see a landmark that appeared only 1,000 feet lower and a half-mile distant, but by the time we reached it we had walked almost four miles. Finally, exhausted, we found enough level ground to pitch our tent. The warm breeze was a welcome change as we enjoyed dinner outside for the first time in days, admiring views of the valley and the mountain peak on which we had stood the evening before.   

Ahead of us, only an arm's reach away, lay the foothills of the San Gorgonio range, our home for the next several weeks. We will get there, one step at a time.