After busting our butts to get to town we decided to take a zero day and do our hiker errands. The campground here in Idyllwild is really nice and conveniently located practically in the middle of town.
All the locals have been very hospitable here and it's a very vibrant little mountain town. Colette, our hitch into town yesterday, said the population is about 3000.
We pretty much immediately took showers at the campground and washed off 11 days worth of hiking. It was needed. We all looked like coal miners, except coated in desert dust. After the showers we realized we weren't quite as tan as we thought... it was just dirt making our tone look darker. Ha.
Feeling more human again, we headed over to the laundromat and did all our laundry. It took a couple washes to get all the grit out. I washed my shirt and all my socks three times.
After our chores we walked around town and did a little resupply at the grocery store since we needed some snacks.
Apparently there is weather moving into the area as we sit at the foot of the San Jacinto mountains. We've decided that tomorrow we will slack-pack a 16 mile stretch that we missed because we jumped off early to get to town for birthday burgers. This will give us time to assess the weather forecast and see if we'll have to wait out the storm or not before heading up to Mount San Jacinto at 10,800' - a place we wouldn't want to get caught in bad weather or fresh snow.
Goodnight!
DAY 13
We got up at 6am and were out of the campground by 7am to do our slack-pack section. We left our tent and sleeping bags, extra food, and all other extraneous items in camp and asked a few fellow hikers who were taking zero days to watch our stuff while we were gone.
We promptly got two successive hitches that took us out of town (Cali has been great for hitches). The first hitch could only take us 1/2 mile up the road but we took it anyway and rode in the back of his truck to a better hitching spot on the edge of town.
The second hitch was in a Hummer. We were stoked to add this our list of interesting hitches. We had great conversation and great views of fog-shrouded high desert landscape as we made our way back to the trail where we left off.
It was much easier hiking with lighter backpacks and the first 8 miles flew by. As we climbed higher the landscape changed from desert to mountainous and we began to be surrounded by giant boulders, and eventually some pine trees. I don't know if I mentioned this in a previous post, but some of the pine cones down here in SoCal are outrageous. Here's a pic of one of them:
Going along, the incoming weather was very visible at every view of the mountains. Large voluminous clouds were gathering above the peaks. It definitely looked a little ominous but made for fantastically dramatic pics.
Further up in elevation we started seeing some new flowers and plant life and more spectacular views.
Before very long we made it to the end of our 10 mile PCT section we had missed and were stopped by a section of closed trail which was destroyed by wildfire 2 years ago. We had been anticipating this and had an alternate route we would take to get off the mountains but would unfortunately have to skip about 18 miles of trail.
Taking our bypass down off the ridge, we zigzagged on switchbacks down steep faces down to green hollows folded into the mountainside. It was refreshing to see so much greenery.
The greenery was short lived and the rest of the scenery along our road walks down to the highway became arid once again.
Dirt road walking. I had to watch my step since I'm still wearing my foam shoes and cactus grew even in the middle of the road here.
After about 6 or 7 miles of road walking to get off the ridge, we made it to the highway and began our hardest attempt at hitching thus far. Although there was a nice wide shoulder for cars to stop, people were drivig pretty fast along this stretch and nobody wanted to stop for us. We thumbed for about 45 minutes before a woman (Melina?) and her dog, Cody, stopped for us. As we piled in, she explained she was out and about doing some training hikes for her upcoming JMT hike this summer in July. I guess sometimes it takes a fellow hiker to take pity and stop!
Melina dropped us back off at our new campground home and Mike and I dropped off our packs to run up to the outfitters before they closed. We were all a little nervous about how my shoes would hold up on more challenging terrain (including the possibility of encountering our first snow/ice) so we hoped to find replacements for my montrails there. Unfortunately we arrived at the outfitter 2-3 min after they had closed for the day, and we felt unsure what to do next. It looked like our only option would be to wait until they opened at 9am the next morning to check out shoes. We were a little worried that this may affect our plans to beat the in-coming weather and cross Mt. San Jacinto and Fuller Ridge safely, but we had no other option. Mike suggested that we check the rest of the hiker boxes in town just to see if they had anything good before heading back to the campground. When digging through the last box mike serendipitously found a pair of almost new looking Salomon shoes. Even though they were men's they fit me better than my old ones ever did.
We returned to camp and did some last minute planning to get our ducks in a row before tomorrow's push. While Idyllwild has been great to us, we are all excited to leave and see what's next. :)
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