Today marks the first day of our third week on trail! :)
Mike packing up our campsite.
We woke up late today and didn't hit the trail until nearly 9 am. It was a nice luxury and it meant that all the people who had camped alongside us were gone before we got up and out. We actually ended up hiking most of the day in solitude which turned out to be kinda nice.
As soon as we finally started hiking we were stopped again by the staggering views. The whole day today actually went really slow for a day that is all downhill because we had to stop so often to take pictures. Brace yourselves for an onslaught of pics:
Our view right after walking out of camp.
Clouds casting shadows on a sea of other clouds.
We walked through giant alpine boulder fields today.
Looked like we were supposed to walk right off a cliff.
Looking back up to San Jacinto we felt glad we bagged it when we did because the weather looked pretty ominous. It went from looking like the above in the morning...
To this a few hours later...
To this even later in the day. It was obvious that a fresh layer of snow had been deposited and the thought of doing the boulder scramble to the peak in those icy conditions makes me shiver. Other hikers very well may have attempted it today but we were very relieved to have just made it through in the little window that we did.
While we had views of stormy San Jacinto behind us, the views down into the hot sunny desert valley below us were in quite the contrast.
The valley floor approx 6000' below.
Better zoomed detail of valley.
Clouds amassing on the next range of mountains. It looked like every type of cloud we knew all mushed together.
We saw a lot of interesting flora and fauna today including a ton of snakes, some cute tiny chipmunks higher up, lots of lizards as usual, and some new flowers.
Gnarled alpine manzanita(?)
Lizard sunning himself.
Bright yellow flowers in a burned section of trail.
More yellow flowers but these were day-glo yellow in person. I've never seen such a fluorescent flower.
The first of a few snakes we found laying around with their heads in the ground. Lazy snakes.
I like the pattern on this one.
About halfway through our hike today we marked another major milestone: our 200th mile.
This year's actual mile 200, marked in stones by some other hiker. The trail slightly changes year to year due to reroutes, etc.
The official marker. Mike is talking but I took the photo anyway.
We finally made our way down to the valley floor where we anticipated the next water source. We hadn't refilled since yesterday and were looking forward to the notorious water fountain at the bottom.
Filling water at the "Desert Water Agency Faucet" which was an actual drinking fountain, meaning the water shot up at an angle and made an arc in the air. It was terrible for filling containers since the wind would make the stream of water bend at its whim and probably more than half of the water was lost on the ground. There was also a security(?) camera pointed at the fountain. It was ripe for mooning, which a fellow hiker performed.
From there we had roadwalked partway across the valley floor and decided to stop for the night under a highway and railway bridge. Why? We're not entirely sure but it was definitely an interesting night. We had amazing views of back up to the peak and the soundtrack of the busy highway and rumbling trains was... loud.
Before I go, three more pics from today that I'm too lazy to weave into the above:
On our roadwalk, looking back to where we came from today.
Desert soil in the valley.
Evening walk across the valley before we found our campspot.
All for now.
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