A long day, and noticeably cooler than the last few weeks.
Slept well. After the usual oatmeal breakfast I set off and ran into a hiker I’d met in the last town. She was on a break as I walked past.
About 1.5 miles further on, water. Someone had at some point hacked a hole into the mountain and buried a concrete pipe at a spot where water seeps out. While I was filtering, the woman caught up. She uses a squeeze filter; I run mine through gravity. She finished first and got moving while I was still standing there — then I overtook her again a bit later. This went back and forth several times through the day. Sometimes we exchanged a few words, then both kept walking. It’s a thing I keep noticing: many hikers take fewer breaks than I do, but I walk faster, so we cross paths multiple times.
Earlier in the day, on a bad dirt road, a car had pulled up beside me — a guy with a dog next to him, asking what the road ahead looked like. I told him there were a lot of big rocks in the way and he probably wouldn’t get much further. A funny conversation. Every now and then you meet people who live more or less on the PCT, or very close to it, and have no idea about it. He was one of them. He thought it was wild that I was up here at all. Then he asked where I had started. To my answer — “the Mexican border” — came an incredulous “What??”. That was pretty good.
At some point I reached a section where the PCT was closed off. The mountain yellow-legged frog lives here, a severely endangered species — someone told me there were around 300 individuals left in 2023/2024. The detour ran along the Angeles Crest Highway, also known as Highway 2, for a few miles. Tarmac instead of trail, but the views were genuinely cool. Parts of the highway were closed off because of damage, and there was a lot of roadwork. I took a photo of what used to be a ski lift, now collapsed — somewhere around Mt. Waterman or Kratka Ridge, both abandoned ski areas. Miles of skirting around wrecked terrain.
In the evening I arrived at a cabin and pitched my tent next to it. A previous hiker had left a few things behind, including unopened packets of mac and cheese. Those I ate. Either way, a fun day — and noticeably cooler than what the last few weeks have been.
