Day 9: Mile 140 to 162   (22 miles)

Woke up to blue skies. Rain is done for what appears to be a long time. Which also means we will be back to temps in the 90’s. Hiked up until myself and couple others reached Hwy 74 and headed one mile in to Paradise Cafe. I sat with both of the Koreans who saw me earlier and saved me a seat along with one other guy from Washington. The hiker hunger is real! I shared nachos with everyone and then ate a Route 66 burger which is pretty much a BBQ bacon burger, plate of fries and pie with ice cream. I did good and stuck with water to keep hydrated.  

Amazing apple pie

There is a trail closure coming up shortly due to a fire in 2013. So we will have to take a detour that’s in place. Hiked until I reached a campground area where others were already set up for the night. Now that the rain is gone, I was able to dry out my tent.

Day 10: Mile 162 to 181   (19 miles)

I finally hit double digits with days on the trail! Honestly, I’m feeling great. My legs and feet sometimes say otherwise, but they keep me going and compared to what I have seen others go through, I’m pretty happy with where I’m at.

Woke up this morning to strong winds pounding on my tent, but was able to sleep through most of it. Woke up and continued the detour into Idyllwild. It’s a really cool mountain style town. Talked to the ranger who said they had a busy weekend with eight rescues from the Mt. San Jacinto area. There was also one deceased person they were trying to remove from the mountain. Sounds like most of those people weren’t prepared for the winter storm that dumped a foot plus of snow up there over the weekend.

After I had arrived into town with Seth and Malia who are from Hawaii. We did all of our laundry and charged our phones. I met Crunchmaster who did the AT last year. After laundry we went to the towns pizza place who gives discounts to hikers. Great pizza!

Myself and Crunchmaster decided we wanted to attempt to summit Mt. San Jacinto and took off for it. Elevation at the top is 10,834 feet and started to see snow at the 8,000 foot mark. The very steep climb proved to take up more time then we wanted. Rumors had it, the shelter at the top was going to have a lot of people holed up inside to hide from the cold. I got up to 9,000 feet and three miles short of the summit. I had enough light to make two more miles, but risked using a headlamp on a snowy trail that’s at below freezing temps. One person in my head said to go for it, but the smarter one said to wait till morning to summit. I ran into Larry (from LA) and Nicki from England who found an amazing camping area that overlooks Palm Springs. That sold me on staying for the night. We cooked dinner and told stories and before long, we all got in our tents quickly to try and warm up as we were expecting temps to drop into the low to mid 20’s. Time to test my cold weather gear and see if I’m prepared as much as I should be.

Found the snow!