Return to Cabazon

The San Jacinto Mountains meet the desert floor just outside Cabazon, CA

I’m standing on a rocky promontory, at about 8,000 ft elevation at the northern end of the San Jacinto Mountains in California.  It is an awesome sight.  In front of me this mountain range abruptly drops almost 7,000 ft to the desert floor below.  It’s as if the San Jacintos, in a rush to go north, suddenly stumbled and did a face plant.  I’m about to start the descent.  Patti will be picking me up at an underpass beneath the I-10 freeway not far from the town of Cabazon.  It feels a bit eerie to be standing here now because of what happened back in 2022.

A bit over a year ago, Mother’s Day 2022 to be precise, I was at that underpass, looking up at this mountain range.  The next stop on my Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) thru hike was to be the town of Idyllwild, nestled in the heart of the San Jacintos.  To get there I had to walk up 7,000 ft.  Alas it was not to be.  Dehydration, acute gastrointestinal “issues”, and the wrong medication for treating atrial fibrillation (Afib) had spelled trouble for me almost from the beginning of my hike.   I posed for a picture at the underpass and sent it to Patti.  She was appalled – I looked exhausted, severely underweight, hollowed out after a little less than 2 months on the trail.  What neither of us knew at the time was that I had also just become infected with COVID.  I gazed up at the San Jacintos and reluctantly decided it was time to temporarily return home. 

Fast forward over a year and Patti and I have returned to this area.  In the interim, I’ve cleared up all my medical issues.  I’ve decided to gingerly dip my toes back into the PCT pool on a two day hike.  Patti drops me off at the Ernie Maxwell trailhead in Idyllwild and I begin walking 35 miles towards Cabazon.  This will retrace, but in reverse, what I was contemplating doing back on Mother’s Day 2022.  The first stage is 5 miles and 2,400 vertical feet up to Saddle Junction to join the PCT.  After an additional 11 miles I will reach the Fuller Ridge trailhead where I will make camp for the night.   What I don’t fully appreciate is that I will end up needing to climb an additional 2,600 vertical feet on the PCT to get there.  For someone with their “hiker legs” this isn’t really a problem.  But for me I’m starting over again.  I manage to make it to Fuller Ridge camp after 11 hours of hiking with 5,000 vertical feet gained and shortly fall asleep for nine and a half hours.

The next morning finds me on that promontory.  Today will be different.  Yesterday I climbed up (and up).  Today I will descend almost 7,000 feet off the front doorstep of the San Jacintos.  While it will be 19 miles of hiking, I figure that I am on “the yellow brick road”.  Losing 7,000 ft over 19 miles suggests a gentle slope where one simply skips along.  That turns out to be pretty naïve thinking.  For the next eight hours I make my way carefully down slope.  Small lizards escort me, repeatedly darting back and forth across my path.  I pause abruptly when I spy a rattlesnake traveling down the trail just ahead of me.  It is a type of pit viper particularly known for its venom.  Its tail rings are bright orange – a juvenile. I decide that it has the right of way and wait till it turns off trail. 

When I do pause to look around, the views are stunning but the descent also reminds me of everything I had forgotten during my time on the PCT last year.  Here and there large trees have fallen across the trail, completely blocking my way.  In other places, the trail is a jumble of rocks.  I pick my way slowly through these obstacles.  And then there are the sections where Tropical Storm Hillary has eroded a trail that was already precariously cut into a steep slope.  One misstep and I will be sliding down the mountain, definitely off-trail. 

None of these hazards are particularly notable for a seasoned thru hiker.  You deal with them repeatedly.  But, in a year my memory has faded, so this hike in the San Jacintos brings all this back into focus.  One thing that is different from last year is the number of hikers I meet on trail.  On one memorable day in 2022 as I left the town of Wrightwood I decided to count the number of hikers heading north as I made my way south.  By the end of that day I had been passed by 120 people.  So much for splendid isolation (or privacy if you need to take a leak). 

This time I run into a grand total of 5 hikers over two days.  Four of these are heading south.  They are about 200 miles short of completing their thru hike.  We pause briefly and exchange greetings.  I’m asked about trail conditions which they will encounter after passing me.  I hear some war stories.  Tropical Storm Hillary dumped close to 12 inches of rain on the San Jacintos.  This undoubtedly contributed to the deadfall that I encountered.  But further north it absolutely ravaged the desert.  One hiker told of Mission Creek having 30 ft embankments to negotiate.  When I passed through that area last year the embankments were no more than a couple of feet!

After 8 hours I finally find myself at the base of the mountain.  It is 3 PM.  I have 4 miles to go to the underpass.  The terrain is now flat and sandy.  Again I think “yellow brick road” time.  But it is now desert hiking, which is a completely different kettle of fish.  This is not unique to this area.  From Walkers Pass (where I started in 2022) to the Mexican border it is predominantly desert.  Desert hiking has its own rules – start before dawn, take a siesta between 1 and 5 PM, “camel up” every time you find a water source, etc. 

But today I don’t take a siesta.  Instead, I stubbornly strike out across the final 4 miles knowing that Patti is waiting for me.  I am again reminded that if you ignore the rules you suffer the consequences, even if you are talking about “only” 4 miles.  This desert section is more of a large wash with little semblance of an actual path.  The heat quickly sucks me dry. This is why people with brains don’t hike the desert in the middle of the afternoon!  Finally, with my tank on empty, I trudge up to our car.  Patti is waiting for me with a cold Coke Zero.  For all the missteps it has been a great two days.  And, as I sink into the passenger seat, coke in hand, I reflect on the bigger picture.

On Mother’s Day last year I had been conflicted.  I had quit.  Should I have kept going?  Could I have made it up into the mountains and down into Idyllwild?  Had I been a wimp?  I’ve considered this for a long time.  But my return to Cabazon finally puts those questions to bed.  I turn to Patti and say “there is no frikkin’ way I’d have ever made it to Idyllwild last year.”

Clash of the Titans: Comparing the Appalachian (AT) and Pacific Crest (PCT) Trails

It has been almost 2 months since my attempt to thru hike the PCT came to an abrupt end near Stevens Pass.  When I mention to people that I hiked the AT and then made this attempt on the PCT invariably I get asked some version of: “Which one is harder?” or “Which one did you like best?” There has been much written about these questions by a variety of folks.  Here are my $0.02 worth.

Disclaimer(s)

 I’m biased in many ways.  First, I didn’t finish both trails.  I completed the AT, but only managed 1,000 of the 2,650 PCT miles.  Second, there is what psychologists term the “recency effect” – it has been five year since I hiked the AT so my memory of hiking the PCT is much fresher.  Third, I am a “senior (AARP?)” hiker, a distinct minority on long distance trails, so some of my observations might be less relevant.  Then there is COVID.  Even after the acute effects of the pandemic in 2020 ended, COVID presented challenges that simply weren’t present in 2017.  Finally there are what I will call “health effects”.  On the AT I was pretty much in perfect health the entire 5 months.  On the PCT karma caught up with me and I endured multiple health issues, the most notable being a bout of COVID and then the icing on the cake – catching the norovirus somewhere north of Snoqualmie Pass.  Throw in a visit to the Tehachapi ER for severe dehydration and a few other issues and there would be good reason to suspect that I might look at the PCT with a jaundiced eye. 

Nevertheless, I think I can be objective here.  Below I lay out six ways to compare these two trails.  Still, caveat lector.

Burnt

Smoke from a forest fire obscures the view on Hwy 2 approaching Stevens Pass WA

It’s over. After Katie walked more than 1,350 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and I walked just over 1,000 miles, we have called it quits just short of Stevens Pass, WA (see above photo for the main reason). More on Stevens Pass in a minute but first some thoughts on the PCT and all things fire.

Sins of the Father

Katie already way ahead of me setting up camp for the night

It is a typical day for my daughter and I as we backpack on the Pacific Crest Trail.  I got up around 5 AM and was walking by 6.  Katie’s got up at 7:30 and was on trail by 8 – half the time it took me.  Sometime in the afternoon we met up and walked the last couple of miles together into camp. At this stage Katie is a much faster hiker than me.  She had her camp set up, ate dinner, took care of everything else and was in her tent, retired for the night, in about an hour.  It took me 2 hours.  What is going on here?  I thought I was the one with vastly more backpacking expertise?  Well, I had a few bumps in the road before getting to this stage of my hiking career.

Growing up my family was not much for the outdoors.  I can’t remember ever going camping with my parents.  A key moment in my opportunity to expand my outdoors experience came when it was time to transition from the Webelos to Boy Scouts. Money was tight. My parents offered me a choice: I could either get the official boy scout uniform and launch my scouting career or get a new baseball glove and launch that career.  Alas, I chose the baseball glove, forsaking the boy scouts.  It didn’t pan out as I failed to ever make the cut for my  high school baseball team.

Prince Charming

Am I really wearing a charm bracelet?

“Hey Dad, you know that your backpack sort of looks like a charm bracelet?” 

My daughter, Katie, and I are 13 days into our backpack trip on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and differences in our hiking styles are beginning to emerge.

Our original plan was for me to hike the desert section in southern California on my own then meet her in Ashland and hike south to where I originally started, then we’d go back to Ashland and hike north to the Canadian border. Yes, I know, kinda complicated.  But things conspired to disrupt these plans and we are only now hiking together, having just headed north bound from Ashland Oregon.  If things go well we are still hoping to make it to the PCT northern terminus before October. Together we hope to hike through all of Oregon and Washington.  Separately we will have hiked most but not all of California.  I guess you might call this kind of an (almost) tag team thru hike?

Medicine Man

Thru Hiker Formulary – Gray Mountaineer version

Back in 2017 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail (AT), my first-aid kit was of the minimalist persuasion:  I wasn’t on any prescription medications, so my kit consisted of a few band aids, a couple blister patches, some antibiotic cream, tweezers and a small supply of the hiker’s main friend – Vitamin I (Ibuprofen).  This didn’t take up much room in my pack.  In fact, I probably used less than 10 doses of Vitamin I during my entire 5 month journey.  Even better for me, I never really got sick on the AT, not even a cold.  Fast forward 5 years and the world is sure a different place as I have been busy wrestling with the PCT.  Although maybe not as busy as I would have liked to have been.

A Day in the Life (on the PCT)

The beginning and the end of a day on the PCT

The alarm goes off at 4:20 AM. This is not a mistake. In the southern California section of the PCT it starts getting uncomfortably warm around 11 AM and with that my performance starts to go downhill (metaphorically speaking). So, I want to start walking right around dawn. Right now that means 5:30 AM. Eleven to 12 hours later I will stop walking. But before any of that happens there is a lot to do.

First off are taking my meds. I’m on one for high blood pressure, another to lower my heart rate (to control atrial fibrillation) as well as a blood thinner. Is it safe for someone taking these drugs to be out here doing the PCT? My cardiologist thinks so. He says that he has marathoners as patients with my condition. He acknowledges that this “cocktail” is not conducive to maximizing cardiovascular performance, which is kind of what you want if you are out here on the PCT. It is another challenge for my hike.

Next up is getting my equipment ready to go. Backpacking means each piece of equipment has its place and you know where that place is, at all times. When you are packing and unpacking you need to be methodical and repetitive. My wife might agree that these are some of my strengths. First up – getting back into my hiking clothes for the day. Then the sleeping bag and pad get rolled up and each piece of equipment that I got out the night before is put back where it belongs in my pack, exactly.

What’s missing from this morning ritual is breakfast. When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I started my day by making a cup of coffee then heated water for oatmeal. It was nice but it used a lot of stove fuel and took a lot of time. Now, I just eat a bar. The final thing I do is take down my tent and stuff it into my backpack. I turn off my headlamp and put that away. At this point I can see well enough to start walking. So I do. All this has taken between 60 and 70 minutes.

The night before I had done some calculations – how many miles will I hike today, how difficult will the terrain be, where are feasible places to camp and most importantly where will I get water during the next day or two? In this section of the PCT, water access is always paramount.

I love this part of the day. It is cool and quiet and as I walk, the day gradually comes alive, the scenery for the day slowly revealing itself. I don’t listen to music or podcasts on the trail. I spend my time absorbed in my surroundings. I fall into a rhythm and try to find my zone. At some point I pass my first NOBO hiker and this breaks that zone.

Each day I pass a lot of NOBOs. The trail can be very narrow, often hugging steep mountain sides, so passing another hiker can involve some dance steps. It is a bit of a game of chicken. Who stops first and pulls off to the side? You need to leave enough room so neither one of you goes sliding down the side of the mountain. Sometimes you just smile or wave, perhaps saying a word or two (hopefully not “Happy Trails”). At other times, and in the right terrain, you might pause and chat briefly, exchanging info on trail conditions, water caches, good looking places to camp. But, you always end up moving on pretty quickly. The extended conversations usually come with someone who is of my “vintage”. The young bucks and beckies, as I refer to the younger generation hikers, usually but not always, just hustle by.

The trail is usually rough enough that I spend much of my time with eyes on the ground immediately in front of me. If I didn’t do this then I’d end up doing a face plant. But there is always time for a brief glance up when I pause, to take stock of my surroundings. I might be hiking up a hill via switchbacks and across a valley I see a snow covered peak that might be tomorrow’s objective. Or, I finally reach a highpoint and look back and see a panorama of a couple days of hard walking. It can take your breath away, reminding you why you are out here in the first place.

These moments are interspersed with the practical aspects of my hike. If you are going to make it from Mexico to Canada (or some approximation there of) you need to get in your mileage and that means taking care of your body. Where are you going to take your next break and have some water and eat some calories? Don’t let it go so long that you bonk, emptying your gas tank. I find myself needing to take breaks every one to two hours. Thirty days and thirty pounds down in body weight, this obviously didn’t work perfectly for me!

Sometime near the end of the day you reach a place that might work for camping. Do you stop or push on for another mile or two? Often the young bucks walk into the twilight but that doesn’t work for me. I stop before the sun starts to set. Setting up camp reverses what I did that morning. The first thing is getting my tent set up. This is behavior left over from my Appalachian Trail hike where you never knew for sure if it might decide to start raining. Getting protection from the elements for your gear was always critical. Here in SoCal that is not typically an issue, but old habits die hard. After that, I prepare my evening meal. After a day that has involved eating about 8 bars of various types, I look forward to an actual meal. This is usually a dehydrated dinner that I prepared months before.

After that I finish unpacking, storing my gear in my tent, and getting ready for the night. On the PCT there are typically no privvies (another difference from the Appalachian Trail). I am methodical about this and always take the time to prepare a cat hole near my campsite so that if an urgent need arises I don’t have to waste time getting things ready.

One of the pleasures I find from a day of backpacking is the luxury of stretching out in my tent, finally relaxing after a day that has often been physically challenging as well as rewarding. Before drifting off to sleep, I’ll write in my journal, and review my plan for the next day.

Then it is time to turn in for the night. 4:20 AM will be here soon and I need to be ready to repeat the above, ad libitum.

Buen Camino on the PCT?

Not the garb of your typical PCT hiker

The other day I started the next phase of my PCT journey hiking south from Wrightwood. My next stop was Big Bear Lake, 6 days away. To help pass the time I decided it might be fun to count the number of NOBOs (northbound PCT hikers) that I passed as I continued my SOBO journey.

By the end of the day, 22 miles later (my miles were mostly downhill) I had counted 113 people passing me headed north. I ended my day at a water cache at Swarthout Canyon Road. I wondered if there would be any water left after the number of hikers who had passed me that day. When I got there the guy who maintains that cache (a true hero) mentioned that this was a record setting year for the # of gallons used per day at his cache. I wasn’t surprised.

Sisyphus Revisited

What would Sisyphus think? The Guthook PCT app faithfully tracks where you are as you climb yet another mountain peak

Remember Sisyphus? He was that Greek guy who ran afoul of Zeus for managing to cheat death (at least for a while). This apparently really ticked off Zeus. So when Zeus finally got his hands on him he was condemned to rolling a stone up a hill in Hades for all eternity. Here is the kicker. Zeus arranged for Sisyphus to lose his grasp on the stone JUST as he was about to complete his task and get it all the way to the top. The stone rolled back down to the bottom of the hill and Sisyphus had to start all over again, and again. Among other things, this proves that Zeus had a very nasty sense of humor. It is a timeless story of misery and the capriciousness of the gods, immortalized by Laurel and Hardy with their piano and staircase skit.

Pacific Crest Trail: Initial Thoughts

Water Tanks on the PCT. Where squirrels go for a swim

I’m about at the 200 mile mark of my PCT SOBO flip flop (just had to get some thru hiker lingo into the first sentence). I now have enough perspective to offer a few thoughts on my hike thus far. Most of this will be comparing it to my Appalachian Trail experience.

Cat Holing – on the AT this is a nightmare. Everywhere you try to dig you find roots of all sorts. Getting a cat hole dug “to code” is nigh well impossible. The PCT in contrast is a cat holing paradise. Nothing seems to grow here so all you are doing is shoveling sand – just like you are living in a giant litter box. I guess this is a plus for the PCT?

Trail Grade – I kept hearing how the PCT grade was easier because it was designed for horse traffic and thus limited to an average 10% grade compared to the AT. So far I am not impressed. I can report that there is indeed plenty of horse poop on the trail but nary a horse have I seen. Perhaps the poop is planted to perpetuate the myth about the grade on the PCT being easier? Time will tell but so far there have been plenty of steep inclines and places where I’d never take a horse, even if I owned one.

Wind – hands down the section on the PCT from Tehachapi to Hikertown takes the cake. On the day I got into Tehachapi the wind was gusting at 75 mph as I hiked over the final mountain top. I crab walked for a while as I tried to prevent myself from being blown over. I heard later that another hiker crawled through this section on his hands and feet. In contrast all I had to deal with on the AT was the misfortune of my pack cover being ripped off my pack by a wind gust while at the top of some mountain in Maine. But that is more just about Maine than anything else. Remember that in Maine they don’t believe that it is manly to have a bridge for you to walk over a stream – water is meant to be waded through not walked over.

The Bubble – both the AT and the PCT have them, i.e., groups of hikers heading north in a bit of a pack. As a SOBO flip flopper (more hiker lingo) I get to observe the bubble but am not in it. I prefer it this way even though I have to endure jokes like “hey you do know that Canada is in the OTHER direction, right”.

Green Tunnel – This refers to the trail going through a dense grove of trees. This is pretty much everywhere on the AT. No where to be found on the PCT however. Desert hiking is a different animal. The greatest concern is water because this section of the PCT doesn’t have much of it (more on this below). Not much water means not many trees which mean no green tunnel. At times this is an alien environment. Going through the Lake Hughes burn area made me feel like Matt Damon in “The Martian”. Pretty much nothing growing except for poodle bush which appears to be SoCal’s answer to poison ivy, only worse.

Water – I admit it. I am suffering from Water Anxiety. My initial solution was to carry 7 liters of water. Folks, believe me, this is close to insane. Adding 15 pounds of pack weight does not make Jack a happy camper. Gone are the days on the AT when you carried a liter, maybe 2 and just about always camped at a place with a water source. In contrast, on the PCT, you get to read comments like this in the Guthook PCT app: “next reliable water source is a tank in 15 miles. Last year Fred found two dead squirrels floating in the tank. He managed to fish one out but did draw water from the tank anyway since he was very thirsty. Be sure to filter and treat the water. Fred did and he apparently is still alive”. Note to reader – I did not take water from this tank.

Blazes – these are the paint slashes on tree trunks that let you know you are headed in the right direction. the AT has thousands of these. The PCT? Apparently they are non existent. Of course it is hard to put a blaze on a tree that doesn’t exist. And splashing paint on the sand doesn’t work well either. Still, route finding on the PCT can be difficult. I’ve come to intersections multiple times with no external clue as to what to do next except to observe where the foot prints seem to be going. Without my trusty Guthook app I could still be out there wandering around (or waiting to be rescued after punching the SOS button on my Garmin Mini).

Not sure if I am keeping score here in the great PCT vs AT debate. I’ll let the reader tally things up for themselves.