June 1, 2012.
Day: 8 Daily Miles: 40.75 Total Miles: 358.5 Hours Hiking: 19 6:20am-1:30am
Listen to the audio journal above or Download June 1st Audio File Here
Day 8
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| A baby rattler gets a meal...on trail. |
Day 8, June 1st. The coordinates for my
camp 0444804 E 3797901 N. I managed 40.75 miles for a grand total of
358.5. I'm up on the ridge of, what's it called, the big climb out of
Cajon Pass. Today was a pretty good day actually. I night hiked
pretty late to get to a water source to make sure to get out of Deep
Creek canyon, felt like crap and wasn't very happy. I got up in the
morning and knew it was 25 miles to get there, I knew it was going to
be hot, so I had to hustle...so I did just that. Nothing too
noteworthy. There was some good trail magic by Silverwood Lake. The
entire time by Silverwood Lake I wanted to jump in and go for a swim.
I got some water and made the big climb out of there by about 11
o'clock. Finally put my shirt back on and then had to bash through a
bunch of overgrowth and terrible things.
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| Looking back at Silverwood Lake, onwards to Cajon Pass! |
But I managed to get through
the next little really hot valley before it was too cooking. And then
on the long 4 mile down it was windy. So I arrived at Cajon Pass at
about 1:40. Straight to McDonalds. On the road walk up I met another
thru-hiker named Walking Stick. We managed to scarf down a bunch of
burgers – a cone, 2 chicken whatevers and 2 double hamburgers. From
there I headed over to the Best Western, got my package and met two
other guys, thru-hikers, that were there. We basically worked it so
that they just added another person to their room and I payed them
back $10. I got a shower, which was amazing, my first shower in 8
days. I got to do laundry – did my laundry in the bathtub. So that
was nice and clean. Repacked and then I chatted with them for 3 or 4
hours, something ridiculous like that, before I needed to really get
going to start this big climb, otherwise tomorrow is going to be a
hell of a day and I'll be behind a bunch of miles still. So I left,
went to Del Taco, got 3 crunch tacos, 3 soft chicken tacos, and 2
burritos {I sound reallllly happy when talking about this}. Ate 3
crunchy tacos on the way to McDonalds, stuffed the others into my
pack for later consumption and got a McFlurry at McDonalds to spend
the rest of my change.
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| Under I-15 at Cajon Pass. Time for the night climb. |
As I was walking down the road back to the
trail I caught up to anther thru-hiker named Dan, who was actually
hiking really fast. So we hiked together until about 11:30pm, uphill
in the moonlight. It was awesome. He's 22, from the east coast, been
on the trail for about a week longer than I have. He's finally got
his feet under him, got through a few problems and was like 'I want
to do it fast so I can get back and have a little bit of summer”.
He's going to Virgina Tech. He camped about 4 miles prior to where I
stopped, because he wanted to make sure he got a 40 mile day in. He
said he'll try and catch me, we'll see, I do a little bit more than
he does. Other than that, the day was pretty good. There was poodle
dog brush for about a mile in the dark, which sucks. I slightly
brushed a couple of them. I did wash my leg off, legs off with a wet
towelette. That's it, the rest of the climb tomorrow, Baden Powell
again tomorrow. So a lot of climbing in the next day, then dropping
down into the heat again, Agua Dulce, then over to Hiker Town. The
heat isn't going to really let up until I get across over towards
Mojave. That's it!
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| Day 2 Panorama - The Banner Fire burned area. This was on fire 1.5 days before this photo! |
