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| Sunset from Mt. Gleason. |
June 3rd, Day 10. It was a
long day. Where I slept was two places actually. I slept for about 5
hours then got up really early and wanted to add on those miles until
6am {to the previous days mileage, since my new 'day' starts at
6:05am.}. I woke up at about 4:30 and just kept on going down so I
could get just a little bit bigger day, just for fun. I know daily
mileage doesn't matter it's just the overall, but for whatever reason
I didn't want to have anything, try to have anything below a 39, so I
did that. I hiked 39 miles and my day ended at coordinates 0384960E
3809231N. That's Maddox creek coming down from the North Fork Ranger
Station, just before, half way before Soledad Canyon. The day was
ooohhhh, long. It was all poodle dog brush, ALLL. Day. Long.
Thankfully I wasn't going normal or regular pace, or I'd have
multiple days of that crap. But still it was not cool. I took none of
the detours or reroutes, so the trail got pretty choked, was not well
trodden because very few others have done that. The first 5 miles of
the day were awesome. I was still up by White Cloud Pass on Hwy 2.
There was the best trail magic EVER, right by Three Points, right
where you leave Highway 2. Whoever that person is, is amazing. There
was 2 flats of prepackaged chocolate muffins, that was a flat of
prepackaged peanuts, a paper grocery bagged filled with 6 or 7
bottles of wine, there was
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| Purple = Poodle Dog Brush. Uggh. Awful in this area. |
one cooler that was pretty much filled
with string cheese and some other drink, another one filled with
orange drinks- Fantas and stuff. There was another bag of those
pudding pie things...what else was there... there's gotta be
something else. There was water, I don't know, it was wonderful. I
had already had breakfast, but I managed to cram in a bunch more. So
that got me fired up for the rest of the day, as well as, when I was
in Cajon Pass, I got a call from Jeanette, because I texted her
saying I was here at XXX miles, which I did for a bunch of people.
She called and said she would be in southern California nearby for
the weekend, so maybe we could meet up. So by doing the calculations
and stuff, I figured out that I'd be at the Mill Creek Summit Fire
Station around 1 o'clock on Sunday, today. I was about dead on. So I
was hustling in the morning and got held back a little bit by the
poodle dog brush, but only had about 18 miles to go. And I made it
and she was there, so that was good to see here. She brought me a
little bit of food and we hung out. It was good, it's always nice to
get surprised visits, especially on days when I end up seeing hardly
anyone. Actually I didn't see a damn person all day long on trail. I
did see one this morning about a mile after I finished the mileage
for 'yesterday' around 6am, but that was it. So it was really
interesting. Anyway, after I
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| Most of the dark green is Poodle Dog Brush.... |
met Jeanette, I had to climb up and out
of the little saddle there and the poodle dog brush was everywhere!
It was BRUTAL. I mean that fire just went forever and ever and ever
and ever. Poodle dog brush isn't bad when the trail tread is nice,
when it's wide and not undulating and there's rocks if it's smooth.
But when it gets to the side of a steep hill, and you have to dodge
this stuff, you have to dip below the trail, hop above the trail
constantly and its PAINFUL. I don't know how much it slowed me down,
and ya know, taking 2 hours off with Jeanette wasn't helping my daily
mileage, and nor was the extremely terrible poodle dog brush. Even at
night, I was night hiking until about 11pm, the moon is full, but I
can't use the moon because I can't see where the plants were exactly.
I brushed a few, 99.9% I missed. We'll see if anything develops I
don't think so. I really barely - I never got any good hits. I
figure that the majority of the people that have gone by already have
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| Sunset from Mt. Gleason - HDR |
probably hit the same ones I hit, and taken the little hairs away.
I'm not terribly worried. So, I hit the ranger station, { North Fork
Ranger Station}, got water and made dinner at about 10:30pm or so,
then continued on. My feet were hurtin' and I couldn't really walk
fast, and had my light on still, and I was just tired and was kinda
getting dizzy. So, I just found a place on trail, pulled out my
sleeping mat and sleeping bag and just cowboy camped right on the
trail, no preparation, just did it. I woke up about 5 hours later at
about 4:30am and I struggled to get up more or less. I went down the
next 4 miles to make it a 39 mile day. But, more importantly, the end
of my tenth day was at 440 miles, which means I'm averaging 44 miles
a day. So I'm onto Agua Dulce. I'm going to stop and get a little
food and keep on trucking because I need to make it to Hiker Town
tomorrow. Today I'm going to make it a big day. Technically I have 4
miles already, but I'm going to see if I can keep going make it a 50
after that and get even closer. Ciao!
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| Day 15 Panorama - Just before Bird Springs Pass road and water cache. |
