Two weeks, 265 miles in!

As soon as we left Warner Springs about a week ago, we started puting in some serious miles.

Day 7: 26 miles! Mile 109-135
We got out of Warner Springs at about 4:30 in the morning on our seventh day of the trip. It was a beautiful day... not too hot, not too cold, and we had pizza from the night before for breakfast. Our plan was to try to do as many miles as we could during the morning before the sun got up. We had to get to mile 127 before we could get to any water. What we didn't know was that at mile 127, there was not only water but also a trail angel named Mike who let us come over and spend the hot part of the day at his house. He had sodas, tacos, and best of a all, a foot bath. It was glorious. My blisters on my heels had been feeling better but they were still a bit infected so I soaked my feet and relaxed. Oh, he had a hammock too which was really nice. But we got out of there around 3 pm and headed off.  We wanted to make get as many miles as we could so that we could stop the next day at mile 151 which happened to have a cafe a mile down the road (more on that later). So off we went. It was hot and uphill but it was fun. Finally, with aching feet, we decided to stop at a nice little spot a couple of miles before the next water source. We had barely gotten into our sleeping bags before falling asleep... so pooped from our biggest day... so far.

Day 8: 22 Miles (135-157)
Now day 8 was another great day, but not because the scenery was beautiful or we were moving well or anything. Actually, it was kind of an ugly day and neither of us felt like walking much. But we knew the cafe was coming up so we were determined to make it to mile 151 for our lunch break. When we finally saw the highway in front of us, we were both just so happy. Again like the day before, we had a certain mile marker in mind because there was something we needed there, but like the day before, we had no idea there was a trail angel there as well who would make our day so much better. This trail angel was Dr. Sole. He was just set up on the side of the highway with sodas and hot dogs. He even let us (and every other hiker) leave our bags with him when we went to The Paradise Cafe. This cafe was SO GOOD. It might have been because we were just so hungry but dang it was good. We both had a nice cold beer and a HUGE hamburger... which we ate with enthusiasm and yet we were still hungry afterwards. We hung out there for a bit but then headed back to Dr. Sole. It turns out Dr. Sole was there to set up a "foot triage" as he called it. One by one, he let all the dirty hikers but their dirty feet on his lap so that he could check out their blisters. Apparently this is also what he did during the Vietnam war. He really worked on my two blisters on my heels and popped the blister I had under by big toe nail on my right foot. Ever since my Dr. Sole visit my feet have felt amazing.  But we couldn't stay there forever so we moved on and headed off into the San Jacinto wilderness and found a great camping spot.

Day 9: 22 miles (157-179)
This was easily the hardest but perhaps the most beautiful day on the trail. MudD right now is running over to the grocery store to see if he can pick up a cord for our camera so we can share some pictures from this amazing day. It was just so beautiful.  Before the beauty began though, we had to climb in elevation. Nearly the entire day we were hiking upwards towards 8,000 feet. The previous days had been hot but up at this elevation, it was pretty perfect. It was a nice, cool day. Beautiful trees, beautiful ridges, beautiful trail work by the trail maintenance crews. I don't even know what more I can say about this day without the pictures to back it up. It was really just amazing and the scenery was stunning and our legs were dead at the end of it. We stopped to camp right before a trail called the Devil's Slide that lead into Idyllwild. Though most people had to stop in that town to get more food, MudD and I had gotten lucky and had picked up some extra free food so we could make it without stopping in that town. We didn't realize at that point that this decision would put us much farther ahead than the rest of our group (more on that later). As we set up to sleep that night, we put the rain fly on our tent for the first time the whole trip because we had heard rumors of a snow storm that might start that night.

Day 10: 31 miles!!!!!!! (179-210)
So we woke up, half expecting snow but not having any. We had 9 more miles of serious uphill that would take us to 9,000 feet and then a long, downhill day. Everybody that we met on the trail told us that the snow we thought we might get the night before was going to hit us at 11 that morning and would last all the way till Tuesday. So we booked it. We had to start going down before this storm hit. We ended up getting to the trail to get us off the mountain at 10:30, just as the clouds were starting to look pretty bad. We heard from our friends behind us that a lot of people took zero days to wait out the storm. The ones who braved it said it was really cold up there and they were fighting hypothermia. Our timing could not have been better. And now we just had to worry about an easy downhill day, right? Wrong! That dowhill was rough! First, it lasted forever. Second, there were so many switchbacks that we almost went insane. Our maps told us that from where the downhill started to where it ended, it would be 16.5 miles for us... as the crow flies it is only 2.5 miles. We were going crazy. MudD actually started sprinting at one point just to try to get out of there sooner. Luckily for us, it was a cold day because of the storm on the mountain above us. We had just the right amount of water to get us down. After we had finished that section, we heard horror stories of other people doing it in 120 degree weather with not enough water because they, like us, thought it would be easy because it was downhill the whole way. Luckily for us, our day wasn't. But it was terrible. The worst part was that the thorn bushes were all overgrown and neither of us had shorts so we got torn up for 16 miles (I just took a shower and now that all the dirt is gone, you can see all the scratches all over my legs). When we got down to the water source, we realized there was no way to we wanted to camp there. It was rocky and REALLY WINDY. Plus, there was a trail angel just 5 miles down the trail and although we didn't know how amazing that trail angel experience would be, we knew it would be better than camping there. So even though those last 5 miles put us at 31 miles for the day and 101 miles for the last four days, we did it anyway.

AND BOY WERE WE HAPPY WE DID. The trail angels are called Ziggy and the Bear. We showed up to their house, exhaused, dirty, and just worn out. They welcomed us with ice cream and warm foot baths. There were some volunteers there helping Ziggy and the Bear out who had hiked the trail last year. They set us up with foot baths, some extra pizza, and showed us where everything was. As they were explaining everything to us, our mouths were hanging wide open in shock. It was the kindest thing I have ever experienced. And it wasn't just us that they were being this nice to. There were about 30 other dirty hikers hanging out in their backyard. They had a shower (which we didn't use for some reason), free wifi, snacks, and most importanly, our resupply package. We slept that night with all 30 of those other hikers in terrible wind but we were so happy.

Day 11: 25 miles (210-235)
We started off this day later than normal, not wanting to leave the comforts of Ziggy and the Bear. But we had to set out. We were both very sore from the day before so our goal was to make it 17 miles to the next water source and see how we felt there. We got there around 2 pm, realized a ton of people were going to camp there, and headed off to find better camping. Then we got to looking at the water report and realized that the next day would be a whole lot easier on us if we went all the way to 235. So as much as we didn't want to, we went all that way. What we didn't realize was that we also gained about 4,000 feet in elevation those last 9 miles. We were dog tired at the end of it but it all made more sense once we looked at the elevation maps. That night was really cold as well.

Day 12: 21 miles (235-256)
This day was going to be hard because we had 21 miles between water sources. Luckily for us, the storm from a couple of days ago was still going up on the mountain and making it much colder than normal. We both had 5 liters of water on us and I think we barely drank 2 each. The morning was literally freezing but beautiful. Frost was covering all the trees and made it look like winter. That afternoon, we took a lunch break at these animal cages. I guess the wild, scary animals that hollywood uses for their movies are kept right off the PCT. Like feet from it. They had tigers, bears, a black panther, a lion, and probably other animals that we just couldn't see. It was kind of cool but really depressing... with a weird lack of security. We were about 10 feet away from this lion and there was noboby else around.  That night, we made it to the next water source at 2 pm and there was only another 9 miles into Big Bear where we planned to take a zero, but we didn't want to do another 30 mile day, so we called it quits, put up our tent, and tried to stay warm even though it had been snowing all day.

Day 13: 9 miles (256-265) (Today)
Man was this night cold. We woke up and I thought I was just being tired and cranky and I would warm up... until we disocovered that the water in our nalgenes were completely frozen... like rock solid. I guess it dropped below 32 degrees for a while.  There was nothing really remarkable about this hike today. We just wanted to get into town and get to our rooms. We are staying here today and tomorrow to let our bodies heal up till we go out again.  Big bear is cool. We have a room with a hot tub jacuzzi tub and fireplace. We have clean laundry and we took showers. The amount of dirt we had to wash off of ourselves was amazing.  But now MudD is back from the store with that camera cord so we are going to load pictures!

Day 14: ZERO DAY

The beautiful but really hard day. The views were like this all day.

 Having a little fun on the hard day.

Fran aka DINGO struggling with the uphill

 MudD playing in the water

 Mile 200!

 This is the mountain we came off of with the 16 mile downhill while we were getting scrathed by the thorns. Hard to believe we were all the way on top of that mountain a few hours before hand. You can see all the clouds stuck right at the spot where we had just been.

 Rainbow in the desert! Right before we got to Ziggy and the Bears. It was really windy that day... good thing they have all those windmills right there.

 MudD killing time waiting for Dingo

The frost on one of our coldest morning. It snowed on us this day.