Idyllwild to Big Bear, California
Trip Start
May 15, 2005
1
3
13
Trip End
Oct 2005
Big Bear,
California,
United States
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Coming to you from Big Bear, CA. I had hiked enitirely by myself up until Idyllwild. At that point the trail crossed an area called Fuller ridge, which is a part of San Jacinto Peak. Due to record snowfall, this ridge supposedly had only been crossed by a few people this year out of a few hundred. So, of course I wanted to give it a shot too. I ran into Luke, another crazy thru-hiker who had the same idea. We teamed up and spent nearly an entire day hiking, climbing, bushwacking, and swearing our way up the side of San Jacinto Peak. We split up for awhile to save time finding the trail, and of course managed to lose each other in the process. The last thing we told each other was "meet you at the top". That way we could look down on the trail, have time for good pictures and dinner, and maybe get a few more miles in. So now it's dark and Luke is nowhere to be seen
Big Tom, Luke, Kevin
. After we had each yelled out the other's name about 100 times we finally found each other and made camp at over 9000 feet, the coldest night of the trip so far. Too cold for dinner. Both of our legs were, and still are, covered in scratches and cuts from the brush. We also had do some fairly technical rock climbing moves over big boulders just before the summit. It didn't help that we had each just loaded our packs with several liters of water. The next morning we found the trail after descending a few hundred vertical feet. After that if was just patchy snow with drifts up to maybe 12 feet or so. We passed three rangers searching for another thru-hiker who had been missing since May 2nd. Kind of a downer, but we were happy to have made it. That ended up as about a 25 mile day. Totally wiped us out. That whole ridge crossing was the best part of the trip so far.
Now there's a big group of us that see each other most nights or at least sometime during the day. Luke and I have teamed up with Rob and seem to be the fastest group in this section of the trail. Most days we average over 3 1/2 mph but on flats and downhill, over 4 mph.
There are some really interesting people out here. I may upload a few pictures of them.
Ther's word that the portion of the PCT that runs through the Sierra Mountains may be impassible for the whole year
BJ's Sandwich shop - Big Bear
. We'll just have to see how it looks when we get there. The ski resort in Mammoth may be open until August or possibly even into the next ski season. They had 600 inches as of a few weeks ago!So many of you have sent emails, even people I've met along the way. Thanks to all of you. I wish I had time to respond to you all, but know that I read and appreciate every one.
FYI - I'm at about the 265 mile mark on the trail. No bad blisters yet. Just sunburned and beginning to look like a mini Grizzly Adams.
Later,
Drew
