Warner Springs to the Paradise Café, April 18th-20th

Warner Springs to the Pines-to-Palms Highway, where the Paradise Valley Café was located, was my toughest stretch to date.  One factor was that I’d realized that I wouldn’t make it as far as Interstate 10 to grab my car from my family’s house and drive back down as planned and that I needed to get it in gear if I was even going to make it to Idyllwild by then, so I hiked the 42 mile stretch to the Café in less than 48 hours.  There were plenty of other people hiking at similar paces but it was the most intense hiking that I’d done, and the most intense heat that I’d hiked in.  Another factor was that I was sick of my food and getting sick of the desert.  I was ready for some lush green, or at least some change scenery, and was done being appreciative of the panoramas of chaparral.  In reality it was probably the heat more than anything, but I felt grouchy, and hiked along bitching to myself about the desert.  

The first night wasn’t bad, I hiked 8 miles across some fields that I pretended were an African Savannah, past an obstacle course, and a up a hill until I got tired and pitched my tent in the dark.  

In the dark with trees surrounding I didn't realize that I'd camped 20 feet from two of the people that I would spend the next two days with.  Eli worked in a veterinary hospital and was hiking parts of the trail with is dog Cleo, and Jesse was a hydraulic engineer who had wanted to hike the PCT since she was 14 and finally, after ending a long relationship, was doing it.  We would also spend those two days with Cowtar, who I had hiked past earlier that night, her sleeping bag stretched out right on the trail.  She was taking a semester off of college, hiking intermittent sections of the trail and hitchhiking in between.  Doubleshot and Wally were a veterinarian and a retired smoke jumper who had started hiking together their first day from the border on account of their mutual propensity to hike very quickly over long distances without stopping.  The second day we hiked 10 miles and stopped at the home of a trail angel named Cushy, and they caught up with us there despite having started the day in Warner Springs 8 miles behind us.  They would be the first ones into camp that night, and in the morning they would take off and we wouldn’t see them again.  

Trail Angel Mike, who went by Cushy, offered a place to relax in the shade, filtered water, and had beer available for donation.  I sucked down two but found again that no matter how much water I drank on trail, consuming beer resulted in an instant dehydration headache.  It was so hot that if I hadn’t had the motivation of everyone else leaving I could have easily stayed another day there.  

There were a couple of guys who had thru-hiked last year and were on their way south for the kickoff party.  One was planning to catch a ride from there to the start of the Continental Divide Trail and thru-hike that this year.  He had a beard and a tiny speaker on which he played the Carolina Chocolate Drops,

Corn bread, and butter beans

and you across the table

keep eatin’ beans, and makin’ love

as long as I am able

I can’t remember his name, so I call him The Hipster Hiker.

The Hipster Hiker (center)

Cushy (left)

We hiked another long, hard 10 miles in the sun, and camped together on a ridge.  I tried cowboy camping, and found that my pad was thick enough and my bag warm enough that I was fine without the tent.  The next day Doubleshot and Wally were far off ahead, Cowtar headed off on a truck road to hitch back to Warner Springs, and Eli had a crisis with his sub letter and stayed on a ridge where he caught cellular service to try to sort things out, and Jesse and I hiked together on and off.  I hiked faster in spurts but took more breaks so we fell into a pattern of her catching me each time I stopped and the two of us starting off together again on each section.  

Wally, Jesse, and Doubleshot

My first night cowboy camping

Cleo

Cleo and Eli

Jesse

Jesse spent the first part of the day hiking barefoot.

Jesse came up with the best suggestion so far for my trail name.  The previous day I’d stopped to pee, and been caught by Eli walking around the corner.  He’d continued on and I’d stayed there resting for awhile.  I decided to go one more time before I put my pack back on, and as soon as I squatted down, Cowtar walked around the same corner.  We had joked about it that night in camp, and I told them how the first time I stopped to pee my first day, the only hiker that I’d seen had walked around a corner.  Mortified, he had both turned his back and held his eyes over his eyes, his elbows out to the sides of his head, until I finished and told him to turn around.  Jesse and I were both hashers and naturally thought of dirty names that could stem from those events, but we had both noticed that trail names tended to be G-rated, so she suggested “Caught.”

“OK,” I said, “but it sounds like ‘cot,’ like the little bed – about ‘Busted’?”

Jesse agreed and I signed it in the trail register at the next water cache, but I generally neglected to start introducing myself that way and so I’m not sure if it really stuck. 

   

I made it to the Paradise Valley Café about 5:30, having given up on hitchhiking the mile from the trail and simply walked.  

The Jose Burger

I polished off the biggest hamburger I have ever seen, the Jose Burger, and showed the waitress my clean plate.

“I win, Jose loses.”

“You ready for dessert?” she answered.

“Jose wins.”

The dinner rush still hadn’t started, and Jose came out of the kitchen to talk with his staff.  I showed him what was written about his burger in the Yogi’s Guide:

“GLORY (2003):  The Jose Burger at Paradise Café is a MIRACLE.  It’s enough to inspire a following of cultish fanaticism to be rivaled only by politics, football, religion, and well, thru-hiking.

SUGE (2003):  The Jose Burger at the Paradise Café is the best burger on the trail.  Swiss cheese, bacon, avocado, mushrooms, green chiles, tomato, onion, lettuce, pickles.  I’ve got a fuzzy, out of focus picture of one.  Glory and I were in shock and awe when they came out.  Quite literally, I had to eat the burger in sections:  work on the top part, then in the middle, then attack a corner of the bottom, etc.”

Jose had never seen the Yogi’s guide, and seemed genuinely touched.  

Jose reading the reviews of his burger

The café accepts mail drops for hikers and I sorted through my food box, disgusted with nearly everything in it.  Jesse showed up just before closing and got her garden burger, and I joined her for another beer and lemonade.  I’d found that if I drank two lemonades per beer, a sort of un-mixed shandy, that I didn’t get a headache.  I didn’t get a buzz either, but I was stubbornly insistent on having my beer.  I gave Jesse most of the food from my mail drop, grabbed some instant refries from the hiker box, and we staggered the mile back to the trail.  We cowboy camped next to the small water cache maintained by the Café, and I laid in my sleeping bag under the stars, wondering if Warner Springs Monty had been right in telling me that I should ditch my tent to lessen weight.