Interstate 10 to Big Bear Lake, May 5th-8th

My sister picked me up from Ziggy and the Bear's and I spent three days sorting and organizing my belongings, all of which had been crammed into the car until I sold it, returning, exchanging, and buying gear, and getting caught up on this blog.  Highlights included a meal with my sister in a Mexican restaurant in Palm Springs, where I wrapped myself in the ambiance of the patio, the grapefruit margaritas, and girl talk, and forgot to take a single picture.  The low point was completely smashing the middle finger of my right hand in their garage door right before leaving.  My sister inspected it and we agreed that it wasn't broken so I went back to the trail anyways, but my right hand was basically useless.  

My smashed finger

Back in Whitewater I spent another night at Ziggy and the Bear's, both because I needed to sort through a last box of belongings that I thought I might need on the trail and organize my food for that stretch, and also because the winds were gusting insanely.  I turned the box into a bounce box, which is hiker lingo for a box of things that you don't hike with but mail ahead to yourself repeatedly.  



The hiker area at Ziggy and the Bear's



Back on the trail the next day I started  Section C of the PCT, which begins with the Mesa Wind Farm. 

Looking up at some of the wind farm I'd been looking down on coming down from Idyllwild



The Mesa Wind Farm



The wind farm has a small field office a few hundred yards off the trail, so I stopped by and found a friendly group milling around the front of the building.  One of the guys gave me an overview of the technology, but I didn't completely understand.  The apparatus in the picture below is present in every structure.  The left end in the picture below is at the top, and is rotated by the blades.  This rotates the part at the right end, which somehow utilizes magnets to generate an electrical current.  This current is carried through a system of underground cables directly into the power grid. 



The man who gave me the tutorial, whose name I didn't catch (standing on the left in the picture above), was excited for me to see their other wind farm in Tehachapi.  He said that the PCT also went through that farm, and that the technology utilized there was much more state of the art.

"You see these?"  he said, gesturing around to the towers topped with rotating blades, "1984 - old models!"

After thanking them and leaving I hiked out and stopped to record the sound of the whirring blades, which was different from the ambient noise in any other place I've been.  I hope that it's captured in the clip below, I'm writing this from the library in Big Bear Lake and the sound is disabled on all of the computers here. 

I hiked over into a valley under clouds and intermittent, light showers, wondering if I'd finally have to use my tarp and how I'd fare setting it up, 

but I hiked into the night and by the time I stopped to sleep the sky was clear.  In the morning I hiked on, impressed by the sheer amount of water this section of the trail in contrast with the miles of desert behind me. 

There was, however, evidence of fire in many places, and the pockets of lush green were puntuated by the blackened skeletons of trees and bushes. 

Wildlife cooperates for a picture.

I can't believe a ground squirrel even let me take his picture.



Climbing higher I saw t his funnel warning of a poodle dog bush.  I asked other hikers about it later and they said that the poodle dog bush was worse than poison ivy, and could literally take you off of the trail.  (I looked it up later and they weren't putting me on, here is the PCTA's web page with a warning about it.)

What I found equally interesting, though, was that on the other side of the funnel was written "property of the wild boyz."  I'd been hearing about the "wild boys," two brothers who were foraging and hunting as they went, traveling mostly at night and killing snakes and lizards for sustenance.  Many hikers that I'd met had met them, but I still hadn't. 

I camped that night at Mission Camp, along with a group of hikers who had been traveling together for a stretch.  In the past day and a half we had climbed from just above 1,000 feet to 8,000 feet, it was substantially colder than it had been on any night I'd camped, and there was some chance that it would rain.  I pitched my tarp between a tree and one of my trekking poles and found that it was actually quite easy to set up.  It didn't rain that night but I spent the coldest night I'd spent on the trail, and one of the hikers in the group I'd camped with said that it would have been even colder without the tarp there to catch the layer of frost.    

Ultralight tarp camping

The group packing up in the morning

The hikers in that group all hiked faster than me, and although I left before them in the morning they all passed me, and I spent most of the day hiking alone. 

Mile 250!

Shortly after passing a series of pinecones arranged to herald the 250-mile mark on the trail, I came to a sort of an outdoor compound in the woods where a number of exotic animals were kept in cages. 



A tiger

A bear

The signs posted on the compound's outer fence communicated with no uncertainty that they didn't welcome visitors so I kept walking, but found out a little more about the place from my guidebook:  these animals are kept for use in Hollywood movies.  So, if you're bothered by the sight of them in their cages, you can stop consuming Hollywood productions. 

Shortly after mile 252 there was a water cache located near a highway, and I decided to get off the trail there and hitchhike into Big Bear.  It took me almost a half-hour to get picked up, but when I finally did a friendly woman named Patricia drove me all the way to the hostel just to be nice.  She was amazed that I would hike the PCT alone, but had faced her own intense fear of heights by going skydiving. 

Patricia

As I walked into the hostel a young man walked in behind me, carrying a half-rack of microbrew and two pizzas.  He said that his name was Jamie, that he worked as a chef in a local restaurant and planned to go to culinary school, and that he found it fun to do things like make random drops of pizza and beer on hikers. 

Jamie (left) looks on while a hiker opens the beer

I scrounged up a towel and showered, and after a few hours Sarge, the manager of the hostel, returned from the bar.  I registered for two nights and he let me stay in a private room for the first night at no extra charge, on account of the fact that the room was empty and I'd entertained him upon his arrival from the bar by rushing out the shower in a towel to register for a room.

Sarge, the manager of the Big Bear Hostel

In the evening I went for Mexican food with a group of hikers at the hostel, and then went to Murray's, a local bar with one of the strangest games I've ever seen.  Instead of fishing for a stuffed toy with a mechanical claw, players fished for a live lobster. 

If anyone managed to catch one the establishment promised to cook it but I didn't see anyone win, likely due to the fact that all of the surviving lobsters were those that hugged the edges of the tank fastidiously.  I spent the remainder of the night drinking and singing karaokee with a tour group from a youth hostel in Los Angeles, and never saw a lobster caught.

The best karaokee act of the night

How many whiskey gingers have I had?