Wrightwood to Hiker Heaven, May 17th-23rd

The Pines Motel is owned by a friendly Korean family, and is ideal for hikers.  They offer a hiker rate of $59 for a basic room, and are fine with a bunch of people sharing a room to make it cheaper.  They furnish the rooms with proper bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lotion instead of the standard tiny hotel shampoo packets, and they'll also do your laundry for free, which is a huge bonus for hikers. 

The owners of the Pines Motel

Hikers hanging out at the Pines Motel

I spent all day Friday in Wrightwood, buying supplies, mailing out my bounce box, writing in my journal, and taking care of things online.  The library was closed but a trail angel named Jeff kindly picked me up from the motel, took me to his house to use a computer for a few hours, and then drove me back despite the late hour.  Jeff was a fifth grade teacher, and I told him how as a child I was skipped up to the sixth grade after finishing the fourth.  In life I often feel like I have no idea what's going on and that everyone around me knows something that I don't, and that I joking tell myself that whatever it is, it must have been covered in the fifth grade.  

Trail angel Jeff

Jessie had left on Friday and I spent Friday night in another room at the Pines Motel with four other hikers, two of whom were G-Dub and Starfox, a duo that I would hike out with the next day.  G-Dub was a father of four and even a grandfather, who had hiked the Appalachian Trail a decade ago and was planning to sail around the world after completing the PCT.  Starfox was a young Australian who had spent years working in an outdoor store, and seemed to know all sorts of tricks.  They'd been hiking together for awhile, and I decided to join them for a stretch. 

I spent Saturday at the public library, where a kind librarian named Robin faced an invasion of hikers wanting to use the computers and stymied by the San Bernardino County library system.  I'd also heard from the Dirty Girl, who wanted to come out for a day hike, and we'd agreed that she would meet Starfox, G-Dub and I on Sunday morning, five miles out on the trail from Wrightwood. 

Hiking out Saturday evening

Dirty Girl asked us if we wanted her to bring us anything.  I said no, that we might pack some beer out those five miles and ask to leave the bottles in her car, but that we didn't need anything, and she said OK.  However, because she is impossibly awesome, her interpretation of "nothing" was egg mcmuffins and hash brown patties from McDonalds, hot coffee that she brewed at the picnic table next to our camp site on a stove she'd brought with her, and pumpkin bread that she'd baked the night before.  

While she brewed the coffee I served the guys rounds of McDonalds.  When else on the trail do you get fed McDonalds while you're still in your sleeping bag? 

G-Dub loving on some McDonalds

Starfox loving on some McDonalds

 We had coffee and breakfast and awesome pumpkin bread, and set out to hike Mount Baden-Powell.  The Dirty Girl and I caught up on the activities of our common friends and gossiped about a few trail personalities as we huffed up the hill. 

The Dirty Girl set for hiking

 

Mount Baden-Powell is known for Limber Pines, an extremely long-lived species of tree.

This one is the Wally Waldron tree, dedicated to a man who did a lot for the Boy Scouts of America - A sign nearby has the information.

Pole dancing on top of Mount Baden-Powell

Boy Scout Troop 691, summitting the mountain on a day hike

I didn't realize this, but the mountain itself is named after the founder of boy scouting

Starfox celebrating the summit with a shot of Fireball

Me celebrating the same thing the same way

Starfox and I looking cool on the top of the mountain

The Dirty Girl and I rockin' the pole

Shortly after Mount Baden-Powell the Dirty Girl turned around to head back to her car, promising to meet us up the trail where it crossed the highway again. 

Starfox and G-Dub taking a break

When we got there not only was she waiting, but she was waiting with cold margaritas pre-mixed in foil pouches, beer, and sliced turkey.  Again, I am seriously considering starting a church to worship this woman. 

The Dirty Girl says goodbye

I drank four margaritas and crashed asleep.  Upon waking up I found that Starfox had moved to the other side of the campground - apparently I snore a bit after having a few drinks.  We started Monday with a required detour, this one to protect the habitat of endangered frog.  I'd been seeing signs advertising the habitat of a rare toad for at least 100 miles,    

I took this picture earlier on the trail.

but I'm told that the detour was not for this toad, the arroyo toad, but rather for the endangered Sierra Madre yellow-legged frog.  I didn't see how walking the narrow trail through the few miles in question could aggravate the frog who was likely suffering chiefly from the second consecutive dry year, but since I don't know anything about the local ecosystem I walked the road with the boys.  It turns out that was the right choice in more ways than one, because I heard there were rangers giving out tickets to hikers who ignored the detour.   

400 miles!

We camped that night at the Sulphur Springs Campground.  That morning the guys had spent 45 minutes waiting for me to get ready before giving up and hiking off without me, leaving me hurrying to catch up with them.  For Tuesday morning we decided to set a departure time, and I would set my alarm to make sure I was up and ready to go by then.  We decided on 6:00 AM, I set my alarm for 5:00, and was ready to go exactly at 5:55.  The next two mornings we would move it even earlier, I would set my alarm for 4:30 to be be ready to hike at 5:30, and I would be amazed at how much more ground could be covered by getting an early start, not only because of the extra hours but also because of the cool temperatures. 

It's fun looking back at a stretch of trail you just walked and seeing warnings like this.

I love these things but have no idea what they are.

G-Dub trekking through poodle dog bush

 Midday we stopped at the Mill Creek fire station, which offers shaded picnic tables and water to hikers.  I was having a grumpy day and a woman there named Linda was very kind to me, and I am grateful.   

The Mill Creek fire station

In the afternoon we hiked out, and the amount of poodle dog bush became ridiculous.  They say that you can't even brush your clothes or even your hiking poles against it, because the irritant that it produces stays on things and gets onto your skin later.  They also say that it takes a few days to really start working, so that unlike a stinging nettle, you don't know whether it got your until well after the fact.  Starfox reminded me to stow my pee rag while walking through it, which is probably the most important advice I will ever get - even just getting it on your arms and legs is apparently bad enough to land you in the hospital.

We walked through it for miles before I looked at the Guthook's app and realized that there was a road detour for that stretch because of the poodle dog bush.  I hadn't taken the previous detour but it was thicker on this stretch and we were getting really sick of picking our way through it, trying not to touch it with any part of our bodies, clothing, or gear.  Halfway through the stretch with the detour the trail and the detour road came within 50 feet of each other, and we climbed up to the road and camped there.  G-Dub had plantar fasciitis and wasn't wild about the prospect of walking on a paved road, but in the morning he was game and we started Wednesday by setting off on it to avoid the rest of the heavy growth of poodle dog bush. 

I can only imagine how this shopping cart got up here.

I love seeing clouds filling the valleys like water.

After the end of the detour there was still poodle dog bush, but it was thinner than it had been in the area of the detour.  In some places it was blooming, its purple flowers making it look deceptively friendly.

Poodle dog blooming

More blooming poodle dog

The trail briefly becomes an obstacle course.

I was running low on food, having packed too much on the last stretch and overcompensated on this stretch by not taking enough, and had read on the water report that the KOA campground had a small store.  I was determined to make it the 19 miles by 5:00 PM when the store closed, but between the 5:30 AM start and the boys' rapid hiking pace, G-Dub and I were there by 12:30 and Starfox was probably there by noon.  We ate the last of our food at a picnic table near the trail, and then G-Dub and I walked the fifth of a mile to the campground entrance on the road.  Starfox walked through the west end of the campground, and said that it was a freaky trailer park full of what he assumed to be meth addicts.  I got a little taste of it from the road, where a woman yelled up as I walked by.

"There's a snake under my trailer, and I'm afraid of them."

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't know how to help."  What was I going to do, seriously?  Crawl under there and try to kill it?
 
At the KOA store I bought a pint of ice cream, and then another, wolfing down each within minutes.  I remembered what Gio had said, months earlier.

"Hiking the PCT is coming into town and eating not one, but two pints of Ben and Jerry's while you decide where to have dinner." 

The KOA only charged hikers $5 and had great showers, coin-op laundry, a pool and hot tub, and the menu of a nearby pizza place that would deliver to the campground.  We had planned to leave in the evening, but that idea went out the window.  At least 20 hikers were staying there, someone made a beer and wine run, and we spent the evening drinking that and stuffing ourselves with pizza.  Mike D, when I met him back in Julian, had referred to 9:00 PM as "hiker midnight," and I thought of him when everyone crashed about that time. 

In the morning we made another 5:30 start, and banged out the ten miles to the Saufleys' before it got hot. 

The tunnel under Interstate-14

I love seeing trees that seem like they're growing right out of the rock.

We got to see some great rock formations, which was a refreshing change from the desert scrub.  Starfox said that their counterparts would have been visible ascending from Interstate 15 after the McDonalds (I hadn't met them then but they'd also hiked it at night), and that the rocks in the two locations had been moved 100 miles apart by the San Andreas fault. 

The poodle dog bush had finally abated, but there was now poison oak to worry about.  I'm not sure if it grows in Washington State, where I'm from, but it wasn't a plant I was familiar with, so I took these pictures of it to try to remember what it looks like.  

This park had many species of plant identified by signs, but this one seemed particularly important.

Poison oak!

Starfox helping G-Dub turn his pants into shorts

Coming out of the area with the rock formations we saw this sign, and heard that the park is used as a set for filming scenes in TV shows and movies.  I looked it up on Wikipedia, which listed the TV shows Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Outer Limits, and The Big Bang Theory, and movies including An American Werewolf in London. 

The trail ran through Agua Dulce and we followed it to Darling Road, where we turned off to head for Hiker Heaven.  Hiker Heaven is the name of the Saufleys' residence and it is aptly named, but this post is already long so I'll elaborate on it later.  We'd walked most of the mile to the house from the trail when a man in a mu-mu stopped his car and asked if we wanted a ride the rest of way.  He said that it was mu-mu Thursday for the staff at Hiker Heaven, and upon arriving I was able to identify the volunteer staff by their attire.  

Thursday was mu-mu day for the staff at Hiker Heaven.

 The Saufleys accept packages for hikers, and I collected my bounce box, the bigger and badder external battery I'd ordered for charging my iPhone on the trail, and a collection of gaiters that the Dirty Girl had sent me to hand out to hikers there.  I found two hikers in need of gaiters before even getting to a computer, so those two lucky winners are pictured below:

My first Dirty Girl Gaiter recipient

My second Dirty Girl Gaiter recipient

Alright, I'm caught up on my blog, I'm going to eat now.  I'm going to eat a huge, huge cheeseburger, with barbecue sauce.