What a crazy day!
Allow me to start with the curious incident of the mouse in the night. Mother Nature punishes laziness. I usually am careful about caching my food, because I would hate for wild animals to become dependent on humans for food. Since this isn't bear country yet, all I've had to deal with are rodents really. Normally I keep my pack next to me while I sleep, which is enough to scare away the small critters. Of course, in bear country I will start hanging my pack at night. Anyway, last night I left my pack out on accident. I had trouble sleeping and remembered sometime around midnight. But it was cold and windy so I put it off. This morning, as I began packing up, I noticed a small hole in my bag of almonds. I knew right away I had a nighttime visitor. I checked the rest of my stuff and found relatively little danage. Though the little bastard did nibble on my hat, dcide it didn't taste very good, so he proceeded to shit all over it instead. I sighed and opened the bottom pouch to put my sleeping bag away. And that was when I saw the mouse, comfortable as could be, still in my pack. I guess dinner was so good he invited himself for breakfast.
On to the hiking. I seriously considered taking another zero today. The morning was cold and windy. I got little sleep last night, and overslept, and packing up camp seemed to take forever. Worse, I made a mistake on par with my duct tape shaving debacle. Yesterday I was laying out in the sun naked, you know, as you do. My clothes were drying out and the sun felt good. You don't often get to indulge yourself like that, and besides I had slathered on the sunscreen first. Well, except for on my thighs, which I forgot. So yeah, sunburn city. Every step I took meant fabric rubbing on sunburn.
Still, I forced myself up and vowed to get past all this snow business. Actually, my scouting from yesterday greatly helped, and I was soon past the deep snow and on a fairly easy trail leading around the mountain. The trail turned to the north side of the mountain and the snow got a bit worse, but a day hiker had gone before me so the trail was easy to follow. I passed a sign for fuller ridge and continued along in the day hiker's footsteps. Something in my mind said this wasn't the right way, so I stopped to study my map. It looked like the day hiker was headed up San Jacinto. I backtracked to the sign and realized I would have to blaze my own trail from here.
I have a pretty decent sense of direction, and from studying the map I knew the rough lay of the land. I trusted my instincts and soon found bits of evidence that I was on the right path. Things like fallen trees that had been cut, or plastic ribbon marking underbrush that needed to be cut back. The trail wasn't hard to follow, and though I lost it several times, by erring on the uphill side, I had a good vantage and was able to find it again with little trouble. The problems started when my hamstrings got fatigued. I was slogging through 8 inches of snow, sometimes more, on a slope. The downslope foot would often slip, leaving the uphill leg to tense and maintain balance. After a while, my hamstrings would knot up and give me a good charlie horse. Once those started, I could try to prevent them, but I ended up getting one every quarter mile or so... for the next 5 miles.
Once I was down on Fuller Ridge I had hope that the worst of the snow was behind me. Parts of the trail were clear and I had a spectacular view along the ridge toward San Gorgonio Pass (pictured). However, the worst of the snow had just begun. The trail switched over to the northeast side of the mountain, and I found myself facing deep snow at 30 to 45 degree slopes. The trail was gone and there was nothing but to purposely post hole each step before taking the next. I tried to stay near the ridgetop, where I could sometimes walk in the sun through shallow snow. This was easier going, though it meant walking through underbrush, which earned me a nice gash on my leg. Periodically the ridgetop would rise up in a pinnacle of granite. At these points I would have to trudge downhill for 50 feet or so and continue around until the ridge top was clear again. Finally I reached a saddle before the next ridge. I descended and found myself smack dab on the PCT. I could see the ridge that descends to highway 10 about a mile distant, and so I picked up my pace, eager to be out of heavy snow.
Finally I was down to 6000 feet elevation, out of the snow on a ridge running to the northeast. I found a small meadow with soft dirt and could go no further. The view northward is of San Gorgonio hanging in the sky above a blanket of smog from the LA basin. I watched a fantastic sunset, then called Wolverine to give him the low down on the trail.
Now I am hunkered down in my bag, warm and ready for much needed sleep!
