Miles Hiked: 19.8
Gratitude of the Day: I’m thankful for the kindness of strangers and random acts of kindness when you least expect it.
I woke up this morning fairly early, but got a good nights rest at the Airbnb with the large group of PCT hikers. After packing up my bag and helping clean up for check out I walked down to the local market and bought some Gatorade to fill my water bottles up before heading back on trail.
One of the ways to get from town to trail is by hitch hiking, prior to the PCT this was such a scary and foreign thing to me, but after doing it several times, it’s not bad at all. So after I bought my Gatorade I stood on the side of the ride and put my thumb out. 15 minutes later, a local who was heading out to trail run picked me up and drive me back to trail. His name was John and he is an accountant that gets to work remotely in Wrightwood for a company in LA. Super nice guy and I’m so appreciative for the ride back to trail.
Once back in the parking lot off highway 2 where I originally headed into Wrightwood I became a circus attraction. It so happened that a local Boy Scout group was heading out to day hike and the scout leaders saw me and started peppering me with questions and soon the whole group was surrounding me. Asking me questions, lifting me backpack… it felt surreal to have people that interested in something I feel is probably fairly selfish. But they were all pleasant and I stood around answering their questions. Perhaps one of them will hike the trail some day.
After answering questions I finally started back on trail around 9:30 and my goal was to summit Mount Baden-Powell. Also I’d have to deal with a “fire closure” from the 2019 Bobcat fire that a lot of hikers were road walking highway 2 five miles from where I was dropped off… but that was when the highway was closed… it’s opened now. So my plan was to summit the mountain and then take the locals advice and just hike thru the closure which I was told the trail was perfectly fine and safer than road walking.
At 11:30 I was on top of Baden-Powell and had the most epic view of a marine layer over the city of Los Angeles. After some stellar pictures, I headed to the fire closure and low and behold there was no signs saying you couldn’t be on trail and there were even day hikers about, so I pressed on. The fire that ripped through the mountain area must have been terrible, walking through was so quiet and odd. Finally the trail popped me out on highway 2 near a parking lot and when I crossed the highway there on the start of the trail was a sign saying “stay out”. So I chose to road walk the highway, after all it was 6 more miles to a campground right off the highway I was going to camp at anyways and the road would be quicker. I walked about 3 miles on the road even passing thru some tunnels when I stopped to put my coat on because it was getting chilly. Then a car pulled over and it was some day hikers I had spoken with early today asking if I wanted a ride… YES!!! And they not only gave me a ride so I wouldn’t have to walk the highway but picked up two more hikers and took us all the way to the ended of the fire closure. So tonight I’m camped right at the end of the closure, there’s a pit toilet for morning duties and a trail angel dropped a cooler of ice cold beer and Coca Cola right near us! What a great way to end a day that started out with so much uncertainty. Things worked out as they should.
I'm sure you made those Scouts' day! They will always have that memory of talking with you!
ReplyDelete