That was a rather hard day.

It started easy enough, after we abated to get our lazy asses out of the hotel at 9:30. We managed to hitch a ride back to the trail along with Sochi. The first few miles were easy and nice. We passed about three school groups who seemed to be very impressed to see “real” thru-hikers. We were happy to play the part. Once we reached the second crossing of the highway we knew it’s going to be all up from here. It was a 4 mile climb up Baden-Powell, and a climb of about 2800 feet. I counted 40 switch back all the way up. I did fill up 1 liter of water at the spring on the way, which came in handy later, when I added Gatorade powder to it and drink it. Up at the top (at 9400 feet) it was surprisingly not too windy and cold, so we had a quick lunch. The cream cheese bagel worked well today as well. From there we had mostly downwards trail, until we reached Little Jimmy spring. Idan went down the side trail to get each of us 2 liters of water.

Idan getting us water at the Little Jimmy spring
Idan getting us water at the Little Jimmy spring

The plan was to push on 2 more miles to the road, where we’d camp, or hitch to some campground at the old (and much shorter) alternative to the closed trail. The new alternative adds 19 miles (a whole hiking day), so we wanted to skip it. Then we decided we’d get in touch with a trail Angel in Wrightwood, so that we can catch a ride from the road back to town, and have pizza for dinner. A devious plan. Luckily, we only chucked 1 liter each, of the 2 Idan just brought from the spring, and we headed out to the road. Passing the Little Jimmy campground, it seemed like a very nice place, full of hikers stopping for the day. Going down to the road, we saw about 10 more weekend hikers heading there. I guess it’s fun up there tonight. We got to the road at 17:40,and failed catching a ride for over an hour and a half. There were almost no cars in any direction, and the few that did pass, just didn’t pull over. We finally gave up and joined the three other hikers stopping here.

After dinner and crawling into my tent, it seems a group of school kids, or maybe scouts, have stopped here for a break. They don’t seem to be trying to be extra quiet, to let us poor hikers sleep. I hope they split soon.