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Click "Play" below to listen to the Day 7 audio journal.
May 31, 2015
Day: 7 Daily Miles: 50.5 Total Miles: 328.5 Hours Hiking: 16.5
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| Morning sunlight illuminating the valley I was about do descend into. |
May 31st, I made it 50.5 miles to point 0467981 E 3794128 N UTM. I started a little bit passed the good view of the Big Bear Lake and the city and stuff and ended at the Cleghorn Picnic area next to Silverwood Lake... a long ways away. I started off at 5:15 am, I got a good, earlier start, about 10 minutes earlier than normal. It was an easy day, I knew it would be, mostly gentle downs with some some tiny ups in between. I just put it on cruise control and cruised down. I got some great water at Holcomb Creek, it's just one of those little creeks out in the middle of the desert with nice lush trees, boulders and things that no one really gets to...it would be a really nice place to just hang out and enjoy for a day....but I, gotta keep going, so I just dipped in, got wet a few times, just splashed myself, walked on. It wasn't that hot compared to 2012 where I felt like I melted. This time, having that in mind, I tired to hurry through that part, especially since I knew, regardless, that Deep Creek would be hot. I made it to Deep Creek, which was right around 20 miles by 11:00 am, which was pretty much right on time, a little under 6 hours, which is my typical pace. I got my shirt wet, refilled water, and up until that point [at the bridge, first crossing] I passed, around 10 hikers or so, most of them were still in their tents sleeping, up until about 9:00 am or so. That was way more than I was expecting to see, way more than 2012, I'm pretty dang sure.
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| The nicely vegetated creek walk before Deep Creek. |
I got to Deep Creek and it was pretty much uneventful...no rattlesnakes, one other person, hiking the opposite way...it was pretty chill for a Sunday. I mean it did get pretty hot and I did have to force myself...as, I was in the 20-30 mile range, which is the hardest stretch because you are in the middle of your miles and you haven't just woken up and are fresh and you're not pushing to see how far you can get in the day, you're just doing the filler miles....and Deep Creek is to teasing, it's always close but 100 feet away down a cliff....and I'm just like wishing that I could go swimming...especially me, I mean I can't just stop, even if there was a good route down to take a dip. I got to the Deep Creek hotsprings..it was packed because it was Sunday...I said screw that, skipped it and hiked 2 more miles to Rainbow bridge, where I took a wonderful half hour break...I went swimming, properly, filled up all my water, just simply enjoyed being wet and not hot...that was definitely the highlight of my day probably of the trip so far, just because its one of those things where you work hard, then all of a sudden you get to have something nice. It's funny, the day before hiking around Big Bear, I was like "man, I really wish there a lake I could go jump into...because I'm not like overly hot, but I just sounds like a really nice thing to do...to have a bottomless expanse of water surrounding you, that regardless of which direction you move, you are supported by cool water and feels good". After the bridge and the swim it was again, very uneventful...there were a few people I passed, that were hikers, well they were just day-hikers going to the river to cool off. Yeah, I got to the Mojave dam, a bunch of 4x4 cars driving around..it looks like the way you can drive into the bottom part of Deep Creek is to literally to come up or down the Mojave dam spillway. Once you do that, you can just drive down to the creek behind, you don't have to walk anywhere, which I thought was kinda cool.
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| Deep Creek Rainbow Bridge where I went swimming! |
Again, after the Mohave dam, the trail one of those really monotonous and boring awful things that just goes in and out of every little tiny freakin' canyon, then it goes up, then it goes down, then it goes up, and then it goes down, then it goes in and out, all the while...and that was a good 10 miles which was more of a mental game at that point, where you have to tell yourself that even if these miles aren't making you progress very far in terms of northwards, because you're going in and out so much, that every mile you do, is one more mile towards your goal of the day. My goal for the day when I knew I had hit the 20 miles early on in the day, I said I'm going to 50...that puts me at the picnic area, where there's water, I might get a nice squishy soft grass bed..who knows?! So that was my goal all day, which it's nice to have a goal like that, you can kinda push for it, keep yourself motivated, not to take too many long breaks etc. Towards the end of the day, when I got to about mile 44 or so, I was still in the winding bits and my leg started complaining....and it's more of a fatigue complain, like its a slight ache, it's not like they really hurt like you have done something bad, it's just this ache, where they are like (laughs) "Heeyyyy you know you've gone pretty far today...you should stop..." But, you know, you just gotta keep pushing through.
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| California king snake after Mojave Dam. |
I got to the dam spillway [Silverwood Lake] which was a relief, because that meant all the zig-zags and monotonous areas were pretty much gone and I was only 4 more miles until I was done....which I was slightly late...I stopped pretty much at 9:00 pm actually, which I was hoping for an 8:30 pm stop, but there was an extra half mile tacked on to get to the little side trail that I needed....and I took a little extra time with the swim, but otherwise it was and ideal day, easy trail, not terribly hot...Deep Creek and the Mojave section were SUPER windy, so, even with the sun out, you felt cool because you got blasted. There were some ridges that I would come over, or trying to hike up, and the wind would just hit me in the face and be like 25mph, and I was like..."ooohhh....I have to hike up this...this is terrible". All in all, it was a great day. I feel really good about the miles I did. Looking back, that was a looonnnggg ways.
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| Nearly free of the terrible contours after Mojave Dam. |
Oh, a side note is, when I was Ziggy and the Bear, I was shaking my backpack out, because there was some junk in the bottom and my camera fell out of its little pouch on my shoulder strap, landed on the ground and managed to crack the lower third of my LCD screen, which now is black, and put stripes through the rest of the LCD screen - vertical ones. The camera I assume still works, it takes pictures, but the viewing of the pictures and of whatever you would like to take a picture of, is very difficult now, especially since you can't really see the setting when you would like to change them... because they usually appear at the bottom of the screen where it is black now. So it's a bummer because I love to take photos [my luxury item!!!], but at least its not world ending...it still works I assume and still taking good quality photos....if not, I'm carrying a lot of dead weight for no apparent reason. Other than that, it was a good day. Tomorrow is a resupply at Cajon [Pass], only about 13 miles out, so that should go pretty quick...then the climb on up to Baden-Powell.
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| Climbing towards tree line 5 miles passed Crabtree Meadows, before Big Horn Plateau. |
