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June 2, 2015
Day: 9 Daily Miles: 47 Total Miles: 419.5 Hours Hiking: 15
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| 1/4 mile from the summit of Mt. Baden-Powell looking east in the morning. |
June 2nd, I made it 47 miles exactly, just passed the Mill Creek fire station, just on that first little climb there. That point, at which I slept is 0400103 E 3807102 N UTM....Ooo it was kind of a brutal day......I woke up, left normal time, 5:25 am, or whatever-ish. I had a little downhill and then, after about a 1.5 miles I had a 3 mile up, from about 6,500 ft to 9,200 ft, up the side of Mt. Baden-Powell. That...its one of those reasons I don't like to do climbs in the morning, especially that one...it's just kinda of...it's all switchbacks. Most of them are fairly steep, so you can't really catch your breath, especially when you are going up in elevation. The silver lining was a nice sunrise through the trees...was pretty at least...but, I went slow. That's just how it went. I didn't...I wasn't awake enough to push I guess. I got to the top, then started going down the ridgeline, that takes about 8 miles or so. It was really pretty, having the morning sun behind me and being able to look off both sides - more towards the Mojave and then towards the coast. After a little while, I saw a little tiny black bear. I mean it was tiny...bigger than a cub, because I didn't see any other bears around....and it just took off down the SUPER steep scree slope, off into the abyss..(laughs)...I wasn't expecting to see that, which was cool. I made it a couple switchbacks further and I heard these rocks tumbling, and I saw it again, further down from me, still heading on down the slope.
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| The little black bear, who promptly vaulted down the very steep slope! |
I made it to Little Jimmy spring, which is one of my favorites, always! It's this nice pipe that comes right out of the hill and dumps liters of cold clean water at you. I filled up all my water there and then proceeded to drop the last few couple miles....and then do one of the dumbest sections of the trail that I can possibly think of. You hit Islip Saddle, and the trail immediately goes up.....it goes up for basically 1,000 ft, one big switchback pretty much, and god, it's just awful...because it doesn't really take you anywhere. At Islip Saddle you hit the road, Hwy 2/Angels Crest, and it I was just to go left and walk 1.5 miles I'd hit the PCT again, where the trail comes back down from the top of this mountain. So, you literally go screaming up, hit the crest and then immediately go down, on some really crappy trail - scree slopes and stuff....just to make it around, basically a big giant slide area...if that slide area wasn't there, they wouldn't have had to go up and around, they would have just gone across it, but, of course, they don't. And so, the whole day, actually from Islip Saddle to Cloudburst Summit, its the trail, crossing the road, dipping down and away, then coming back to the road, which is doing like 3x as many miles as the actual road does. So, it really pisses you off AND its a heck of a lot of elevation gain and loss in a short distance at 6-8,000 ft elevation, which will eventually catch up to you..which it did. The first half of my day was pretty slow, I was feeling it...mentally, I knew that if I got to Cloudburst Summit, that from then on, it would be easy, which it was. But yeah, I came down off that stupid mountain, did the little section and got to the endangered species detour...which I won't talk about.....and then at the bottom, both Little Rock creek and Burkhart Creeks were flowing, which was great, a good place to rinse out my shirt, cool off. Then there was a 4 mile climb back up to Cloudburst Summit.
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| Nearing Jimmy Springs. |
The climb was easier than I remembered, but also, it pissed me off the same as I remember because at one point, you go up and hit a road, and you follow the road for about 3/4 of a mile...then you drop off DOWN from the road to a canyon bottom, then go back up to Cloudburst Summit, where the ROAD YOU WERE ON, actually goes too..and so, it's again one of those...."so if this road is gated and never used, and you were hiking on it for almost a mile, why not make it 2 miles and not have to do the stupid shit, like lose 500 ft then gain it back within the next mile??" So this part, it seems like that took somebody from the AT and were like "build us a trail!"...(laughs). Once at Cloudburst....I think that was around 25-27 miles for me that day, so midday...it took me a little bit longer to get there than I was hoping. I think it was around 2:00 pm. So I just hopped on the trail and kept going...I passed the 400 mile mark, I passed about 8 people at the Glenwood Camp, where there's water. I filled up and continued on. And from then on out, it was pretty much listen to an audio book, zoning out...there was no good trail magic like there has been in the years past, at Three Points, which was sad. That would have been very welcome. And then, there was some poodle-dog brush, which started right after that. Compared to 2012, it was amazing...there was nothing...I maybe had to dodge like 5 stalks that were kind of trying to encroach on the trail...that is just ridiculous [2012 you had to do the "poodle-dog brush dance" to TRY and miss it...] I didn't remember too much of that part of the trail, it was fairly gentle and ups and downs were well graded, so you could actually go quickly on them, so I made up a little bit of lost time, by going quicker.
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| A little section of trail in the west side of Hwy 2. |
Once you peak out, and you can look down towards Lancaster and Agua Dulce, the trail more or less contours and contours and contours all the way to Mill Creek. Even though you could see the trail one canyon over, it would take you 1.5-2 miles to get to it, so it was very deceiving on the speed at which you could actually get somewhere...but it was easy, which was great because that's what I needed for the end of that day..to compensate for the very hard beginning of the day. My legs...they felt tired. especially since the day before - full pack, full water coming out of Cajon Pass, kinda killed them, and then I had to do Baden-Powell and probably like 6,000 ft of elevation gain and probably 4,000 of loss, so my legs were pretty beat up. I got to the watering area, just at around 8:40 pm, I think, just when it was getting dark. I filled up, kinda had a half dinner there because there was water. I knew I'd have to have water for that night to carry me for the next 16 miles all the way to North Fork Ranger Station, so wanted to make sure that I had enough...it's always better to have more...then you can just dump it out if you think you have too much, not to carry it.
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| Lupins while climbing to Cloudburst Summit. |
I hiked on from the ranger/fire station a little bit, about another mile or so...there were a bunch of people camped out down below in the overnight areas, and I didn't want to be by them because they would probably be loud for a while...I found a nice little sandy spot, cleared it out, had a view down towards Lancaster and went to bed. It was a bit breezy, but I like breezes, especially when it's warmer, and you've been dropping elevation and it's getting hot. But that was the day....pretty good, pretty excited about the 47, especially on a hard day. I went to bed around 10:00 pm, later than I'd like. I really want to try and get one of these days to get back on that schedule, or at least get an hour night of sleep one day and get really good miles...That was the day, and tomorrow looks like it will be...probably a 50. I know it will be a lot of downhill, a couple obstacles of up, but nothing that bad....so it should be pretty easy.
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| Senlden Pass looking N-NE at the clouds raining...with a thunderstorm chasing me behind. |
