Day 12 and 13: April 24 and 25th

Shortly after getting to town I bought a much needed new pair of shoes with a MUCH wider toe box. When we took off our toe bandages that night both Alex and my right pinkie toes were well on their way to disintegrating, see picture if you dare, nails falling off and all.

With new shoes and socks we felt hopeful that at least some of our pain would soon be getting better.
We relaxed, gorged ourselves often and soaked in the hot tub as much as we could. There was an impromptu hiker’s meeting to discuss the snow on Fuller Ridge that we’re soon to encounter. Apparently an experienced hiker went up to the pass to see if it was even possible to cross, he fell and hurt himself somewhat badly. Because many of the hikers do not have extensive snow hiking experience the debate is whether to pass it by road and skip that section or not. The snow is over three miles of the trail and over five feet deep. More snow may be falling soon too. It’s a big debate because you’re skipping trail but Alex and I have decided that we’re not doing this to push our limits of safety. In the long run skipping a small section so as not to kill ourselves (the Ranger station said they’ve already had to rescue people because the trail gets lost among the snow and you can’t tell where you’re going) is worth trying to make it to the end alive.
We set out tomorrow for Big Bear City and we’re actually excited. No more tears tomorrow! Well…probably at some point in the day, but not right as we leave this time!!

Day 11: April 23rd

I had had to take two Nyquil’s the night before so that I could sleep through another solitary night with no other fellow campers and with strange scratching noises I heard coming from the dark outside our tent. After a somewhat restful sleep I woke up to someone coughing and unzipping their sleeping bag, I rolled over to discover that Alex was still soundly snoring (it’s become a bizarre hissing sound each night now as his allergies get worse) I checked the clock and realized that we had overslept. It was already 5:15 and the tiniest hints of light were starting to show in the sky. I woke Alex up and heard the cough again, we guessed that someone must have walked past us in the night after we had fallen asleep (totally possible when we passed out around 7:30).
Our solar charger finally had started working the night before and I had been able to charge our ipod. Alex and I passed a man packing up not far from where we had slept, his name was Marco. Alex went to filter some water for us out of an algae thickened “creek” and I went ahead to try to use my first wind as best as I could. I put on my headphones and sang along to Ray Lamontagne and Fiest as I watched the sun rise over the hills. Hiking by myself in the cool air in a peaceful solitude was actually nice. Listening to the soothing music cleared my head and helped me not to feel so harshly about the trail. Was I reconsidering quitting? I wasn’t quite there yet.
Ric and Ginny (Alex’s parents) were meeting up with us again at the Paradise Café ( a hiker haven that we had heard about endlessly) on the Palms to Pines highway later in the day and we had to make it there before the restaurant closed.
The day got increasingly hotter and the trail never seemed to get any shorter. Slowly the bile I had for the trail began to rise again. It was so hot, the ridges we had to cross were so steep (yet again because of private land use issues we had to go far out of our way and actually on the edge of a canyon that had been blasted into the side of a mountain, very steeply) and my feet and knees were killing me. Along with Beyonce blasting in my ears I had “WHY!!!???” screaming in my head.
I told Alex that I had to get out, as yet another panic attack began to rise in me I said through clenched teeth that if he would let me quit I would do anything, even skydive (possible more scared of flying and subsequently jumping out of a plane than I am of cougars) or walk on the glass walkway that now hangs over the Grand Canyon. We kept walking in silence until I burst out in tears uncontrollably sobbing about my life. When you are hiking for so many hours and so many days your mind will make you think of things you might normally repress. Well, I had hit my limit and now everything was spilling out. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, I cried for the pain of my body, the fact that I was giving up on something that we both had wanted so badly and for the fact that I didn’t want to quit at all, I just felt that I had to.
Alex and I talked for a long time about our options and how we were both feeling about the trail. The thing we kept coming back to was that we didn’t feel like we were done yet. Although I couldn’t imagine myself on the trail for five more months of this, I couldn’t imagine myself having quit the trail either. We picked ourselves up and hiked to another water cache, we signed our trail names (Alex is 2-Pack , because when I was about to die in the afternoons he would offer to carry my pack for me and the name caught on. My name is Budget cause I save that money) and read the note from our friend Gumpy Bear telling us that he would meet us for the Jose burger later that afternoon at the Paradise Café.
To avoid a total nervous breakdown on my part Alex called his parents to have them pick us up a few miles early before the café. While we waited for his parents Alex and I had the revelation we had been waiting for and it came in the form of a quote that Gumpy Bear had told us “Hike your own hike”.
It seems so obvious but it becomes far too easy to get pulled into a mile race where we’re trying to keep up with much more experienced hikers. Although I hated sleeping by ourselves it is much better than being absolutely miserable every day because we’re pushing ourselves further than our bodies are ready to go. As Alex and I decided that we would no longer try to go so far just to keep up with other people and that we would go just until we were tired or found a good camping spot (within reason) we felt a peace wash over us and finally a renewed sense of purpose as to why we were doing this whole trip in the first place.
Were we on our ways to finding ourselves already? I don’t know but it felt good, and a lot less scary when I thought about returning to the trail after our two zero days in Idyllwild.

Day 10: April 22nd

Alex and I had decided that because yesterday was a slow day and we had been all alone nearly the whole day, that we would get up exceedingly early (4:30am) and start hiking at first light so that we could catch up to the people that had passed us the day before.
The day started off fairly well, we had gone nearly nine miles before eleven am. Unfortunately, it was also a day that we had to descend down mountains nearly the whole day. My knee had been bothering me off and on but hadn’t been too bad since Mt. Laguna the week before. As soon as we started descending it started to get sore, but I was reluctant to put on my brace because my leg had gotten even more grotesquely swollen when I had worn it before. Suddenly amid my and Alex’s rousing “alphabet game” (you pick a topic, let’s say fruit, then each person trades off the next letter, A-apple B-banana and so on…) I felt a shock of pain travel up my leg from my knee. I was momentarily frozen in place until I was able to move it again, and then I was fine. Until it happened again two or three times and I decided I should stop walking and put on my brace. Immense pain followed and I decided no brace, just hobbling slowly until it got better. Unfortunately, we were again nearly out of water so I told Alex to go ahead and I would catch up to him. Here you’ll see it pictured just how far behind I was.

My knee eventually felt better as we began inclining again, we got water and kept on walking. Because we had gotten up so early we had agreed that we would stop mid-day when it’s the hottest and set up our tent for an afternoon nap. Our guidebook had explained a nice forested area, which was the only flat spot in miles, that would provide cool shade and a relaxing spot for a nap. As Alex and I hiked higher and higher toward the top we looked around and neither of us could see any trees to speak of, but a flat spot was coming up so we figured that we would just be able to see the trees better from up there. Well guess what? THE FOREST BURNED DOWN SINCE THE GUIDE BOOK CAME OUT! Yeah, that was a nice surprise after hiking in the scorching heat for SEVEN hours! We were able to precariously balance Alex’s sleeping mat on a rock and a flattened pokey bush so that we could huddle under an overlying scrub for the little shade we could find.
After hiking for a few more hours we saw a white post, a landmark that our guidebook told us was actually much farther than we had thought we had gone. We were really doing a lot better than we had thought, we had already gone sixteen miles that day and we were going to push to do another four for our first twenty mile day!
We practically sprinted toward our campsite so proud of ourselves, sure that our early rising was the new way to go, the early bird really does get the worm! After another hour or so of hiking we came to another white post…the guidebook had assured us that there was only one white post so we were sure this one was just a new one and we kept going.
When we saw the fourth white post we thought we might have a problem, sure enough upon checking the guidebook again we discovered that we weren’t as good as we had thought, our hard work hadn’t paid off and we indeed didn’t get the worm. We had hiked from 5:30 that morning until 7 pm that night, hadn’t even taken a long afternoon nap/break, and had only gone sixteen miles. I, out of pain, exhaustion, desperation, hunger, frustration, all of them, of course began sobbing and telling Alex once again that I was done.
I didn’t want to do the trail anymore, in fact I hated it, never wanted to do it again, was NOT having a good time and didn’t know why this had been my stupid idea in the first place. I texted my best friend Annie telling her I was done, tried calling my mom but of course our solar charger wasn’t working and the phone was getting no reception. Alex and I were once again alone camped on a ridge. We talked about it through tears and prayed together, hoping that in the morning we would feel clearer about what we should do.

Day 9: April 21st

A cloud hung over me as we started our first day back on the trail after our break. We had to say goodbye to Alex’s parents, warm food and beds, and the comfort of knowing, almost certainly, that we would not be eaten alive in our sleep.
We had decided that we would “only” do a ten mile day because we had just had our first zero day and wanted to ease back into the trail as best we could. As soon as we began walking and Ric was out of sight I began crying (again). I felt that I had completely lost sight as to why we were doing this whole hike in the first place. I began feeling like this was all selfish to just disappear from our families’ lives for five or more months. We were needed back home and we were CHOOSING to be in misery and pain and fear (for me) in the desert instead. WHY!? Neither of us had an answer to that and we just had to try to pray that the purpose would become clear again soon.
Aside from my lackluster feeling of the trail we’ve also had to deal with a lot of pain. Pain has really been one of the biggest problems for us so far, as one might imagine walking fifteen or more miles a day is made a lot harder when you can barely walk. Alex had a right pinkie toe that had essentially exploded, fallen arches that were causing him immense pain, a very painful ankle, and a knot in his shoulder that was so hard he thought it was a clip from his backpack poking him. He also had contracted a mystery rash on his legs and arm and severe neck pain. Now I had seemed to have developed Elephantitis of the legs (I didn’t even recognize my own legs, they were so swollen they literally looked like a man’s, and “cankle” doesn’t even come close to describing this!), my right pinkie toe had started to fall off, literally the whole top half of it, a hideous blister (pictured last entry) horrible arch pain and now bad knee pains, especially when descending.
I continued to feel down all day and Alex and I tried to make it better by just pacing ourselves and taking breaks in the blistering sun, or the shade out of the blistering sun rather, whenever we wanted to and making camp fairly early, by ourselves, at five or so.
Our tent was set up on a ridge overlooking Warner Springs, it was a beautiful view but it also just reminded me again of the family that we had left and how isolated I again felt.

Day 7 and 8: April 19th and 20th

Gumpy Bear (or Brian in real life) our hiking buddy for the past three days and us woke up on our random ridge before the sun rose and began hiking. We had to meet Alex's parents in Warner Springs that afternoon and couldn't wait to begin our well deserved break.

After the four miles of even more ridges and circling we finally made it down to Barrel Spring Campground by 9 am, took a quick break and pressed on to Warner Springs. Finally there was something to look at!We traveled rather flatly through flowering meadows and even saw some cows!

We made it to Warner Springs by two, met the parents and quicly lapsed into a meat and pool induced coma. Here are what my feet look like after walking 110 miles!

It was so great to see the smiling faces of our family, and the king sized Snickers bars that they were holding. Warner Springs was the BEST place to have come to after walking so far. There are two pools one is a regular one, and the other a hot spring!
We ate all that we could hold and rested up so that getting back on the trail will be well slightly less traumatic!

Day 4, 5 and 6: April 16-18

I think I can easily say that these were my least favorite three days of the...oh my life. For three days we went ridge, over endless ridge, ridgelet and gully around Scissors Crossing and the San Felipe hills. It was unbelievably hot and endless. This is a short blog because my disgust for them runs so deep that there isn't much to say (we did experience our first "trail magic" though when trail angels brought drinks and snacks to us at Scissors Crossing. Thank you Sparky, Jellybean and Shorty!).
On day six I told Alex quite honestly while collapsed in a wash in the desert while running out of water and nearly out of food that I didn't think I could make it the 21 miles to Warner Springs. It was mid afternoon and I was as collapsed as can be with a pack and sleeping pad attached to my back. As dusty tears rolled down my cheeks I looked skyward and watched the birds begin to circle us. I looked apologetically to Alex and actually thought that I might die where I lay. Luckily I didn't and we made it with Gumpy Bear to a random ridge to sleep the night.

Oh! I nearly forgot, on the night of day four Gumpy Bear and Alex and I all camped in a soft creek bed, it looked like the perfect place to set up camp. Alex and I went to bed in our tent, got a bit cold and apparently slept on our faces to keep warm.

These photos have not been doctored.

Day 3: April 15th

We got up extra early this morning after an actual good night of sleep and set out for Mt. Laguna, which is a 5000ft. elevation gain day! We were so happy to meet about four more hikers later that morning that had camped just about 200 yards from where we had camped, sadly they didn't "woo-hoo"... The hikers we met were Unbreakable and No Trace, Chuck Norris and Tigger and Sketch and Rambo and one other woman who flew by us without talking wearing a Scottish scarf, we call her the Flying Scottswoman in our heads...all on their way to Mt. Laguna. Some of the hikers had taken a break and we pressed on, having learned early that when you have a burst of energy to use it to the fullest. We had been walking by ourselves for about twenty minutes and we were getting close to Cibbets Flat Campground when I looked across a gully and saw another group of hikers all wearing black. It was so interesting to me that they were all wearing dark colors that I looked closer thinking that it was possibly a group of monks or something on a pilgrimage (I was tired, and it was just after Easter okay?). As I looked closer I quickly whipped my head around to hiss "ILLEGALS!" to Alex, my darling husband responded, "You see a bald eagle?!" After some rapid pointing Alex saw what I saw and snapped some pictures.

You can see that they all quickly dropped to the ground to hide. It was very sad, or not depending on your stance, that less than half an hour later we saw a big group of ATV's zooming by on a near road possibly to find these people.

Later in the day as we got closer to Mt. Laguna it got colder and colder and snow flakes actally began to fall. When we were about a mile away and frost was covering all of the trees we decided that we would stay the night at the motel that is in Mt. Laguna.

As we neared the mile got longer and longer and my knees really started to hurt, being the caring husband that he is Alex offered to carry my pack for me to give my knees a break. Who would have known his "trail name" would come from that, more on that later though.

We made it to the "lodge" just in time before they closed we were told from the owner that the weather was "bringing you people in like rats". Luckily we were able to get a room, some snacks, and ran to the bath to wash off some of our filth and warm ourselves in front of the heater. I fell asleep with a wide smile on my face, nachos in my belly and Lost on the twelve inch television. Bliss.

Day 2: April 14th

After having a wonderfully restful sleep between hearing people walking through the bushes a mere ten feet away from us, a baby crying in the early morning, and the aforementioned Border Patrol helicopters we couldn't wait to make the 1000ft. elevation (oh and that's in half a mile!) climb straight up a mountain the remaining four miles to Lake Morena. We needed water and food, we couldn't eat dinner the night before because we couldn't spare the water for the stove, and a break by the time we walked into the Lake Morena campground. You can see my restful nap

here having been so relieved to be past the "illegals" I was so glad to soon be talking to another camper who informed me that really I should be careful of them until we reach the highway in another few days...awesome, welcome back upset stomach and restless night of sleep!
We ended up only doing a ten mile hiking day on day two because we had hardly slept and were so tired from the day before. Being so anxious about being murdered in my sleep I made a deal with Alex that we would camp at Boulder Oaks Campground (ten miles total) as long as other people were there, and if no one was there we would walk the extra four miles to Cibbets Flat Campground where we were told by the only other hiker we had seen the whole day (Pie) that Stinky Butt was sleeping that night. You might be able to imagine my expression when we got to Boulder Oaks, it was almost dark again, and not only were there no other campers but the campground was chained from the roadside so that no one else could get in, or hear your screams in the night. There was a thick fog rolling along the ground and there were what appeared to be huge rusty cages, yes cages, that were set at every camping spot. The cages were actually encloseures for people that bring along their horses, but that didn't diminish the horror movie like appearance in my mind.
Alex and I huddled around the picnic table and ate our 99cent store refried beans (and they were actually really good!) in the cold. When Alex went to go fill our water bladders I set up our beds. I was suddenly frozen in place when I heard a clear woman's voice say "Woo-hoo!" I was SO elated that some other hikers must have been so pleased to have made it to the camping spot that they actually shouted out with glee. I excitedly told Alex and he went jogging around the campsite looking for the other hikers to invite them to come sleep by us. Sadly, he couldn't find anyone and we assumed that it was just voices carrying again. We slept very well that night and I was surprised to wake in the early morning light to hear more women saying "woo-hoo" in tandem...oh wait, those are only birds...

Day 1: April 13th Campo

We spent the weekend with my (Rebekah) Aunt and Uncle (and cousin Ben!) in San Diego. We had a great Easter, loaded up on some last supplies at the local Walmart, watched Slumdog Millionaire (We loved it) and got some some extra sleep and took out even more weight from our packs.

Here you can see Alex is ever so excited to get on the trail with our final weights of 49 lbs. for Alex's pack and just under 25lbs. for mine. That was still a little heavy but it was including all our food and water (3 liters in mine and 5 in Alex's).

We made the drive to Campo and signed the register and took a few pictures of the border and were on our way. We also met Brian aka "Stinky Butt" and his mom Judy who were hiking to Lake Morena that day too. The trail for the first few miles flew by, the sun was out but it wasn't too hot. Border patrol was out in full force and our spirits were high...no one would have guessed that in an hour we and Stinky Butt and his mom would all be lost, I'd have a bee sting and we would see enough clothes left by illegals that we could fill a Goodwill clothes bin. Soon we all found our way and my bee sting got better. Stinky Butt and Judy went ahead of us not wanting to take a break for lunch because they still had a long way to go...so did we. By the time it was getting dark I had accidently/ on purpose thrown myself onto the ground in the middle of a border patrol access road convinced I could no longer go on. After a few..."encouraging words" and pointing out some danger signs written in Spanish Alex had convinced me we needed to make it to camp. By eight o'clock it was nearly dark and we had made it to Hauser Creek, a "fine camping spot" as our guide book told us. We set up our tent in the dark trying to watch out for the poison oak that was covering everything around us. After going sixteen miles that day we had made it to the creek hoping that there would be water, seeing as how we only had a liter and a half left. Naturally it was dry and no one else was camped there, so we had nothing but the soothing sounds of the Black Hawk helicopters and the crunching of leaves underfoot as the illegals pressed on into the night.

We leave in a week!!!

We truly can't believe it's come on so quickly but we leave in six days and start the trail in eight! Along with our other semi-odd money making...let's call them "tactics" we've found a craigslist posting of someone who would pay someone to drive their u-haul down from the Bay Area to San Diego. Perfect! So we're leaving bright and early next Saturday to drive a u-haul from Burlingame (it's on the Peninsula) to San Diego and making some money in addition to the free ride! We'll then get a ride from my ever-so-generous Aunt to her house spend the night, and some Easter, with them and then on to Campo for Sunday night and start the trail first thing Monday morning!  Thanks for reading our blog our journey is just about to begin!