4/17/20, mile: 275, elevation: 7,260 ft.
Well wasn’t that a whirlwind resupply! To help him avoid grief from locals and online, I won’t name him. He normally hosts hikers every year, but he doesn’t advertise. It was just my luck he caught up to me on the trail. Come to find out, he gave Pac Man a ride in to town that morning, and just dropped him off when he started his little day hike and ran into me. What a small world. Anyway, I got to do all of the normal resupply things (no TV, which was fine with me). I stayed up too late organizing, blogging and listening to music. But hey, I can catch up on sleep on trail, the rest of this stuff is a gift not to be wasted.
This morning, he gave me directions on how to clean and sanitize the place and then off we went to the post office to mail my two packages. One was snow gear stuff and the other was food for Wrightwood. He had me back at the trailhead by 10am. A 20-hour pitstop, not bad! That is certainly a record turnaround for me, and it didn’t cost a zero, either!
I was surprised how easy my pack was to fill, and also that it wasn’t that heavy. What was I missing? Well screw it. It is what it is. It was surprising cold to start, and it never warmed up. I had planned to stop at the top of the next climb (to go around Gold Mountain), but the temperature and new falling snow nixed that idea. Yes, it started snowing on me. I didn’t take the time to adjust the phone camera settings to try to capture it, so just trust me.
I got to camp around 3pm (being cold is a great motivator to keep moving). Two new-to-me hikers were already setup; Diego and SoCo (as in Southern Comfort). We chatted about the weather and the trail conditions, and then they informed me that I had just missed Lamb Chop going in to town to resupply, and Pippi Longstocking was further down the trail. Woo hoo, they’re still going!
Though the sun was peaking out now and then, it was still cold…in the 40’s. And when that sun dropped, goodbye. I cooked and ate in the tent. Afterwards, I tried to get some blogging down, but my fingers just were too cold. Even reading the Kindle made me cold. I think I reached the lower limit of this camping gear.
I did a budget check for the first month on trail. Not good. Those four nights in Palm Springs didn’t help. With my speed increasing now and the weather hopefully improving, I can reduce the vortexes that are town stops.
Savior out.