Day 22

Today was super fun. I woke up to the sunrise, a beautiful and also upsetting sight, as I had hoped to wake up early enough to see the sunrise from the summit of Baden Powell—a 45 minute ascent if I would have hustled. I was also pleased to identify rabbit tracks in the snow, as rabbits always remind me of my sister and my dog.

The climb up on the frozen snow was easy and I made it to the summit in no time. At the top, wind gusts were (I was later told) up to 60 miles per hour. I forgot to turn my phone off airplane mode and try to fix my FarOut comments, so I would be annoyed with this technological issue until I could resolve it an hour later.

I ate my breakfast on the jog off the peak and soon found myself with less than half a liter of water. It was about forty degrees on the ridge I needed to descend for five or so miles to the Little Jimmy Spring, so I didn’t stress it. I got lost twice trying to follow the bootpack since at this point my hands were basically nonfunctional from the cold so that GPS use was out of the question. Fortunately I found my way and soon made it to water.

At the spring, a group I briefly met in the hot tub at Cajon Pass caught up with me, as they had been camping at the summit. It was really nice catching up with them and I decided to hike with them the rest of the day, since I estimated that I brought about half a day too much food if I were to do the big day I had planned the night before. We hiked fast towards Highway 2, where some excellent trail magic—muffins, bananas, apples, iced coffees, chips, cookies—greeted us. Like an idiot, I didn’t take a single photo of this happy moment. I gorged, making the ensuing 1500 foot climb harder than it ought to have been.

Soon Penthouse and Roadrunner split off with me to power through the descent back to the highway, where we would walk three miles around the Williamson Rock closure, a longstanding closure (since 2005) for the preservation of yellow-legged frogs. I hate road walking, but conversation was boisterous and I munched on yogurt covered pretzels, so it wasn’t too bad.

After walking too far on the road (too much fun!), we descended down the side of the road to meet up with the trail and continue for the five or so miles to the agreed upon camp. Wanting to hang, I decided to stay as well, despite the fact that it was 3:15pm, by far my earliest stop. We encountered a huge recently downed tree on the trail which we had to crawl under. Here’s Roadrunner for scale.

At camp, I did copious amounts of yoga and ate my underripe avocado with glee. Limp Pickles gave us an excellent description of all the stars and planets we were seeing before we scurried off to bed. Great day, ending at Mile 395.2.