Start point

Black Mountain Road (PCT alternate route): 7.2 miles

End point

Dirt road at mile 192.5

Miles hiked

9.2

Wilderness area

San Bernardino National Forest

People I met

Grumpy

The day on trail

Oh man. Today was a slow start. We (Half Pint, Shark, and myself) got a room that was more expensive than we wanted, so we wanted to check out as late as possible. This means we had a leisurely breakfast at Red Kettle. I had corned beef hash with eggs, poached medium, hash browns, and sourdough toast. Apparently they give an extra slice of toast to thru hikers. It was delicious and the eggs were poached perfectly.

We headed back to the room, cleaned up, I had a bath, and we texted Grumpy, a local trail angel, to get a ride to the Black Mountain Road. He picked us up around noon and we were hiking by 12:30.

It. Was. A. Road. Walk.

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Road walks suck, to be honest. They’re dull, harder on the body, and you often have to look out for cars.

Yup. This road was open for two miles before it closed for snow (yes, more snow). There was a big family party with four or so cars a bit up. There was a caravan of three Jeeps getting themselves stuck in snow farther up.

After two miles there was a gate closing the road for further vehicle use. We continued on.

The snow soon resumed en masse. We postholed our way along. Shark took an unannounced shortcut, which wasn’t the brightest of moves. Half Pint waited behind because she thought he needed to go to the bathroom. I continued on and we set a place to meet. Further up, I saw Shark sitting on a log. He told me about the shortcut and I let him know Half Pint was waiting for him.

I kept going so they could get reunited and continue.

Postholing was very real. That’s a posthole that went up to my knee. It’s when you step in snow and then just…fall through . This one was down to a trickle of water underneath. Hooray for wet feet!

My pole sank in the snow at one point. And, well, got stuck. Now I know how the knights before King Arthur felt. That thing did not want to come out!

Here are some signs to give an idea of how high the snow I was walking on was.

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I just continued on. Slowly. Snowly.

I found a great lookout.

I got to the intersection we planned to meet at, and really didn’t have to wait long. I burned enough time taking photos that they were only about 10 minutes behind me.

We met up, made a plan to continue forward to drop elevation and hopefully find dry trail and camp.

Finally some dry trail!

We kept at it, trying to get to where we could while we had sun. Just pushing and pushing. Trail would pop up between streaks of snow and then disappear.

We finally found some dry ground on a closed road. It was mostly dirt with some broken up pavement. I could barely get most of my stakes in halfway, a few went all the way in.

Dinner was a dehydrated Backpackers Pantry meal, just because it required less water and we didn’t stop to refill.

I finished the day with maybe a liter of water. And just feeling good that I did more than three and a half freaking miles. It feels good to have escaped Idyllwild.

Here are some vignettes from today.

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We also had this magnificent sunset.

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