Start point

Mission Creek tent site at 235.5

End point

Coon Creek Group Camp and Cabin, 246.5

Miles hiked

11

Wilderness area

Sand to Snow National Monument

San Bernardino National Forest

People I met

William, from Germany

Francisco and Joselyn

The day on trail

We learned our lesson from the last time we had a late night, so today was a much faster start.

Everyone who cowboy camped cleared out quickly except for Nightcrawler. Us tenties, Layla, Alpha, and myself, got out about an hour later. We needed some breakfast and a little mojo, so it took some time.

Eventually we got going, and we just focused on moving forward. Layla wanted to do some solo hiking, so she took off. Alpha and I hiked together for a bit.

I found this huge sign. Hand is there for scale.



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Eventually, we ran into Big Tuna and Alpha and him chatted a bit while I continued on.

I got turned around at the Sand to Snow trail, as a guy named William, from Germany, was following me. Oops. I rectified the direction and headed back. Retracing steps is already embarrassing enough, but doing it when your location is being broadcast is just downright mortifying. I just keep reminding myself that anyone can make that mistake.

Well. We’re back on track!

I meet Francisco and Joselyn out on a snowy traverse. They’re going slowly and postholing a lot. I think they’re spending too much time looking at the holes and not the steps. They’re looking where they don’t want to go, not where they do. They decide to follow me since I’m postholing less.

I come to a knoll and Layla is sitting on a log at the top of it. She can’t find the trail.

I have an app called FarOut. It tracks the trail, your location, and a bunch of waypoints (like road crossings, water, tentsites, etc.). Sometimes if I get a touch of service, the app will delete all the close up maps. And it did it this time.

So to find the trail I needed to get a signal strong enough to reload my close up maps. I let them all; Joselyn, Francisco, and William; know that I’m looking for signal so they don’t mindlessly follow me. They follow me anyway.

I end up finding the trail and calling out to them. Layla put an arrow of pine cones to lead people the right way.

Only problem is now we’re losing sun. Of freaking course. And Alpha still doesn’t have a working headlamp.

I let Layla go forward and I wait to assist Alpha.

Alpha got there, took a cursory look at her feet, and we continued on. And boy, howdy did the snow pick back up.

And we’re losing light.

The goal is to get to an abandoned cabin with indoor floors, despite no doors or windows. It also has sites for tents.

The problem is it’s still five miles off and we have a lot of snow to get over.

We get over one bank and need a rest. Alpha asks “can we just sit and look at the sunset for five minutes?”

Of course we can.

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But we have to get going.

I have the only working headlamp of us both. For snowy traverses, which is pretty much all of them, I have Alpha walk right in front or right behind me, so she can use my light.

We end up losing the trail because it’s buried under snow and the boot tracks are in all different directions. I kind of make an executive decision to do some route finding to cross a snowed over meadow to get to the cabin. Trying to track the trail there is too complicated in the dark, especially with one headlamp (anyone a fan of the Wallflowers? Anyone?). We agree this is the best move and it gets us across this meadow and to the cabin, where the group has a campfire going in the pit.

Finally.

But it’s another late night and I’m getting a little fed up with the logistics of this whole group.