Ancient Indian Sacred Hot Springs

My earliest day yet, I was off at 6:30. Unbelievable! It was gonna be a long one though. I had about 2 cups of water for 5 miles until the water cache at "Third Gate" and it got hot early. By mile 3.5 I was shuffling, a little delirious from dehydration and sucking at the sweat on my hands and face for a little relief for my dry mouth and cracked lips. This girl Keilly came up behind me and gave me a little bottle of water. She could tell I was all messed up and shortly thereafter I made it to the cache. There was a little left and I wanted to get out of there because I needed to do 24 miles today to get to Warner Spring to meet David Davis. We agreed to meet there and hike a section tomorrow. My blisters are still open and burning and I have some weird pain in the millde of my foot whenever I stop. Simple solution: Don't Stop.

It seemed like it took forever to get to the next water area (Barrel Springs mile 101) which was purported to have a questionable water supply. As I came in I noticed that there were a couple of RVs parked on the roadside plus Spring Guy's shortie. It looked like a party was developing and a couple of people were holding a camp/cookout for PCT hikers. It was a bunch of retired pilots who did this every year and cooked all kinds of stuff including chilidogs, sodas etc... I ended up staying there for about three hours with all these people that kept coming in off the trail. We set all of our packs down by these bushes and a big Pacific Rattlesnake showed up to check them out. I put my helmet cam on a trekking pole and got some footage of it all rattlin and stuff. The footage wasn't that great but I'll probably post it later.

I had 8 miles or so left and I had to get to Warner Springs by 8:30 when Dave was going to meet me there. Warner Springs is a place they built on hot springs and they actually have an olympic sized pool fed by the hot spring. I couldn't wait to try it out but if I didn't get there in time it would be closed.

By the time I got in it was dark and David was already there. He had driven his motorcycle. It turned out that I still had to hike another 1.2 miles on the road to get to the resort. I called him and he offered to pick me up so he rolled down on his bike and got me to the resort on the Harley with my backpack and all. it was cool. Fortunately we go in in time to enjoy the hot pool for an hour. Unfortunately we weren't in time for a steak...

I was hobbling around so badly that Dave was thinking, "How the hell is he gonna hike tomorrow?" but I know that there's a big difference between tonight and tomorrow when it comes to hikers' feet. Besides the sulfurous pool was gonna fix everything (or so the Indians say). I wasn't sure how fast Dave was going to be able to hike tomorrow but hopefully we can get close to a road so Jeff can pick us up the next morning because I have a gig tomorrow night.

David AKA “Mister F. Gentle Spirit”
Website
http://www.davidpatrone.com/PCT
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