Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Back to Idyllwild


I have been feeling pretty good lately and I've been getting big miles but today I felt the strain. I've been climbing up at much higher elevations so I am finally starting to slow down, not to mention I ran into a ton of snow today, so much that I actually lost the trail and bushwhacked a half mile up a mountainside, pretty much lost, until I found a trail which I assumed was the PCT (it was) but I ended up going the wrong way on it until i ran into some people who set me straight. It may seem like it's hard to go south instead of north but it's actually pretty easy because I don't have a GPS to tell me where on the trail I actually am and even when you're going north on the PCT, a lot of the time, you're going any direction BUT North. It's frustrating but the trail is dictated by terrain so you just have to deal with it. Today had amazing views though and it's evident that the people who work on this trail have done so much hard work to maintain and build this trail. It's amazing.

The altitude climbs and the snow hiking made for a really tough day and I had to drop back down into Idyllwild to pick up enough food to make the next 130 miles to Big Bear. It's going to be rough because in two days I descend 8000 feet into the desert, only to have to climb it all again after I cross the I-10.

When I got into Idyllwild I was planning on resupplying and then going right back up but I had to hike an extra 5 miles just to get in to town and I decided to just take a break and tackle the re-entry (2.5 miles straight up) in the morning. I piggybacked in a cabin with 5 other guys and I hit the market to resupply. 6 days of food is heavy and I have a lot of altitude to cover both up and down. It'll be rough but the views are spectacular. You can follow my progress on my website at http://www.davidpatrone.com/PCT For some reason the GPS map isn't working in some browsers but if you give the page a minute to load it usually works.

Tomorrow also has a lot of snowy and icy spots that have a lot of hikers worried. I don't have crampons or micro-spikes but I figure enough people have gone over that the footprints will be easy to hike in. We'll see! If my GPS tracker loses a couple thousand feet of altitude in less than a minute, you better call the coroner to come pick up my body.


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

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