Day 15: mile 195ish to Ziggy and the Bear's, 16 miles
While refilling my supply of stove fuel at the hardware store in Idyllwild, I heard from the salesman about the imminent "big storm" in the mountains. I politely thanked him for what has to be one of the oldest wheezes in existence--spooking the solo female hiker with storm stories--and carried on with my chores. Nonetheless, I kept a weather eye to the mountains as I called into the bakery next morning (thank god bakers and hikers both wake up early) for coffee and a chamomile muffin (!), and prepared to leave town.
A trail angel named Dave--another one--gave me an early morning ride to the trailhead at Humber Park, plus a roll of Lifesavers "to keep me from getting dehydrated." Thanks, Dave! These people genuinely make the trail possible. They can never receive enough thanks, and saying "thank you," however many times, feels so paltry. Dave, like most trail angels, asks no kind of compensation for his help--not even a few bucks for gas--preferring to admonish us, gently but firmly, to remember to pay it forward. They don't want our money. They want us to remember to go out of our way and help somebody else someday. It reminds me of my folks. They'd make great trail angels.
The clouds thickened as I climbed back to the trail. They loured enough that I decided a summit of San Jacinto would be too socked in to merit the extra altitude (especially with a fully loaded pack), but it didn't appear too ominous in terms of immediate safety. One of those changeable days. When I stopped to cook lunch and tank up my water vessels, it snowed for a few minutes, fitfully, alternating with patches of dazzling sun. I ate my noodles with great deliberation. It's funny to witness, with partial and amused objectivity, the relationship between your mental processes and your instincts. My brain assured me confidently that it was May, there were several points of refuge available, and that I had a packful of expensive gear meant to protect me from the elements--not to mention a presently burdensome plenitude of food and water. My gut agreed with all of these observations--and meanwhile urged me to eat and keep walking. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck on the notorious Fuller Ridge in bad weather.
Fuller Ridge was a lark compared to the nightmare some hikers get to deal with in other years. I think I stepped on two (!) patches (!) of snow (!) the whole time. But the weather definitely started to turn snarly, and the wind picked up as I began my descent. "Descent" here used advisedly. According to my maps, as the crow flies it's a mere handful of miles from Fuller Ridge trailhead to the Snow Creek water tank at the base of the mountain; following the PCT it's more than sixteen. Losing that six thousand or however many feet seems to take bloody forever. The trail doesn't perceptibly "descend" at any point so much as present the hiker with an elaborate walking tour of the San Jacinto foothills, very slowly and tortuously returning her back to the desert.
As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of Hiking Day: the kind that has a specific destination in mind--water source, town, point of interest--and you walk until you get there, no matter how acutely you feel your feet falling off; and then the kind of day wherein you just walk until your feet feel like they're going to fall off, and think, alright, the next flat spot is Camp. That night was one of the latter. The wind and clouds had begun howling down the mountain with a noise and force and dramatic swirling of clouds that was frankly...unsettling. It made me jumpy. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that. I had to remind myself sternly that I was back in the DESERT, where it's WARM, not in Antarctica or anywhere else where winds of that magnitude mean You Might Die. Hell, I could see a WIND FARM in the valley below--clearly there'd be no getting away from it, the wind was just part of the landscape, like the overgrown sticker bushes that were coincidentally also making my life more difficult. Get a grip, woman. Still, a storm, not just wind, lurked somewhere on the mountain I was so determinedly "descending," and the gusts started yielding little droplets of condensed cloud matter, so figured I'd better split the difference between escape and refuge.
I made camp around mile 195, a little away from the trail and tucked into a hollow I thought might shelter me slightly from the wind. (It didn't.) My first Stealth Camp! I went through the usual motions of pitching my tent, amid much flapping, aided by veritable CAIRNS of stones over each stake, and auxiliary piece-of-wood stakes, and more stones--go big or go home, right?--but with every expectation that I would find it crashing down on my head in the night. My Master Hiker Backup Plan consisted of rolling myself and all my gear in the lee of a rock and waiting for sunrise. You know what? IT STOOD. It snapped and whistled tremendously, but that silly tarp-tent STOOD, and wearing earplugs I slept like a rock. At some point a particularly ferocious gale must have lifted the roof and dislodged the tip of my hiking pole from the grommit where it's supposed to fasten--so I woke up to find it'd blown a hole in the roof--but it STOOD. Everything stayed dry. And in nine hours the wind had not abated one whit.
Buoyed by the unexpected success of my shelter, I rolled out before dawn and started haring the rest of the way down the mountain in record time. Just at mile 200 a rainbow appeared behind me like the prize at the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack. At Snow Creek I paused for water and a snack, and Jeff and Gator, the two men whose somnolent camps I'd passed earlier, caught up to me. (They never even saw my tent. That's why it qualified as a Stealth Camp.) Jeff is a bit of a loudmouth who thinks he knows best and still carries a potty trowel. Gator hiked the AT a few years ago and packs a five-pound video camera. (Yes, this is really how to register other peoples' identities out here.) We discussed the merits of stopping at Ziggy and the Bear, just another six miles across the desert plain now standing before us, before setting out with everything firmly battened down and heads bent against the still-gale-force wind.
Ironically, leaving the lovely San Jacintos we crossed the ugliest, most confusing piece of trail I've yet encountered. Littered with junked cars and garbage, crossed by massive powerlines and jeep roads to and from construction sites, the desert surrounding Cabazon stands as testament to what a godawful mess human beings can make when they just don't give a shit. The "National Scenic Trail" could have been anywhere, utterly unrecognisable. Also, the WIND, did I mention the WIND? You lean into it at 45 degrees and squint from one marker to the next. The best I can say about those miles is, whoever put up the tall wooden markers, THANK YOU, or we'd have been sunk. By the time we reached the shelter of the underpass--and the ice cold cache of soda and water some dear trail angel had put there--we felt like we'd marched for a thousand years. Suddenly there was no question about whether or not we planned to stop at Ziggy and the Bear.
Ziggy and the Bear are an elderly couple who serve as trail angels at the edge of Anza, or Cabazon--my geography of southern California is appallingly limited, considering I'm traveling it on foot. They provide shade, water, wi-fi, cowboy camping, and god help me, EPSOM SALT FOOT BATHS to each and every hiker walking through their backyard. They've been doing this for over a decade, expanding the operation every season. They even have showers this year, and performed some elaborate reconstruction on their porch to accomodate the madding crowd. It's really quite extraordinary that anybody would go to these lengths to help a lot of smelly itinerants like us. Previous hikers Cool Ranch and Capitan were volunteering there, making sure every sun- and wind-dazed arrival got a seat, a lecture, and a footbath. Here is your towel. Here is your footbath. Here is your password. You may dump out the dirty water over there. You may wash your socks and whatever else in that sink. We will have salad and ice cream for dinner. Amen.
I hadn't planned to stay. I'd planned to take a break and put in another handful of miles before calling it a day. But Cuddles, Grady (now Fun Size), Ashley, Frosty, Atlas, Shotput, Wagonwheel, Alex, Noah the Prophet, and a whole crew of people I knew started rolling in; Belgian Red, Bunk, and Baby Steps were already there; even Billy Goat, a 70-something-year-old Triple Crown trail celebrity with more than 30,000 trail miles to his name, showed up. A lot of them had weathered the storm up on Fuller Ridge--sitting in puddles and clinging to the supports of their tents--and looked incredibly relieved to find a place to dry out gear and recoup after a rough night. As I paced, restlessly examining the black clouds now barrelling towards the hills where the trail would lead me, Cuddles wandered up and observed sternly that one does not leave shelter INTO bad weather. Listen to the veteran hiker, dummy. So I stayed, vicariously enjoying my ice cream and salad, watching the others playing Spoons (card game involving zero strategy) for packets of Body Glide. It's not a race. Canada isn't going anywhere.
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