Trail Day 4: Penny Pines Trailhead (mile 48.7) to a tentsite (mile 71.1)

22.2 PCT miles

Well, today was interesting.  It started off with me missing my alarm, so my Trail Angel and I headed back down to Mt. Laguna about 1.5 hrs later than I had originally wanted. After I was dropped off, I noticed my cell phone wasn't in my pocket. I had left it in the car!

My Trail Angel and I use a SPOT messenger to communicate. There is a “check in” button that delivers the message that I am “OK” and another button that delivers the message,  “Come get me.” Wanting to catch him before he left the area,  I hit “Come get me” so that he would turn around. I pressed it several times in case he didn't hear the notification.  After waiting over an hour at the trailhead,  I hit the “OK” button to cancel his assistance and started back on the trail.

New day, new vista.

Not long after I started, I bumped into an Italian lady named Mari. She was solo hiking for a month before her boyfriend would join her for 2 additional months. She had just spent last night camping alone in the wind on exposed terrain. It was such a bad experience that she was considering hitching a ride to the hiker-friendly town of Julian so that she could spend the night indoors. I ended up hiking with Mari for a bit before we each started hiking at own own pace, leapfrogging each other along the way. After her thrilling night she seemed happy to see someone else.

It was still cold and windy out on the trail. There were definitely several gusts that had you checking your balance.

A couple miles in we hit one of the strange, famous PCT landmarks called Pioneer Mail.  I knew it was some sort of monument,  but I assumed it commemorated the early settlers of the era. Instead it was littered with plaques commemorating people who had passed away fairly recently (past 10 years). It was a nice memorial for those people, but I'm still not sure why it is called Pioneer Mail.

Memorial plaques at Pioneer Mail.

This is listed as a PCT "water source" at the Pioneer Mail picnic area. No, thanks.

From here the trail ran along the side of the mountain, then ran parallel with Sunrise Highway. There were beautiful shrub plants flanking the trail, some blue, some white. The blue ones were wonderfully fragrant. I passed through an area with large boulders and then back out to the windy, exposed terrain.

Mari walking the trail just past Pioneer Mail.

Baby gopher snake!

Blooms flanking the trail.

Fragrant boulders.

That is when I saw someone waiving at me. At first I thought it was Mari, who was ahead of me by that point, but it was actually my Trail Angel! He was sitting right in the middle of the windy, exposed path wearing only a T Shirt. He had my cell phone!

It turns out that there was some miscommunication with the SPOT messages. He had gotten the flurry of “come get me” messages (2 hrs after they were sent), but the “OK” message had been sorted to a different email folder. As a result, he thought that I was in trouble when he went to the trailhead where the messages were originally sent and couldn't find me. He asked as many people as he could if they had seen me before assuming I had started hiking and tried to get ahead of me on the trail. He had taken half a vacation day to do so. It was amazing that he went through that effort, but it also made me feel pretty guilty.

After he handed off the phone,  I walked with him back to the trailhead he came in on (it had bathrooms!) and saw Mari standing by the side of the road. She'd had enough of the wind and was going to try to hitch a ride into Julian. Usually people hitch a ride into Julian from Scissors Crossing (18 trail miles away) and not Sunrise Highway, so I was a little worried she wouldn't be able to get a ride. My Trail Angel volunteered to give her a lift into town. I don't know how long she would have waited otherwise. Trail magic for both me and Mari today.

After I left my Trail Angel and Mari, the wind picked up quite a bit. Hiking in strong winds, for some reason, can be demoralizing. I couldn't help but wonder if Mari had made the smart choice.  I found a single boulder to use as a wind break to rest my feet which were getting tired. It also gave my face a break from the wind burn it was receiving.

While I was resting I was passed by 4 men. The funny thing is that PCT thru-hikers tend to be ⅔ men, but I had mostly been seeing women up until that point. It was almost a surprise to see that many guys in a row.

After resting for a bit I followed the guys back into the punishing wind for a couple of miles. Thankfully, the trail eventually steeply wove down into a valley. The wind disappeared almost entirely, and you could hear the birds peacefully chirping.  It even seemed slightly too warm. Or perhaps it was just the windburn making my face flush. As I headed down in elevation new wildflowers emerged and the trail was dominated by pretty yellow flowers.

The trail going down into a valley. Notice the PCT hiker in the bottom left.

A change in wildflower species as the elevation decreased.

The guys who had passed me rested in the valley but I wanted to make it to at least mile 70 today so I continued on past them. There have also been some animal encounters while camping in the area this year, and I wanted to avoid that if possible.

Leaving the valley. Peaceful at the bottom, but stormy at the top.

After I left the valley, the trail became a small path etched into the steep sides of the mountain. There was no place to camp for miles, just steep mountain slopes. I started seeing a lot more wildflower diversity, including vibrant cactus blooms. If I had more time I would have stopped to take pictures of them all, but I was losing light and needed to find a camping spot quickly.

Prickly pear cactus bloom.

My Guthook app showed several campsites starting at mile 70. However, when I got to mile 70, I passed by without realizing there were campsites. I had expected there to be more flat, open area for camping. Instead, I was still mostly walking on the mountain slope. I eventually saw a small patch of sand that had previously been used by tents at mile 71.1 and tried to quickly set up my tent and eat dinner.

The winds had picked up again so being in my sleeping bag, sheltered by my tent was the only thing I wanted to do by that point. I had to carefully weight the inside of my tent with my belongings to help keep it anchored to the ground. The nice thing about the tentsite was that I could see the freeway I needed to go under tomorrow (at Sissors Crossings) and I was getting good cell signal. Another positive was that despite the rough start to the day, I had officially hiked the longest distance I have ever done in a single day at 22.2 miles.