Last night we camped on a precipitous outcropping in low manzanita shrubs, overlooking the glow of glitzy Palm Springs more than a verticle mile below. The wind was howling all night, slapping and shaking the walls of our little yellow tent. It held up well and we passed a surprisingly warm night above 7000 ft. When I got up at 5am it was 51 degrees inside.
We set out early, Casey just in tow, and ascended further up into the mountain range. After about 2.5 hours we hit the snow. The trail rounded a bend just east of Taquitz peak and as we took on the north facing wall, we were forced to make our own route as the trail disappeared completely beneath the thick, icy drifts. We followed some snowshoe prints and what seemed to be the only substantial track of footprints down off the ridge into a bowl and went cross-country towards the saddle along the western rim where a junction was to take us on a spur trail--the Devil's Slide--down into the mountain resort town of Idyllwild. It was really beautiful, actually, to be off the trail, to frollick a little bit, sliding down the hillsides, skiing down overtop the frozen, virgin crust of untouched mountaintop snow. It was also very very frustrating and difficult. Faling is kind of fun for a bit, but then it starts to hurt. Ankles started to swell, knees got jittery, even my muscl!
es got sore, trudging up and down the ridgeline--it is very diffifult to maintain elevation without the trail to keep you up. Eliza was having a hard time kicking foothold and was getting frustrated with me for moving too quickly. I was getting frustrated because before too long we were absolutely, undeniably lost. We found highground eventually and pulled ourselves together, ate some lunch, checked out our topo-maps, figured on which wa we should go and or how long and then set out. This didn't work, however. We ended up in a saddle, losing elevation, following a seep or a rivulet, hoping against odds that it was the right one, only to discover that we were looking down over a near-verticle ravine, pebbles and boulder dribbling past our ankles as we skid to a halt on the lose terrain. This led to more frustration. We bickered a little. Then we started in on another plan--walk back and forth, up and down this strip of ridgeline, keeping a close eye on our compasses !
(they are definitely proving useful), until we hit this damn j!
unction.
We had lost Casey hours before when we stopped to filter water and so we were alone through all of this. Then, as we started one of a seris of these N-S passes I caught a glimpse of a green backpack just like mine bouncing down the hill before me on someone's back. It turns out it was Maury, a younger kid from NJ who is out hiking for a couple of months on summer break from college. He, Casey, and I all carry he same pack, oddly enough, so at first I was sure that it was him. Maybe he was on the right track. But it was Maury and he, too, was lost. We all briefly conferred and soon agreed that we could just blaze on down the mountainside and eventually we would hit the trail. So we did just that.
Two hours later, we strolled into town, after a couple of miles down the trail and a couple more down the road. These road walks are the worst, by the way. In Idyllwild we met Casey soon enough at the State Park campground. He got lucky, I guess, and found the trail no problem. Marge, the Old Gal, was at the post office, and we even ran into Bob (little debbie), the first person we met on the trail almost two weeks ago. We had passed his campsite our first night out and then the next day he walked up while we were sitting down for a snack. We exchanged pleasantries and we asked where he was from after he said something about "back east." He said, "Oh, I live in Ithaca now." We thought this was pretty cool, as did he. He's a goofy guy, talks a lot, but I like him.
A community does feel like it's coming together for us here.
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