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Paul Mitchell hiked the Pacific Crest Trail for Haiti

Potential 178

Paul Mitchell

Trail: Pacific Crest Trail     Goal: 2658 Miles
Dates: Apr 19 2010 - Jun 20 2010
This will be my third attempt at a PCT thru-hike. Trying and failing a thru-hike on the PCT is an amazing way to spend a summer! I'm hoping this time to find out how finishing a thru-hike compares. I feel lucky to have the opportunity, again, to ... more
Total
Pledges
Total
per Mile
Total
Pledged
Miles
Hiked
Dollars
Hiked
Total
Donated

15

$0.51

$1355.56

400

$204.00

$349.58

Kleiwerks has been on the ground in Haiti since February 2010. Our primary goal is to improve long-term security on behalf of the Haitian people by offering training and technical support to individuals, organizations and communities that are ... more
Journal

Casa de Luna Vortex

Green Valley - Mile 400 - Jun 16th, 2010

So bad at keeping up with the journal this time around. Hard to catch up once too much time has passed – a week ago seems like months ago out here.
We hiked out of Big Bear & enjoyed the relatively easy trail and nice views over Big Bear Lake. Walked through a huge burned stretch which included Little Bear trail camp, formerly surrounded by nice big trees and lots of greenery, now shadeless and barren. On to cross icy cold Holcomb Creek multiple times. The next stretch from there to the Deep Creek area was really enjoyable, though much of it also burned in some recent year, and interestingly I didn’t remember any of it until reaching the first big wood & steel bridge – I almost thought it must’ve been a re-route since I’ve hiked it twice before but couldn’t remember it at all. Sooo much water this year – little streams and creek crossings all over. Took a nice siesta every day through this stretch, aiming for a short one but averaging a four hour afternoon lunch/nap break. On to Devil’s Hole to camp with some fun locals and plenty of mosquitoes. I forget names instantly, hopefully ThruCry will remember more, but the locals shared some wine with us & we sat up past hiker midnight & had a great evening. That’s about the time we met SuperClaw and mAnimal – a couple of our favourite trail punks. On to deep creek and eventually the Hot Springs for an afternoon dip. Deep Creek was practically a river this time ... several hundred percent more water than my past times through.
Made it to the Mojave River Forks dam in time to hitch down the road to a little bar we’d been told about. We had cold soda on the brain and though I doubted the “it’s ¼ mile off trail” description was accurate (non-hikers are terrible judges of distance) we were willing to take the risk. It turned out to be one of those perfect days where everything falls into place and we get exactly what we need, right when we need it. We got a ride to the bar (lucky, that ¼ mile was more like 1.5) got cold soda, microwave treats and cold beer, and after chatting up some locals got a ride right back to the trail, walked in a ways and camped at a water cache. The alternate version of that story would have been “We walked 1.5 miles to the bar, found it was closed and walked 1.5 road miles back to the trail, defeatedly sodaless” so we were extra happy with how it did work out.
Highlight of the next day (other than actual flowing water sources between the dam and lake Silverwood) was my dance with a rattlesnake. He must’ve been just about to cross the trail, obscured by tall grass and the next second he was tangled in my feet, rattling while I yelped and tried to jump back. I felt him slither across the toes on my left foot. I don’t know if I stepped on it in my mad scramble. Our little dance was over in a few very fast seconds, and for some reason my adrenaline didn’t even kick in. My heart should have been thumping, it was a very close call, but I just walked on and let ThruCry take care of the stress. I was extra careful to poke the bushes and tall grass with my trekking poles for the next mile or so, but then I forgot about it and hiked on with my normal lack of care.
We reached lake Silverwood, looking lush and green and clean compared to last time after a recent fire. Took a quick swim and hiked on to the day picnic area where we found SuperClaw and mAnimal. I exercised my masterful yogying (yogiing?) skills and a generous Hispanic family from LA shared plates full of amazing barbecued corn, jumbo dogs & cold drinks with our group. For those who aren’t familiar with the term “Yogi” it means, at least to my understanding, to say something which indirectly hints that you need/want something and gives someone (in this case nice clean city people) the opportunity to offer it. I’ve become a big fan because it doesn’t put people on the spot, but more often than not people do offer and really do enjoy sharing (or giving rides, or whatever.) We feasted, thanked them profusely, which made them offer more ... by the time they left they had fed us three times! The four of us had a fantastic evening gorging, scrambling to move tents when the sprinklers came on – a classic PCT experience, getting stalked by a mountain lion which turned out to be a toad – good times.
The hike from Silverwood to the McDonalds at Cajon Pass was uneventful – dry and typical until the last few miles where the trail traverses some dramatic hills, following the top of the ridge and providing great views. We were stoked to get to the air conditioned McDonalds to partake in some dollar menu debauchery, but were saddened to discover via smartphone that our good friends Salami and Fugitive lost their puppy Egor to an asthma attack the day after getting home from the trail. :-( He was a great dog, only four years old, they treated him like gold and we could totally empathize with their loss. I also got some emails related to work at home which also brought our mood down a bit. I had hired an art director to take over some projects in my absence and the emails from him and the client confirmed that it hasn’t been going very well. Payments were (are) late, the client isn’t happy with the rate of progress, etc. These sorts of concerns are one of the big reasons we’re not feeling highly committed to the trail this year. The last time I was out, I had very few loose ends back home – this year we’re both feeling like there’s things we should be taking care of. Part of the joy of a thru-hike is the simplification – being out here with nothing to worry about for half a year except the next water source, a good spot to camp for the night, and how many days to the next buffet. We’re having a great time, but we’re not feeling that free.
So, we didn’t have nearly as much fun at the McDonalds, probably got into a conversation about whether we should be out here or not, the daylight was gone and in keeping with my past hikes, we ended up at the Best Western, where 25% of the facilities were not out of order. A bit of a dump, but they give hikers a discount and it’s a lot better than pitching the tent in earshot of the busy interstate. We found that SuperClaw and mAnimal had already checked in – they kept getting ahead of us without passing us on the trail, thanks to roads and thumbs. We stayed up late with them, and got sucked in to staying the next day. 48 hours after arriving at Cajon Pass, multiple Oreo McFlurries later we escaped. The guys hitched up the highway to Wrighwood, on a deadline to meet a friend at the Saufley’s – and we hiked on past the McDonalds for one more punch to the gut.
We followed the detour, a dirt road walk to avoid a burned stretch of trail, and arrived in Lytle canyon at Applewhite campground for the night. The flies and mosquitoes were relentless and maddening, but worse was ThruCry's ankle. A couple days out of Big Bear she rolled it, came down hard on her knee and spilled off the trail into the prickly embrace of desert shrub. We both roll our ankles fairly regularly, but this one was worse. It was paining her fairly regularly, sometimes feeling better for a while after a long break, but always getting sore again after a while on the trail. The stretch up from Cajon was really uncomfortable for her, and it had been many days since the original roll, so it was starting to seem like something potentially more serious.
The next stretch of the detour was a road walk up towards the Lytle creek firing range, where two hikers had had their backpacks stolen. ThruCry was determined to hike, and we turned down multiple ride offers by Green Hornet, a former hiker who was driving around providing support for his son and daughter in law. He drove past, on his way back from the firing range and let us know that he’d be coming back up one more time shortly after. A quarter mile past that ThruCry reached the point where she could barely walk on her ankle and it was obviously time to seek medical advice. We parked on the side of the road for a couple hours, battling the biting black flies and waiting for Green Hornet. Eventually we concluded he wasn’t on his way back up and we hiked another mile to the firing range, thinking that the road we were on must go through and connect somewhere with the highway up to Wrightwood. We got there to find it was the end of the road, so a little cranky for the unnecessary additional walking we turned around and headed back towards the campground, trying to hitch from the occasional car heading down from the range. Finally, most of the way back down we scored a ride in the back of a truck and our day started to turn around.
At another McDonalds (more Oreo McFlurry in my hairy belly) further down the highway I hunted up a marker and cardboard, put together a “Wrightwood” sign, and we scored a ride from a nice girl going through the drive-through! Ironically, she missed dropping us off at the Wrightwood exit and instead dropped us off way at the top of Cajon pass, as far on the other side of the junction as where we’d started. Felt like a terrible place to hitch, but we scored a ride with a guy in his super-cool converted school bus in no time. He dropped us off at the gas station by the Best Western, and five minutes later with a free drink from the store (“You hiking? It’s on the house.”) we were en-route to Wrightwood with the gas station manager, heading home after work. He dropped us at the hardware store, closed for the day. We couldn’t get in to get the numbers for host families in town (Wrightwood is the one trail on town that has a list of families who host hikers!) but we barely had time to contemplate where we’d be for the night before a hiker walked by and let us know there was room where he was headed. A couple hours later we were dining on BBQ and salad, drinking fantastic red wine with a bunch of hikers and our host, David. There we befriended Mountain Tripper, a guy with a fantastic, kind energy and an interesting past that I’m constantly struggling not to pester him for more information about, Chipper from Vancouver who I had been in touch with by email before the hike, and a few other hikers.
David had work to do the next day so after being treated to another great meal for breakfast we relocated to the picnic tables in front of the grocery store. My clients were still late with payments and we were down to our last $40 so we couldn’t indulge much, certainly not in a hotel room. We wanted to take a couple days to let ThruCry's ankle rest, so we spent several hours calling and re-calling the listed host families to no avail. They either weren’t answering, weren’t home, or weren’t taking more than two hikers, and we were a group of five hoping to hang together. Suddenly two ladies, strangers to each other, showed up simultaneously to chat. One wouldn’t take no for an answer and gave us five joints and shortly after a giant bag of cherries. The other offered her home for the night, so off we went with Mary to her beautiful home to rest and lick our wounds. Well, not literally, that would be disgusting. Mary is quite the character! 72 years old (looks 20 years younger), she starts her day with avocado, pine nuts and hemp seeds ... and then around 11:00 she cracks her first Corona for the day. Her home has been blessed as a Goddess Temple, she’s a tantric sex instructor, and in general has a very healing energy. It seemed like every hour she pulled out some new high tech healing device, including a low level electrical current sock ... thing – I don’t know what to call it. We had a great time there, along with Chipper, Joel and Jeremy – all resting to heal various stress injuries.
Mary drove us to the trail, approximately 20 miles past where we turned around. We didn’t want to skip miles, but ThruCry's ankle was worse on climbs and after a few days of rest we thought it best to not start hiking again with a big climb, which is what we’d have if we either went back down to the firing range or started up the Acorn trail from Wrightwood. We hiked on, saw all the snow on Baden Powell and elected for the lower Manzanita trail which normally wouldn’t be an option but this year connects with the PCT detour around the huge Station 2009 Station fire burn. The trail was nice, the little suicide flies bouncing off our eyeballs not so nice. We camped at South Fork campground, filthy with garbage thanks to the LA car campers. I don’t understand people – wouldn’t they want their site to be garbage free when they get there? Yet they leave all their bottles on the ground ... we even found a used diaper by the river on our way to get water in the morning.
On past Devil’s Chair and Devil’s punchbowl ... everything out here is named Devil’s something. At the Punchbowl trailhead’s Nature Center we got a good look at all the deserts permanent residents up close. Scorpions are terrifying! We learned though that there are no deadly ones in California, and that they’re very passive, so that’s comforting, even if they do look like little glow in the dark monsters.
From there the big fire detour is 35+ miles of paved road walking. We intended to do it, but three miles along we got an offer we couldn’t turn down. A car pulled to a stop, the fellow inside asked if we were hikers, we chatted and he offered a ride. 3 miles of pavement was enough to convince us that 35 miles of pavement was a terrible idea, so we said yes. In the car the next question was “Where do you want to go?” .... “Uuuuh, I dunno?” We were just going to camp at whatever we could find by nightfall so had no real destination in mind. “You can camp at our place if you like.” So we spent a fantastic evening with Pat and Carol, cold beer, tasty mango salsa and carnitas, and great conversation with a really nice couple! Pat has built his own plane and together they’ve flown to Alaska and all over the US. He goes “airplane camping” – hunting for hotsprings in the back-country and landing his plane on whatever dirt road he can find. Just an ordinary thing to do for him, but a pretty crazy sounding adventure to us! He has section hiked the entire trail and at 53 he sometimes likes to go climb the 10,000 foot climb up San Jacinto, then bike home after the trolley ride down. I have never, and will never, be that fit. Carol was about as sweet and fun as a person can get. We sat on their porch on their beautiful piece of desert property and had one of our most pleasant evenings on the trail. With the thought that we would have missed that experience had we been dead-set on hiking all the miles, I couldn’t have felt less guilty for skipping the detour, or any other trail miles in favour of these little side adventures – they really are the best part of the experience.
Green tea in the morning and a ride to the KOA campground where the road detour ends and the trail is trail again. 10 miles to the Saufleys, more nasty biting flies ... and worse, ThruCry's ankle getting worse again. Lost in Vasquez rocks, through downtown Agua Dulce with zero dollars for cold drinks. Great to see Donna and Jeff again, and to get to know JJ - Jim Keener – an absolutely fantastic person. Hard though to watch other hikers going on trips to town for pizza, Mexican food, breakfast at the dinner, or ice-cream, and to spend several days eating mostly from our hiker food bags. Some days we barely ate a thing just because we’re so sick of our hiker food. Still no payments from clients, so no indulgences accept for a great BBQ courtesy of JJ.
ThruCry got a ride into the Santa Clarita to see a doctor and the diagnosis is a sprained ankle. So, good news ultimately, no fractures, she’s free to hike and let the pain dictate her pace without fear that she’s making it worse, and hopefully she realizes she’s a lot tougher than she thought – having hiked for days on a genuine injury! So we moved on to the Andersons, skipping more miles in between in favour of a longer rest to hopefully let her ankle fully heal. They’ve kept us well fed on taco salad, pancakes, loads of soda and beer. We’ve seen video footage of chocolate syrup wrestling, Terrie being the victor – UpChuck, SuperClaw and mAnimal the losers. A whole lot of naked guy in that video! Too many hikers to list – I think there were 27 here last night. Alien March, who I met in 07 and 08, her son Stacks – Mountain Tripper (glad to get to spend more time with him, still curious about his past but not digging no matter how tempted!) – SuperClaw and mAnimal, Vador, the girl who had her pack stolen at the firing range, LionKing, Stitch and Slip-n-Die, our friends from way back in Idyllwild ... Pyjamas, the list goes on. It truly is a vortex here.
So here we are. We’re packed up and more or less ready to head out, but we’re also ready to go home. There’s really no chance of us finishing in time for ThruCry's course in late September, we’ve skipped miles, and with work/money concerns we’re not feeling particularly care-free, or focused. ThruCry is feeling like she’d like to try again, next time with more savings and more training. I’m feeling like I have way too many things on my mind, too many projects that I’m not feeling good about neglecting. Feels like time to go home, but then when we think about going home it feels terrible to think about not being a part of this community anymore, and to miss out on all the great places further up the trail. We’ve been really torn about it – and that in itself is a problem! To really do this trail, you need to be committed and clear that your main priority from here to Manning park is the trail. If you know for sure that’s what you’re doing, then there’s no conflict. If you’re a purist about the miles, then there’s no conundrums at the many cross-roads along the way. It also really helps to hate your job, cause then you can remind yourself that the worst day on the trail is better than the best day at work. I’ve really enjoyed my work lately and actually miss it, and ThruCry is eager to work and earn some cash before going back to school ... so it’s just not our year. I never felt fully committed to the trail at any point before or during our hike, but hoped that maybe I would somewhere along the way. I’m really not too conflicted about it. We’ve had an amazing couple months down here, have met some really amazing people, and the Trail will always be here. Well, most of it anyway, though every year there seems to be another nice long stretch without any shade thanks to man-made forest fires.
Our plan is to hike to Onyx, so we will have achieved 500 miles and gotten a little more exercise before heading home. Who knows, maybe we’ll reconsider during that time and do a little more, then a little more... We’re out of shape after all these zero days, pancakes and second servings of taco-salads, so it’s going to feel like crap to hike again for the first couple days, and ThruCry's ankle might act up again, but we'll see how it goes.
Next update from Tehachapi in, I dunno, five or six days. We’re amidst a group of easily side tracked goof-balls, and all bets are off so who knows where we’ll end up tomorrow. :-)

Potential 178

Green Valley - Mile 400 - Jun 16th, 2010

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Scott Herriott
Dude, to Seiad Valley and beyond!
$0.05 per mile
up to $132.90

$20.00 paid!

Patrick Jackson
Love from the OUR Ecovillage home base! Great site/idea..!
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$10.00 paid!

Scott Clayton
Good luck, Paul. I hope to see you out there.
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Glen Van Peski
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$40.00 due

Matt Hornsby
I will also buy you a pint for each state you complete!
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mark votapek
Good luck!
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Matt Wisdom
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Magic Man
The third time is a charm! Good luck!
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Heidi Hitchcock
If you complete the trail, I'll double my pledge!
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Mary Partridge
The other half of my pledge is going to Dr. Girlfriend
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Good luck with the hike! I hope to join you for part of it
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green protein advocacy
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