Mile 20 to 42, Skunks, Ice, Campfires, then Storming again, Part I (March 31)

After all the machinations and obstacles, here on Monday April 3rd, I’m nearly back to Plan A (conceived last November), at least for this week. That plan had me starting a North Bound (NoBo) full thru hike on March 28th. landing in Mt. Laguna 5 days in after a mellow start, and here I am!

However, the details are of course the devil. I did those first 20 miles March 19th and 20th, 10 days off the trail including that planned Las Vegas/Taylor Swift episode and a litany of Palm Springs training hikes, then finally back to resume before March ran out to pick up where I left off. Ashley had work to finish from Palm Springs and we took off at 3pm and I had a 10K to cover from Morena to the Boulder Oaks campground where we stopped off the freeway and pre-set my tent!

The first hour was beautiful, amazing rolling country with boulders among the desert brush, cottonwoods, and yes… oak trees. Not what I thought of his terrain would look like! I was listening to the brand new Depeche Mode album Memento Mori released this week, waved hi to a guy named Dave setting up his tent off the trail and just in a great mood. But then….

I looked up from my feet and 12 feet in front of me was the bushy tail of a skunk arched towards the sky! Ahhhhhhhh – I’ve really only seen skunks in books, cartoons, as road kill, or maybe at a zoo? But I had no doubt what this warning meant. I immediately stopped, and luckily no spray. It continued to saunter up trail and I walked slowly, but not slowly enough as I caught up again. I then just stood for 5 minutes to let the thing carry on to where it was going. The sun set shortly thereafter and I continued through terrain with 6 to 10 foot brush on either side of the trail, bracing for a surprise spray as I panned my headlamp side to side, with the faint scent of skunk 6 different times. But I made it through that gauntlet un-sprayed, but a bit paranoid.

Then, the unprecedented water this season showed up again, first as the trail passed under a highway bridge, too high to ford in the dark. So I backtracked to cross on the road, in the dark with my pack and no shoulder. I ‘jogged’ the 200 meters on the bridge facing no vehicles! Only 2 miles left to the campground but I saw on my map app, the trail crossed the drainage again (a sandy wash on the map) and so it was. It was now about 9pm and pitch black outside of my lamp and I couldn’t gauge the depth. I put on my fording footwear and waded up to my knees probing ahead with my poles – nothing less than waist deep could I find. So I called in the cavalry when a couple bars of service and then back tracked a mile, stumbled over a barb wire cattle fence and Ashley drove 5 miles on the road, for that last trail mile.

There was a noble campfire attempt with wet wood and then sleeping in an iced over tent, hiking day 3 complete…