PCT 2022: Cabezon to Big Bear Lake

Here is the 6th installation of my 2022 nobo PCT trail journal (a few weeks off the present timeline as a safety precaution).

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Low desert or ski town, the wind was relentless the whole way. We had our first snow storm, and vortexed in town for 3 days.

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Please attribute all spelling/grammar errors to autocorrect and exhaustion at the end of the day. Read the post bottom to top for chronological order.

Day 26: Thursday April 21. Zero in Big Bear, Mile 266.1 + 3 in Big Bear, + 1.5mi bus ride (3 mi)

Leave a comment with any questions you have about blogging while on trail.

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I’m writing today’s post on May 12th, so it will be short and succinct since I don’t remember all the details.

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We walked to get a giant pancake breakfast at a diner. The cook was a vegan yoga teacher who talked our ears off.

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The three of us split up for the rest of the day to do our own things. Project went off to check out long pants and warmer base layers at different stores since she’s been freezing. I have no idea what Twinkle Toes got up to. And I went to the library to schedule as many blog posts as I could before they closed.

We had initially hoped to get on the mountain today, but due to a high wind advisory and snow storm that were supposed to cause some not-so-fun (and actually very dangerous) sleeping and hiking conditions, we decided to stay another night in town.

The Krusty Krew invited us to stay another night, and we all watched part of a Twilight Marathon.

Day 25: Wednesday April 20. Zero in Big Bear, Mile 266.1 + 1 in Big Bear (1 mi)

Drop a comment if you have any questions about how to resupply for a 7 day section.

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I’m writing today’s post on May 12th, so it will be short and succinct since I don’t remember all the details.

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I grabbed coffee from down the street for everyone, and while caffeinating we spent the morning prepping our 7 day resupply for the next section. We all bought nutella, nut butter and a bottle of olive oil to supplement our growing hunger.

Both Project and Twinkle Toes had run out of food at least once on trail this year, so I convinced them to give my food packing method a try:

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Each day you have a gallon sized ziplock bag with your food for the day. For me, a day of food is about 3,500 calories, although I don’t typically count the calories, I go by a standard “amount” for different meals and snacks.

Breakfast is 1 Pro Bar, OR 2 Clif Bars, OR a protein bar AND 2 Poptarts, OR 1 tortilla with peanut butter and dried fruit (haven’t done this one this year yet).

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Lunch is a “sufficient” amount of meat (1 or 2 packets of flavored tuna/chicken, or 4+ meat sticks, or half a salami) OR 3 cheese sticks, AND a savory carb (corn nuts, or chips, or crackers, or bread).

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Dinner is a box/package of noodles (pasta-roni, or fancy ramen, or chow mein) OR couscous, AND a shot of olive oil.

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Snacks include 1+ protein bars, AND 1+ electrolyte/energy chews, AND 1+ savory snacks, AND nuts or trailmix, AND dried fruit, AND chocolate, AND gummy candy.

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At the end of the day, and sometimes during breakfast, I also eat a massive mixed spoonful of peanut butter and nutella.

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The rest of the day we spent wandering around town eating and messing around.

The Krusty Krew invited us to share their room at the Robinhood Resort, so we all squeezed into the two bed room for $16 each, passing out early.

Day 24: Tuesday April 19. Mile 256.2 to 266.1 + 2 in Big Bear + 10mi hitch (11.9 mi)

This night was brutally windy, and the only flattish spot for my tent happened to be in a more open space in the trees where the wind funneled through. I woke up at 3am to one corner of my tarp flapping in the wind, thankfully with the stake still attached to the guyline. Sand and dirt was everywhere, including every inch of visible skin; I was taking mud bath to a whole new level.

I followed Twinkle out of camp and when we stopped to filter water, David (the guy who was being mean to Twinkle) literally ran down trail, attempted to hurdle over Twinkle’s pack, and ended up kicking his pack instead. He ran off, no apology or anything, in a true hit and run scenario.

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At a small stream crossing, I attempted to step on a piece of wet bark to keep my feet dry, but ended up slipping into the water, getting both feet and knees wet, and bending my right pole into a 45 degree angle, causing me and Twinkle to laugh uncontrollably while I knelt in the water, unable to pull myself up without getting more wet.

The wind was impressively brutal in the last stretch to Big Bear, tearing at our packs, clothing and bodies, trying to pull us off track.

We saw our first true Joshua Trees, strangely out of place in the alpine environment.

Proj and I got ahead of Twinkle Toes while he was taking forever to put sunscreen and leukotape on, and doing who knows what else, so we decided to just try to crush some miles as quickly as possible. I told her that she looked like a Snowy Plover when she was moving fast, referring to their tiny legs that move almost imperceptibly quickly as they run.

We were able to catch a hitch for the ten miles to the Post Office in Big Bear Lake and then to the PO in Big Bear City with an older couple of day hikers, squeezing Proj and I in the trunk and Twinkle and Schrodi (we finally caught up to him and he loved the new name) in the backseat.

Proj grabbed her package, still waiting on a second one for the following day, before we walked into the small downtown area to get massive burgers and a beer at a hipster restaurant.

On our way out, we bumped into The Krusty Krew (having just gotten a room at the Robinhood Resort) and Starboy and Keeper (on their way back to trail).

Then we walked towards the Clean Jeans laundromat, stopping at the local consignment store to buy matching town dresses so that when we get into town and do laundry, we don’t have to choose between not washing some articles of clothing, being naked, or wearing just a wind breaker while things wash.

“If your masculinity is challenged by wearing a dress, then it is exceptionally fragile”

Slowly Dying to Twinkle Toes

Twinkle looked really good in the pink dress, but it was too see-through for a man to go commando under, if you know what I mean, so he got a blue one like Proj. When he was waffling over whether or not to actually buy it, I said “If your masculinity is challenged by wearing a dress, then it is exceptionally fragile,” and that decided him very quickly to get it, saying “SOLD for twenty dollars!” The cashier even gave him a slight discount.

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We got a mixed bag of responses to Twinkle in a dress, with a lady at the laundromat glaring at him angrily until we left and random drivers openly staring, to hikers all loving it because they know the struggle of laundry day on trail.

After throwing our laundry in and asking King to send it through the wash one more time when ours finished, we went to the Robinhood Resort to get our own room to drop our stuff off in, and then went to the gear store, which was a glorified fishing and hunting store with a small hiker section. I tried on all the men’s and women’s Topo shoes, a brand I had never heard of before but that both Proj and Twinkle were rocking, and found that none of them were that great. The very talkative sales associate (and maybe owner?) Josh told us to come back tomorrow for a shipment of more sizes of the same shoes to see if maybe I could find a better option.

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I ran back to the laundromat to put everything in the dryer while I sent the two slowpokes back to take showers before Twinkle’s friend showed up to bring us to a grocery store on the far side of town. We resupplied, went to Big 5 and got our laundry, then joined Twinkle’s friends at a nice restaurant. They had to leave immediately since they had work at 4am, so we didn’t really get a chance to get to know them, but one of them (Liko) offered to come to the trail in a few days to drop off two extra days of food that we would ship to his house, so that we wouldn’t have to carry 7 days of food out of town.

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We each got a delicious dish of food that was shockingly rich with butter and garlic. We also all got a really fancy cocktail; mine was a delicious whisky beverage that the bartender apparently didn’t mix because it turned out that all the whisky was on top and the strawberry puree was at the bottom, giving me a sweet shock when I finally got a little taste of it. I couldn’t even finish half of my meal, while the other two forced themselves to finish theirs. Twinkle and I had a rough night with all the gas that the dinner caused.

We got back to the room and passed out almost immediately, stopping only to pop and clean Project’s giant blisters.

Day 23: Monday April 18. Mile 239.9 to 256.2 + 0.4 to/from spring (16.7 mi)

We had camped right near a good water source, so while we were packing up, a bunch of early riser hikers passed by us on their way to the stream.

We cameled up, Proj struggling to get water straight from a trickling waterfall inside of a small cave, and me easily getting it from a much denser stream further down the hill.

The ecosystem was beautiful with massive Sierra Junipers towering above us, gnarled red wood and blue berries spicing up the air.

“The altitude is like a Dementor. It’s sucking the life out of me”

Project

The higher altitude was a problem for Project: “The altitude is like a Dementor. It’s sucking the life out of me.”

We had a great view of the snow capped San Jacinto, San Gorgonio and Sugarloaf mountains for most of the day, as well as some wildfire smoke on a ridge north of us that I almost reported, but then we saw a helicopter approaching it.

I decided to siesta with a view, and almost froze to death for a few hours while relaxing in the windy shade at the high point for the day.

I caught up to Project, lying upside down on a hillside, and Mainard who didn’t like his name linking him to his home state, so we decided we’d try to give him a new name.

He caught up with me again, walking extremely quickly as we passed what used to be a private zoo, and was now a yard with cages and aggressive dogs. Laid out in front of the cages was the word Castelano, disturbingly spelled out in the bleached white bones of a cow.

I caught up to Twinkle Toes and we started throwing names around for Mainard, including One Pole and No Pole, because he regularly left his trekking pole in random places and had to go back for it. We settled on Schrodinger’s Pole, Schrodi for short, since the pole was sometimes there when he looked for it, and sometimes not.

Project caught up and we had a little bit of cell service to call some hotels in Big Bear to see about prices and availability for the following night. I then sat down to dinner on the trail to speak with David before heading to the massive group camp a mile away where a bunch of people, including the guys from the previous night with the fire and a bunch of Canadians.

Day 22: Sunday April 17. Mile 226.2 to 239.9 (13.7 mi)

In the morning we took our time getting ready until it was very warm, at which point we soaked our shirts in cold water from the creek, screaming as we put them back on our bodies. The creek was very small but very beautiful as it sparkled in the sun.

The rest of the day was a hot mess of trying to find the trail as it wound around a narrow willow and reed wooded valley, crossing the stream repeatedly, only to reappear on the far side of the valley, up high on a ridge where it appeared to have been the whole time, which was inconsistent with the cairns that followed the stream.

I took a siesta in one such shaded place by the stream, telling the others I’d catch up after a nap and some time reading for four hours. I

saw Puke and Rally (climbing South Sister one year she had vomited halfway up then proceeded to summit) again, and her hiking partner Potato (King Baked Potato III, received on the AT because the only notable thing about him was his origin in Idaho–his words, not mine).

And I met Fun Guy and his little trail doggo Bodie.

As I continued hiking, walking fast and singing out loud as the sun set, I saw some mormon tea for the first time on trail.

The trail eventually sunk down into a wooded oaky hill side, which would have been a little creepy to walk through at night after such open desert skies.

I walked through a camp full of hikers bedding down for the night, including King who told me that Proj had stormed through “Rage Hiking” and I met two ladies from the UK (Lee and Ana ?) who told me that Twinkle Toes had told them to say hi to me.

After walking by a bunch of rocks covered in blood, which I found out was Twinkle’s attempt at leaving a note for me with a smiley face in blood droplets from his nose, I caught up with Twinkle Toes moving pretty slowly.

We saw a fire in the distance. and jokingly said, how much do you want to bet that’s Project and three men. And when we got there, it was in fact Project and three men huddled around the fire, trying not to freeze.

I got into warm, dry clothes, strangely sweaty even though the night was really cold, and set up my shelter before joining everyone at the fire pit.

The guys were a norwegian man who was extremely competitive and had to one up every conversation, a guy named David that just was meanly roasting poor Twinkle, and another guy who I can’t remember clearly.

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We climbed into our tents, freezing, and I begged Twinkle to throw me his bivy since he wasn’t going to use it, and I was able to sleep once I warmed up a little.

Day 21: Saturday April 16. Mile 215.7 to 226.2 + 1 to/from Whitewater Preserve (11.5 mi)

Only one of my stakes tore out in the middle of the night, which was easy enough to fix when I woke up and crawled out of my shelter to pee.

Courtney and Pickle, a lovely married couple whom I had met at the In-N-Out in Cabezon, caught up to me just after I left camp, having started hiking around 6am. They agreed that the person sleeping on the mattress was a little creepy when they walked by earlier the night before, and they told me about a random hiker who had decided to attach themself to their group and proceed to make off-color comments the whole previous day.

My pace was a little faster, so I kept walking as the morning heated up, saying hi to day hikers as they passed by.

I took a right at the trail to Whitewater Preserve where I had told Twinkle Toes I’d meet them, and followed a silty stream and a well-established trail all the way into the Preserve area. There was a massive picnic shelter, toilets with running water, and a manned ranger station.

All the hikers there appeared to still be sleeping in their tents and there was a college group camped nearby for a desert riparian botany expedition. I sat down in the chilly ranger station and charged my electronics while attempting to nap. Cheshire Cat, a trail angel I had last seen in Julian, came in and started asking questions about camping in his car for a few nights to provide hikers with fresh fruit, and a number of day and thru hikers wandered through as well.

Eventually I went outside to chat with some hikers, Fork Lift (her name used to be Uplift but she was hiking with boys so they rechristened her), and her two hiking partners, the vlogger Life Saver, our friend King and a few others. Cheshire Cat gave me a delicious quarter of a pineapple, and we had a rousing discussion of how pineapples grow on the ground, not a tree, and how they have a chemical in them that actually digests your mouth cells, that’s why eating too much can make your tongue burn.

King told me that Project and Twinkle Toes were a few miles behind him and were planning to come to the Preserve, so I decided to keep waiting, even though I’d already been there for 3 hours. By the time the 4th or 5th hour had rolled around, I realized that the two of them probably weren’t coming and dejectedly packed up to leave.

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On my way out, I decided to do a little networking with the Naturalist, Jenifer, at the ranger station. I got her business card and asked some questions about working at the preserve, then continued on my way.

I sat down by the silty river to put my feet in, watching as a bunch of other hikers did the same thing. I wished I had soaked my shirt as the hot sun beat down on me as I picked my way through the rocky river bed, searching for sign posts to find the trail.

Some older hiker took a picture of me with his nice camera as I walked towards him, I’m not sure what he did with it, but okay haha.

I saw a Patch Nosed Snake, which looked like a garter snake to me, but apparently there is a distinct scale on the nose that a herps ID app on my phone could distinguish as a different species.

I finally caught up to Proj and Twinkle, yard saled all along the trail underneath a gorgeous sycamore tree with perfect limbs to climb all the way up into (which I did, getting covered in white dust from the bark of the tree).

We set up camp super early, so we had a lot of hours to kill just talking, eating, stretching and massaging sore muscles. Proj and I took a shot of vodka which she had brought on trail, and she chased her’s rather disgustingly with super spicy pad thai. Another hiker came over and showed us a skull he’d found, which even as I search the internet, I can’t seem to find an easy match for it. We acted silly for several hours before we decided we should go to bed.

What’s Next?

Check back in in a few days for the next section’s trail journal entries!