May 8. Day 20.

Bench Trail Camp to PCT mile 318.

Miles hiked: 23.3.

Never mind, yesterday wasn't hard. Today was hard. 

It started hailing around dark, and sometime after I went to sleep it started actually snowing. I woke up to a rim of white around the bottom of my tarp, and the roof sagging down with a load of snow. But, I was warm and dry inside; the tarp did it's job. I pushed up on the ceiling to clear the snow, then extended the trekking pole a bit to take up some of the slack you get in sil-nylon when it gets wet. I had set the alarm for 5, but since I didn't know exactly how much snow had fallen, I decided to take my time this morning and let it get a bit light, rather than rush out and possibly have a tough time finding the snowed in trail while  it was still a little dark.

Home sweet home.

Finally got hiking around 6:15, and it was so beautiful! I'm so glad I didn't make it down below snow level. There was just a heavy dusting, with pink granite boulders and bare ground here and there. It was a great time to be hiking! California Towhees were out laying fresh tracks along the trail, and an Anna's Hummingbird visited manzanita flowers, seeming to stick his bill in to sip nectar even more delicately than normal to avoid dislodging the snow that had collected all over the bush. Where plants laden with snow drooped over the trail, I tapped them with my poles before walking through to stay a bit drier.

I was in bliss for about 4 miles. Then there was a short descent down to a bridge over a creek, and going down this really aggravated the little quad soreness I had gotten yesterday trying to adjust my stride to make my feet hurt less. Over the next mile or 2, this pain grew, radiating out from just above and inside of my knee. And thus began the  emotional and comfort-level roller coaster that lasted the rest of the day. By 10 I was just hobbling along, and stopped for brunch and a little rest. I had still been keeping up a nearly 2 mph pace, which is just enough to reasonably make it to the next resupply stop with the food I have. But almost every step was painful, especially going down hill. This got bad so quickly that I wondered if something serious had happened, and it was hard not going down the dark rabbit hole of wondering what impact this might have on the whole trip.

The yellow clown shoes got me this many miles...

Then a group of 4 hikers who I've hung out with before (Avenger, Ryan, who is now Shuffle, Caveman, and Fievel) came by and we chatted for a while. It was really great to see some people I know and talk and get my mind off the leg a little. I was also stretching a bit, and when I packed and got up to keep walking, the leg felt much better. What a difference it made to talk with some friends about nothing in particular and have a reduction in pain; so great for my mood. Now I was paying more attention to the Western Tanagers, Black-headed Grosbeaks, and Green-tailed Towhees singing here and there and flitting around dodging drops of melting snow. The trail was tracing the rim of the canyon of Deep Creek, win steep granite walls plunging down into clear pools, and quick riffles framed by the snow dusted hills above. I added Mallard and Red-winged Blackbird to the trip list.

Around noon I reached the Deep Creek Hotspring, which considering the surroundings should be really nice. However, it is just a couple miles from a road, and is apparently very popular with the type of people who like to leave trash all over the place and spray paint the rocks. I wasn't really planning to stop here because of what I'd heard about the trash and sometimes rowdy crowd, but with the leg in the state it was, I figured a hot soak might be just right. The soak did in fact feel good, and I was able to sit in a pool that was away from the crowd a bit with just one other hiker out for a week or so. Unfortunately the hot water and massaging didn't really help too much, and I think the later actually made things a bit worse. 

I limped up stream past most of the trash and made a liter of water then got back to walking. I was OK for a few miles  then things went downhill again. It was still a beautiful canyon, but the trash and graffiti just added to the depression I was feeling about the leg.

Deep Creek Canyon 

Then, lo and behold, my mood was buoyed again by seeing friends. This time it was You Again and Angie, coming up behind me when I thought they were way ahead of me. It turned out they had camped at the same place I had but I didn't see them, and that Angie's foot had been bugging her so they were taking it a bit slow. They told me where they were planning to camp and continued on. Their destination, mile 318, suddenly seemed doable to me. If Angie could get there in pain, shouldn't I be able to? So many other hikers are dealing with their pain seemingly better than I am. A bit after they continued on the trail made a steep descent down a hill and past a dam with no water on either side. This was only about a quarter mile of switchbacks, but it took me about a half hour to get down, making steps of only a couple inches. By the time I got to the bottom I was a wreck. Now I could hardly walk on flat ground, and I went back to those frustrating thoughts of wondering what this meant for the whole hike. Have I really injured myself? How bad is this? How long will it take to recover? I wondered if I should try and find the parking lot for the hot springs and hitch a ride somewhere. But I had no idea where I would go or really what I would do when I got there. Since the maps I carry only show the narrow swath around the trail, I didn't really know what was around me; I couldn't see any towns or anything, just a few scattered houses and a far off power line. I sat in the sand next to some more trash and had a bit of a breakdown. Tried looking at a map on the phone but no service. Looked at the trail map to count miles to Cajon Pass: 36. Probably can't hike there tomorrow. Not sure I could take another 2 days of walking like this. Eventually I decided that the best choice was to just keep heading forward on the trail. I had enough food to make a slow walk to Cajon, and if it was still really bad then I could hole up in the Best Western there and figure out what to do next. At the creek crossing I ran into the same guys I'd seen at brunch, and sat with them a while, listening to bad and offensive jokes, and trying to arrange myself so that my upper leg but no other part of my body was in the cool water (it was only in the 50s, with a bit of wind). Again, being with these guys made me feel much better, and I think the cool water helped too. The next couple miles went pretty well, on flat and gently climbing trail. Where the trail crossed a road there was a little note tacked to a post letting hikers know there was a water cache just ahead. Never mind that we just passed a great natural source about 10 minutes ago, what caught my eye was the "via con dios" at the bottom of the note. I thought that was interesting but just fine. But when I got to the cache I found that it was right next to what seem to be a couple graves, which made the whole scene seem a bit weird to me. There were some people in a car nearby so I didn't take a picture, and just kept on my way. 

Orange Mariposa lily.

2 miles later at PCT me 316 I made a bit more water from a little trickle flowing through poison oak, then continued another 2 miles to camp. The trail had been traversing the side of a hill, looking out toward what we all think must be the Mojave desert (we've been saying it like mo-jave; rhymes with slow shave). It was quite beautiful. My leg did pretty good until the last quarter mile or so, which was pretty painful. Set up camp by Angie and You Again, had vitamin I, ate potatoes and veggies, and settled in for the night. The low whistle and rumble of trains going up and over Cajon Pass carried on through the night.

Birds:

Swainson's Thrush- fledgling 

Mountain Chickadee 

Black-chinned Sparrow 

Northern Flicker 

California Towhee 

California Quail 

Song Sparrow 

Green-tailed Towhee 

Bewick's Wren

Hairy Woodpecker 

Oregon Junco 

Ash-throated Flycatcher 

Cassin's Vireo 

Anna's Hummingbird 

Black-headed Grosbeak

Mourning Dove 

Pacific-slope Flycatcher 

Lazuli Bunting 

Western Tanager 

Mallard 

Common Raven

Wilson's Warbler 

Canyon Wren 

Bullock's Oriole 

Black-throated Gray Warbler

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 

Spotted Towy

Western Wood-pewee 

Red-winged Blackbird 

Wrentit

Yellow Warbler 

Western Meadowlark