Day 4:
Last night we celebrated a bit and went out for cheeseburgers with Moses and Torstan. Since Moses is familiar with the area, he informed us of all the worth while spots on the trail in Socal. After the nice relaxing evening, I slept like a baby in our clean bed. In the morning we spoke with Torstan and Moses again about what they planned on doing on the trail. They decided to hitch a ride out of this section to the following one near Big Bear. Lex and I, however, wanted to hang around the area and do a day hike up to suicide rock. Today was another fiasco. Things just are going to well for me on this trip so far. We wanted to hike up to suicide rock and then camp at the strawberry junction campground about a mile and a half up the trail from the rock, but since it was memorial day weekend, all of the campgrounds were full, according to the ranger. So, we asked if there was any other possible thing we could do. She then chased us down and said "wait girls you can camp 200 ft away from the trail as long as your hidden." Finally, we thought we had a solution. We began the hike and it was the most strenuous of the trip thus far, with multiple switchbacks and steep inclines. Clear from the bottom of the town to the top was about 5 miles one way. The plan was to camp at the top and then continue onto Mt. San Jacinto in the morning. However, once we got up to the rock, the temperature had already dropped drastically and the ground was complete rock. There were jagged rocks everywhere. I mean everywhere! The temperature was 60 degrees at 2:00pm. We began to panic because there was no way we were going to be able to withstand the cold at night. We were already literally frozen in the desert whenever the temps were in the high 40's at night. The temperature was bound to drop and there was absolutely no way we could pitch our tents on this type of terrain. Looking at the positives, though, the view was incredible! Unlike anything I've ever seen before and I'm so glad we did the hike. I also got to talk to a few teens about my study. Anyways, we decided to make a dash down off the mountain to try to find somewhere to camp in lower ground. The ranger told us again that we couldn't camp in the state park because all of the spots were filled, which I don't understand because we are 2 rather small girls that would take up barely any room. Ironically, the owner of the bed and breakfast we stayed at the previous night pulled along side us as we were trying to figure out where to sleep. He pulled over and asked if we were alright and we explained the situation to him. I do like to live on the edge, if you couldn't tell thus far, but this was over the edge for me. We had no place to sleep and it was beginning to get dark. We also hadn't ate since breakfast and just hiked about 10 miles. He let us pitch our tent behind his place! Another trail angel! I am so thankful for all the people who have helped us thus far on the trail! There are good people in this world. Tonight we'll camp again and talk about what would be the best thing to do in the morning. At least setting the tent up is very easy and we enjoy cooking our Mountain house meals.
-wishing there weren't drastic changes in temperatures here
Grimmzlybear
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| Lex pitching the tent behind the bed and breakfast |
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