25 total miles today for my first day hike. I hurt. The problem was less the total mileage, more that I started out too fast. If I push my pace to three miles an hour, which feels pretty maintainable on flat terrain, that’s where I get in trouble. I can do it for a few…

Zero day! Not much to report. Pants gloves and fuel secure. Lake arrowhead is a cute little area – there was a woodie car show and some biiiig fish in the lake just ready to be hooked. One fun thing maddy and I figured out is the trail goes pretty close by or across roads…

Booked it pretty fast to get through 15 miles to my pickup point! Maddy grabbed me a few miles into a moderately sketchy dirt and gravel road to spend this evening and tomorrow zeroing in lake arrowhead. The terrain was suuuper easy which made getting 15 miles by noonish a piece of cake. Gotta sort…

Breezed through 19.5 miles today. If I hadn’t slept in, I probably woulda pushed for 26 to the next established campsite. Made it through the soundtrack for all 3 lord of the rings movies and the ring of power series as I hiked. Still feeling good for a 15 mile day tomorrow into big bear.…

A hard day of hiking. The PCT for this stretch has largely been wiped out, so there wasn’t really a trail, per se, for most of today’s hiking. The trail followed a creek though, so I pretty much just followed that. The terrain was brutal – I had to choose between walking on ankle twisting…

Now that was a full day. Started with six liters of water from my faucet since I didn’t want to rely on water caches. Made good time to the I-10 underpass, which was pretty cool! The I-10 underpass is at the San Gorgonio Pass, which is the lowest point on the trail until the Columbia…

The easiest fifteen miles I’ve ever done! The grade was mostly pretty gentle, was done by 3pm. It was hot as hell in the desert though when I got down here – I probably sweated out as much during the 3 hours waiting for the sun to go down behind the mountains as I did…

That was a long time to hike with just one baby break. I got started at 11:30 after my final shopping was all wrapped up, and hiked through straight till 7. 13.5 total miles, 11 on the pct. The trail stayed pretty high altitude and grueling incline so I feel pretty darn good about getting…

Tried to book it to get into idyllwild early today but jeez the terrain is still brutal. Lots of elevation change and so many down trees on the route. Took me six hours to go ten miles. Was very fortunate maddy could come pick me up and I could get a real shower and do…

Man today was tough. Only got 12.5 trail miles covered, but ended up doing 15.5 overall with getting water off route. The altitude was the first thing that hit me – for my east coast readership, altitude is a measure of how high above sea level you are, and mountains on this coast get so…