Pacific Crest Trail Day 5: The Long Way Around

PCT Day 5 — May 1, 2025
San Felipe Hills to Lost Valley Road
Soggy Sandwich Camp to Flight Path Camp
PCT miles: 26.5 miles
Total miles: 118.5 miles
Elevation change: 3268ft gain, 2943ft loss

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Well, it’s official. My new sleeping pad is not at all comfortable, and I’ll be sure to let you know about it every day. Somehow it manages to turn to concrete each night, but it does come with one benefit — I’m ready to get up and go at first light. And so it was today. Awake at 5:15am, moving by 5:35am.

Wondering where ole Punisher ended up last night, I cruised up the remaining climb in the morning cool. It was perfect hiking weather, truly a good time to be alive. I ate my breakfast cookie, flossed and brushed my teeth, all before sunrise.

Eventually, the trail flipped over the ridge and turned a corner, finally revealing the terrain ahead. Everything was a long way off. Wild to think that I would be over there, across the wide valley, by the end of the day. But first, I needed to get down out of these darn San Felipe Hills, yet the trail seemed unwilling to do so. Look, everyone, the PCT is great and all, but it took miles to gradually descend and swing around to the other side of a small drainage. A bird could have flown the distance in ten seconds. I never thought I’d say it, but I could have used a smidge of the directness that makes the AT so difficult. I wasn’t here to pad my mileage stats. I just wanted to get to town. My socks were the stiffness of cardboard with the grit of sandpaper. Bucket laundry was calling.

All was forgiven when I rounded a bend near the bottom to see “100” spelled in small stones. One hundred miles. Wow, that was pretty cool. There had been an official post marking the spot in 2015, and the milestone had given me chills, good and bad. The good: though I had been backpacking my whole life, my longest trip to date had been 60 miles. This was already way bigger. The bad: holy smokes, 2500 miles to go. That will always be a long way to walk, and it was longer back then. The ugly: the blisters on my feet were nasty. During this visit, I had less on the line, and 100 miles wasn’t as big a number as it was in 2015. Still, I tried to remember that feeling, all of them. It was really just the start. I knew so little. However, as painful as they were then were my blisters (not really, but they hurt). Why they were maturing now after leaving me alone for days was a mystery, but it didn’t matter. My heels were on fire.

A bunch of folks congregated at Barrel Spring, the first natural water source in about one million miles. On the valley floor, it was shaded by humongous oaks rising out of lush grass and poison oak. In a way, it was a reward for making it this far through the desert. This oasis could only exist near the 100-mile mark. Neither would be as potent without the other. I quickly filtered a liter and chugged another, then congratulated all the others on doing a big thing before following the trail north to a metal gate. Into cow country.

The meadows were greener and more flowered than I remembered. That was nice. Instead of thirstily lusting for moisture, grass suppley swayed in a cool breeze. Color popped in every direction. This was a pleasant place to be. My blisters still jabbed, but I stretched out my arms to catch the wind. It blew in my face while the sun warmed my shoulders. Good living.

“Eagle Rock is absurd and cool.” That was the same this time around. A bunch of Aussies joked that it was the most American thing they’d ever seen. I gave Lollypop the dog good belly pats.

From the eagle, I finished the pasture walking and followed a wide path through oaks along a creek. It brought me straight to the Warner Springs Community Center, right where I wanted to be, right when I wanted to be there. The day was heating up, and I was cooking.

The place hadn’t changed much in ten years, which was a good thing. Some hikers tapped on their phones outside under the shaded pavilion. Another was sitting beneath a tree, talking on the phone. I didn’t know any of them, but they greeted me like I did.

First order of business was aforementioned bucket laundry. Washing my socks separately from everything else, I managed to almost get the water to run clear. Hanging things on the fence to dry, then it was my turn. The showers were new, for which I was grateful. Sweat and sunscreen burned my eyes as I washed the grime down the drain. My legs felt unfamiliarly muscled as I lathered away the caked-on dirt. Renewed, I emerged, ready to chill like I hadn’t since yesterday in Julian.

While eating loquats and the remains of my food bag contents, a hiker that I hadn’t known longer than five minutes asked me if I’d thru-hiked before, prefacing that it was apparent in the way I conducted myself. I wasn’t sure what he meant exactly, and I didn’t ask, nor did he elaborate, but I felt uncomfortably proud in the same way I had when Gentle Giant named me. I did feel ‘at home’ in 2015, and heck yeah, I’ve thru-hiked a lot since then. Gentle Giant and this new guy weren’t wrong with their observations. The weird part is that they were able to observe it, whatever it was/is, at all. Were their observations, noticed ten years apart, one and the same? And what did they notice? Why did I look at home then, and like I’ve done this before now? How have I changed? Or have I changed at all?

Before I could spiral too far down this self-aggrandizing rabbit hole, a cheeky cow knicked one of my socks from the fence, intending to do who knows what with it. That was less clear of a compliment, though I interpreted it as such. Jumping up from the table with arms flailing, I spooked the dastardly creature into dropping the precious item. I hopped the fence, got it back, and moved everything to finish drying over a raised bed of mint. Probably should have done that from the start.

Time flew by, and it was 4:30pm when I packed up my freshly heavy load. It seemed ridiculous that I would need everything in my resupply box to fuel me to Idyllwild in three days, but I had to trust myself. That other hiker thought that I looked the part. Maybe he was right.

Feeling homesick for some reason, and missing Spice a lot, I followed the trail back into the cow lands. Perhaps I was lonely. Well, of course I was. But even though I didn’t have 2500 miles left to walk, the end of this trip was out of sight. Hardships lurked ahead, along with questions with no answers. It was a good sign that I was unnerved by the expanse of uncertainty, by the freedom to do whatever the heck I wanted to do for the next two weeks. What a lucky thing to have the option to choose. There was no snow to beat in Autumnal Washington, no fires to avoid in Oregon, no questions about ice axes or water crossings in the Sierra. All I needed to do was walk, exactly as far as I liked. The problem was, how far did I want to go? Without a clear answer, I’d been walking each day to the point of discomfort and beyond. Was there actually value in feeling this fatigue, or had I been slightly suffering only because some part of me needed to do the hard thing to check a box? Besides keeping myself alive and covering the cost of living, why did I do anything?

I caught up with Gabrielle after a few miles, who was on her first thru-hike and feeling good. No small feet considering that we started on the same day and I thought that I was hot shit. We covered all the basics over the next couple of hours as we followed the cottonwoods up Agua Caliente Creek, somehow passing up some great beach camping. Instead, we climbed high up some bouldery mountain with no name. My legs were cooked, but she was so eager to hike that I pushed on for a few more miles for the sake of living up to my Triple-Crowner status. All of my experience was working against me now until I decided that an experienced hiker would camp whenever they pleased. And it pleased me when we found the next flat spot.

It was weird camping with another human besides Spice, and I was extra aware of my camp habits. Some were specific to my current gear setup, but most had barely changed since 2015, like how I laid my poles along the sides of my groundsheet to keep it flat. Similar to the tread of the PCT itself earlier this morning, sometimes you take the long way around only to find that it’s only brought you a short distance from where you started. It took a lot of miles to get from 2015 to 2025, but maybe not much has changed at all. At home then, at home now.