PCT Day 10 — May 6, 2025
Idyllwild to Snow Creek
Honey Bee Cottage to Jacinto View Camp
PCT miles: 22.9 miles
Total miles: 204.7 miles
Elevation change: 5023ft gain, 7014ft loss
Waking up still tired, I was frustrated that I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Packing and prepping last night had pushed my bedtime to midnight, so I at least wanted to sleep until my alarm at 5:45am. But no dice. 4:39am it was. It would be one of those tired days.
I ate the last of my pizza in bed, then braided my hair, got dressed, and cleaned up. Back to the trail today. I told myself that I was excited, but I was too tired to believe it. Maybe I would be excited, but right now this felt different, more melancholy and apathetic. Then my buffer evaporated, and it was suddenly time to go. Grabbing my pack and stepping outside, I made sure to take one more minute with the birds as they repeated their morning songs. They sounded cheerful, comfortable in their routine and lives. I was happy for them, hoping to find my own flavor of zeal back on the trail.
Queen Bee dropped me and three other hikers back at Humber Park. They knew one another, but were all strangers to me. And I’ll probably never see them again. I ate my second-to-last donut, chugged a bunch of water, then started up the trail at 7am.
My plan for the day, this section to Big Bear, and the rest of this hike was uncertain, so I just hiked, plugging along under a heavy backpack. My brain was too tired to push, nor was there a need, and I made slow and steady progress. After an hour, I was back on the PCT at Saddle Junction, glad to be in the company of giant trees again. The sky above was clear. The lands below were covered in cloud. I felt like I was on an island, in more ways than one.
There was a fair bit of snow near the summit, but not enough to be an issue. It was the same ten years ago as well, but while it was just a bit slippery today, the snow had been tossed as snowballs and eaten like a slushy back then. The joy of sharing a summit with new friends featured prominently in my memory of San Jacinto, and I remembered hanging out with Kate, August, and Tarzan for over an hour. Today, however, I was tired and lonely. Now it felt like there were almost too many memories, all so distant, a lifetime away. I noticed the same homesickness that had struck me when leaving Warner Springs. I missed Spice a lot, and hiking out of town wasn’t the same without her. Adding to that, now I was friend-sick. I’d summited San Jacinto so many times while I was still living in San Diego, all with different friends and family, all by different routes. When I was last on top, during the PCT in 2015 with the two sisters and Tarzan, those other visits had been recent. I took them for granted. Now, ten years on, the distance between then and now was horrifying. It’s not like I’d been in prison for the last decade, but I missed those times, and it was scary to understand that at the ripe old age of just 35, I had reached a point where parts of my adult life could feel distant. Lost, even. There was no going back, nor did I want to, but I also wasn’t in the mood to have my face rubbed in those distant happy memories. San Jacinto is a great summit, truly epic. I looked way down, 10,000ft to the desert floor where I would be tomorrow morning, tracing the PCT into the hills on the other side of the interstate. I gazed back to Cuyamaca and Mount Laguna, as far south as I could see, pleased with their smallness. I shuddered in the frigid breeze, overloaded by what I thought I should feel and what I felt. I lingered on the summit boulders, noticing the slushy puddles and the ice breaking from the short pine, watching the clouds build and swirl. Birds flitted. There was so much to see, but I was satisfied after ten minutes. 80 minutes in 2015, 10 minutes in 2025. I think the difference sums up my state of mind quite well.
The track was harder to follow down the less-used Round Valley Trail to rejoin the PCT, but navigation was still easy despite the covering of snow. Soon, I was back on the path to Canada, still tired, not sure if I wanted to be there, but committed to moving forward. I was certain that any peace and happiness that lay in store for me would be found by hiking north. And besides, there was nothing else to do.
I ran into Giggles, one of the hikers I started the day with, at the next creek. I splashed across the flow over a granite slab, filled my filter bag from a short pour over, then knelt in the dust to guide the stream into my bottles. Giggles was filtering water too, standing and squeezing into their own wrinkled plastic bottles. I liked their vibe, and I thought it was clear that they had already hiked a long trail or two. This was confirmed when we started walking together. The conversation was relaxed, and we parted with an ease that comes from the understanding that it’s never goodbye for long on a thru-hike.
I continued along the spectacular Fuller Ridge alone, pondering a question. One that others had asked, but finding a new answer. Giggles, after learning why I was out here, asked, “Does it feel like a long time ago?” Meaning 2015. The answer today was, “Hell yes. And, hmmm, no.” It was odd now, thinking about time. 2015 was ten years ago, which is a long time in my book, but as I thought back to then, I got there in a blink. During the intervening years, I’d gathered my fair share of milestones and memories, and I flipped through them like a bunch of folders filed chronologically in the cabinet of my brain — PCT ’15, Mojave, Grand Canyon, England, meet Spice, CDT ’19, road trip, COVID, Portland, ECT ’22-23, Colorado, PCT ’25. This is pretty much how I organized my photo libraries too. It was all there, the experiences giving depth to my life, and I trusted that it all meant something. But did any of that matter when I could be standing here, ten years later, remembering all that shit I’d done in only an instant? My fading memories were all that I had to indicate that any time had passed at all. And if I didn’t have these file names to anchor my remembered existence, had I even lived at all? And this is how 2015 felt like a long time ago, and yesterday. Only in my brain did I understand that I had done this and that, and I had to have faith that it was real. But if I didn’t have those landmarks in the topography of my experience, those ten years could reduce to nothing. If I’d worked the same job and had a similar routine for a decade, how could I look back and say that any time had passed at all?
Of course, time is always moving (probably), no matter what I do. However, does 2015 feel like a long time ago? It is a long time ago, that’s a fact, but it feels both long and short. I just hoped that the next ten years wouldn’t pass without their own wrinkles to help me remember the great ride.
Soooo, that was all happening in my head, and it actually came and went pretty quickly, leaving me lonely again. The Christopher McCandles quotation popped into my head, something like, “Happiness is only real when shared.” I felt that, and deserved to for watching Into The Wild just before I started this trip.
Sometimes all I need to shake a funk is a good lunch break. Caffeine helps too, as does music. So after sitting for two hours, eating a bunch of things, and drinking iced tea while my tarp dried, I turned on some tunes and cruised. Feeling melancholy can be alright sometimes, but I was tired of that and ready to rock n roll. I perked up as soon as I got moving again. Starting with Red Wind Supernova and then shuffling my best playlist, it was easy to love everything again. It also helped that the trail began the major descent to the desert floor. And I mean major, 6k feet all down.
The large-character conifers were the greatest thing in the world, and I enjoyed their mature, this-to-shall-pass presence as I wound beneath thick boughs. Then I broke out onto the ridge, finding the spot and remembering 2015 when Tarzan, 42, and I had seen a sunset so rapturous that we stopped hiking and camped where we stood. “We were going to push on to mile 196 to break up the descent tomorrow, but the sunset froze us at 192.” It was good to be back, and though the sun was still high, the undercast covering the LA basin was the same as it had been. The snowy summit of San Gorgonio played peekaboo through swirling clouds on the other side. I stood and remembered, then kept the party rolling.
I made great time, feeling good and in the groove. Bees buzzed at the manzanita elevation, then the desert exploded with color as I dropped lower. I took a picture of the first yellow flower, thinking that it might be the only one, just minutes before finding myself in a fragrant sea of gold. Desert, it’s good to be back.
Eventually, I was below the cloud layer, which billowed around the ridge like a giant white whale. There was purple now to complement the yellow, and the air was warm again. A golden haze had settled over the Coachella Valley, where wind turbines looped around in perpetuity. My legs were tired, though I wished that it didn’t need to end. This cool evening walk was as good it got, made all the better by my morning funk. But as the clock turned 7pm, I snagged one of the only spots for miles. Time for dinner. The beans went down easy, and it was with a face full of San Jacinto that I lay back to admire the day. Somehow, it was one of my favorites, and the benefits of selective memory loss were not lost on me. Maybe it wasn’t all bad for memory to be porous. Moving on from the dull morning, I was back on track.
Hike For Days 
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