PCT Day 17 — May 13, 2025
Deep Creek to Cleghorn Slope
Group Dinner Camp to Trains and Planes Camp
PCT miles: 27.8 miles
Total miles: 342.1 miles
Elevation change: 3196ft gain, 3173ft loss
Awake at 5am. Time to go. *Sigh* I was ambivalent about the end of this hike the night before, and maybe my mooshy morning brain still was, but a full day off to soak in the hot springs seemed particularly appealing as I rallied myself to change into my cold hiking clothes. Why did I have to leave? There wasn’t a great answer, which made it hard to pack up and go. I needed to hike 34 miles to Cajon Pass and had about 30 hours to do it. But did I really need to do that? Couldn’t I skip the free ride to San Diego and get there a day later? Why was I going to San Diego at all? But there was no bargaining with the logical side of my brain. At some point in my life, I had become an adult, losing my freedom to ignore consequences, so I did the ‘right’ thing and got moving. The canyon was quiet and still except for the water, which had faded into the unnoticed background yet still churned and rumbled as it had continuously since eternity. This darn water had been flowing longer than I’d been alive, and would keep flowing for lifetimes beyond my own. Talk about commitment.
The trail climbed high above the water one last time before settling to a mid-height after crossing the famous rainbow bridge. The walls widened, and the slope mellowed. The horizon opened up once more as the vast Mojave came into view to the west. Looks like we made it. A pair of mallards bobbed for whatever ducks eat while floating in a calm Eddy of dark water. I walked along a wide trail built on the hillside by some forgotten New Deal laborers. Their work crumbled, yet stood solid. Kinda like my knee, which yelped with sensation on moderate downhill while supporting my weight anyway. Maybe it really was a good thing I was finishing soon. My body was telling me something.
Remembering the odd construction well, I descended to the spillway of the giant earthen dam that stood unused astride the Mojave River. It had seemed impressively big, pointless, and amazing in 2015, and it did again today. Crossing Deep Creek for a final time was easy on a slender log in the shade of old cottonwoods, then I watched it pour through the outflow tunnel unencumbered, as if the dam didn’t exist at all. The proportions were all wrong — big dam, small creek — yet there was harmony. What flowed in flowed out.
The cool breeze riffled the green grass as I rose out of the riparian sprawl to a paved road. Oh yeah, I remembered this place too. This was where the trail angel, Coppertone, was slinging root beer floats. The ensuing sugar rush had turned my mind frantic and powered me long into the night in 2015. There was only a single gallon of water this time, but I did take a seat just past the crossing next to a bush anyway. My feet felt gritty and sweaty, my blisters were waking up again, and Clarissa had told me to take more breaks. That was three good reasons to take off my shoes for a breather.
The trail contoured higher into the hills, as if to avoid being drowned if the dam were ever filled. Me, I was just glad to be going slightly uphill again. That was better for my knee, and I was able to forget all about it for several miles. Instead, I finally got some answers about this potential PDB situation. I’d ignored this suspicious plant for as long as I could, avoiding it when possible, but no longer leaving the trail to walk around it. However, now it was chest high and all over the trail. I was hugging it. Its greasy leaves were surely coating me in caustic goo. So I used the good cell signal to download iNaturalist and identify it once and for all. Hairy Yerba Santa, aka not the bad stuff. Fwewh. That was nice to know, and I plunged ahead with new vigor.
One other hiker from Missouri loled when I mentioned the higher humidity. Well, I wasn’t wrong, but yeah, compared with Missouri, this tint of moisture was nothing. Even so, the subtle change was one of those things that become obvious when living outside all day. I liked that I noticed it. It helped me feel like I was learning something.
I took a short break in some humongous metal pipes that I had long forgotten until seeing them again, but the humid breeze was too cold, so I moved on to look for a warmer lunch spot. I found this along the shore of Silverwood Lake. A vicious little side trail dropped me on a short arc of beach where I found a sandy spot to relax for a while. Trash of all sorts, cups, shoes, chairs, hats, bags, were caught here and there in the bushes, but it was easy to feel like I was in paradise. My own little slice of trash paradise.
I left a few hours later, curious to see what I would see for the rest of the day. In 2015, I was desperately looking for a place to camp in the dark by the time I reached the lake, and didn’t see much, despite having one of the more psychologically intense experiences of the trail. “Seems like there would be nice views in the day. I get myself worked up about cougars. Not sure how real the risk actually is, but it seems legit. Especially around a water source. It just goes on and on and gets darker and darker. There are a couple spots where I’m essentially blind. Headlamp? No. I can do this. But it keeps going and I go through cycles of freaking myself out and feeling really cool. Senses and adrenaline definitely heightened. Finally get to a road. Check the map while thinking a cougar is right in front of me.” The three miles to Cleghorn Picnic Area were much more mellow this time. I never did see a cougar, and doubt that I was anywhere near one that night, but the fear was real. Enjoying the views that I missed before and not redlining fight or flight, I mused about reality and how so much of our experience blows at the whim of our fickle perception. The danger was probably no greater then than it was now, but I lived that danger anyway. What stress was I fabricating now? Maybe this whole knee thing was fiction.
My feet hurt in new and interesting ways when I left Cleghorn to hike up and over a thing. More so than at any other point during this hike, it felt like my body was falling apart. Blisters had jacked up my gait, so my knee was getting used in new and weird ways, explaining the pain. Now my feet, which were also being impacted differently, ached in places I’d never felt before. That was my theory, at least. It was kinda cool to think that I was completely responsible for this current discomfort because of numerous instances of minor neglect. If I had taken just a few more breaks every day. If I had changed my socks more often or rinsed them more frequently. If I had stretched at all. If I had drained my blisters last night. All of these things that I could have done, I didn’t do, and I was paying for it now. Without the weight of the entire PCT on my shoulders, I was spared the worst remorse. It sucked to hike in discomfort, but I was done hiking tomorrow no matter what and had little to lose. Who knows, I might actually come out ahead if I could remember this lesson when it mattered more.
The smugness that came from this silver lining was gone by the time I crunched into camp six miles later. I was happy that the trail turned away from the chilling fog bank and back into the sunny desert, but I wasn’t stoked about the long descent on frustratingly angled tread. It was a stupid trail. My knee and feet were mad when I stumped into camp. Spread among the bushes in a wide sandy wash, I found some familiar faces, and although I was too tired to make my rounds once I sat down to eat my mashed potatoes, it was nice to have friends nearby. It would be nice to have someone around when I said goodbye to the PCT tomorrow at McDonald’s too.
Not too worried about anything except for my onion farts, I watched the planes blink in the night sky while distant trains tooted their ridiculously loud horns. A nearby owl hooted in reply. This was my last night. How did that happen? How did I feel so at peace with that, and my knee? Why don’t all planes share the same blinking pattern? I think that I was ready for it to be done, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and all of the -ally’s. Being physically beat depressed my zeal for sure, but I had never committed myself to living on the PCT long-term again like I had in 2015. I never girded myself for the grind of the long haul, and now I was ground down, pulverized and ready to recuperate by living the life that I was committed to. The burritos of San Diego called me south, and the mountains, my love, and my home beckoned me to Colorado after I’d eaten my fill. In 2015, it was only Canada that urged me forward, with the exciting unknown populating the in between and beyond. That was fine back then, but I was sinking roots now, building the life that I had been so eager to find, even though I had no idea what it looked like. I had dreamed it then, in a loosey goosey kind of way, and now I was living it. Not perfect, still filled with questions, but doing better than alright. Just like I currently struggle to remember the full vividness of hiking the PCT in 2015, 2015 me couldn’t comprehend the richness that awaited in the future. Life wasn’t what I had dreamed. It was harder, and messier, and confusinger, and better, and wilder, and much more wonderful than I could have imagined.
Hike For Days 
Thank you. What an adventure.
I wonder what you would write if you stayed in one spot for a week, perhaps with Spice, and explored and wrote?
Cheers!
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