Catching Up

Greetings to all, sorry for the delay. As you might expect, computer access is tough to find out in the woods. We wanted to let you know about life on the trail after Julian.

We went from the snow storm into some of the most beautiful desert we have seen thus far. On our second night out, we found probably the most beautiful campsite yet on the trail. We actually were able to camp at the base of Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock is a beautiful rock formation, naturally shaped like an entire eagle in the middle of vast rolling fields. We saw an amazing sunset, listened to coyotes, and the sunrise was pristine. In addition we had morning visitors. An entire herd of milk cows came to greet us for breakfast.

Following that, we had a little bit more excitement after Warner Springs. Chad, Fire Marshall, went to the kick-off party for PCT-ers and was supposed to meet back up with Zero and Friday at a camp six miles outside of town. The Trail Angel who took him to the trail head was kind enough to give him a four-pound pie. Not the easiest thing to carry while hiking. Hiking in the dark without the assistance of a GPS or maps, he had to go into survival mode. Forced to set up camp by himself, he did the only thing that a true thru hiker would do. He got out his spork and ate the whole pie. Meanwhile, Friday, who had all the maps and the GPS, practiced her newly found navigational skills in the dark. Friday and Zero found the camp with only one small mishap. Friday stopped in the middle of a stream while rock hopping, forcing Zero to fall into the stream. In the morning, Zero and Friday were greatly relieved to see him, but of course, upset that he had no pie for them. All in all, we came out fairly unscathed.

Life in the desert was fairly uneventful, all the way up to the town of Idyllwild, where we hooked up once again with our newly found friends Dave and Jane. The next day, we made an assault on Apache Peak. On the assent to Apache, the team was greeted by extreme winds, which we later we found out that they were clocked at 109 miles per hour. Our video will be up shortly of us playing in the wind. It was also our first real taste of bitter cold and snow along the journey.
We have to thank Eddie Bauer and Marmot for keeping us warm, safe and dry even in such harsh conditions. The gear is exceptional, and we could not be happier.

We camped at Cedar Springs on the way to Apache Peak, and had a long, miserable night in our tents, buffeted by winds and snow. The next day, we had all intentions of going up and around Apache Peak. But once we hit the North Face of Apache Peak, we were greeted with an extremely steep slope covered in about six feet of snow. Without the aide of crampons and ice axes, it proved to be too dangerous. We were forced to go back down and regroup.

Once back in Idyllwild, the Team made an executive decision and once again sent fire Marshall on a mission. We decided to send him to snow camp. So we packed him up and sent him off to the snow in the mountains to learn how to survive, snowshoe, and build his own igloo. He came back tired and cold, but had refined his skills in the mountains.