so, what have I been doing this past week since leaving SRosa?
After rushing to clean up after myself at Mike's apartment (leaving a
few bits of furniture & other stuff behind... to make it to Alison's
place in Santa Cruz before she had to go to work that afternoon,
getting there with barely one hour to spare, we had a short chat and
she showed me around her new place in the Santa Cruz Mts -very nice!
I moved on to overnight at Madonna Mt Park a bit south-east in the
same Mts, though I had to go west to hwy 1 and back up the next canyon
after being told the "more direct" route would be longer. That overnight
turned out to be a bit more expensive than expected, because the Sr
discount I noted on the web only applied if you had an annual pass or some such. The campground was in a pleasant deep-woods setting, and there were a variety of trails that seemed to promise sweeping views of the area, but I didn't stay to seek out these photoops.
Next day I drove almost to Walker Pass at the south end of the Sierra
range, turning off on Kelso Valley Road near the town of Onyx, a paved road that connects to Jawbone Canyon Rd and a web of dirt roads for OHVers and dirt bikes. The PCT passes through this area. I took a left onto Bird
Spring Pass Rd that crosses the PCT, where I wanted to leave myself a
water cache for when I planned to hike that section later this month.
I camped before the road climbed up the ridge, not sure whether my car
would make it easily and worried I wouldn't be able to turn around.
With still two hrs of daylight left I walked up the ridge with a
gallon of water, but at the trail I found a large existing water cache (a
typical feature along dry sections of trail that are accessible by
jeep or high-clearance vehicles - "trail angels" maintain these caches
periodically during the hiking season.)
Next day I wanted to go further south along Kelso road to other
spur-roads crossing the trail, but the southbound rd was closed that
Saturday due to a Bike Rally going on in that popular ORV area. So
I backtracked and drove east over Walker Pass looking for possible
places to park my car for a few days and checking how feasible it might
be to bicycle from the pass down to hwy 14 where I think there's a bus
that runs south to the town of Mojave, that connects with another bus to Tehachapi, ideally stopping near where the PCT crosses. I haven't yet checked out the details of these routes.
But I didn't see any side-roads or big turnoffs near the pass, so I'm not sure how
feasible this will be - I may have to go all the way from Tehachapi to
Kennedy Meadows before accessing my car again. Or maybe I could time my hike it in coordination with the Bristlecone CNPS Chapter's "conference" in Big Pine near the end of the month, and persuade a friend from there to drop me off there on their way home. And maybe it would be convenient to do the hike in reverse direction, southbound.
I drove south on hwy 14 then hwy 58 towards Tehachapi and stopped
at the Jawbone Visitor Center, a very ORV-oriented place, got a bunch
of good maps of all the ORV roads that also showed the PCT and very
clearly the "jurisdictions" (BLM, Park, Forest, private, etc) for much
of the southern sierra. Going on, I stopped where the PCT crosses hwy 58, then cut south across the valley trying to paralell the temporary route
of the PCT, to the Hikertown Hostel, and chatted with the host there to verify that I could leave my car there for a
while in a few days.
I also asked for any news about the progress of the planned rerouting
of the trail into the Tehachapi's through the Tejon Ranch property. He
said it would be routed along 300th street about a mile or two west of
here, which was disappointing to hear, since that was still well down
in the valley although apparently the trail would then turn north-west up the
first set of low ridges of the Tehachapi's, and then rejoin the current
route still south of the rte 58 hwy crossing. Anyhow, I next drove to 300th street to look around - it's just a bit further west along the aquaduct, seems to me.
I then checked out the abandoned "Old Ridge Route" road that roughly parallels hwy 5 at the west end of Liebre Mt, that I would have thought the trail could be routed along or across.
There is an existing trail branching from the PCT on Liebre Mt that
goes westward with a trailhead on the Old Ridge Route, and I did find that trailhead. I also wanted to see whether that trail could be extended further west to ideally cross hwy 5 and enter the Hungry Valley ORV area that is just southwest of the hwy 5/hwy 138 junction. Very steep topography west of the old road, however.
I then drove on east along Pine Canyon Road to
three points Rd to hwy 137, eastward, stopping at the "Desert
Woodland" park that was closed, and the Poppy preserve that was open
but bloomless, through the urban sprawl of Lancaster and Palmdale to
Pearblossom and on to the Devils Punchbowl park, following the route I
planned to bicycle & bus. Got to the park after hours, near sundown,
too late to talk to the ranger about leaving my bike & Pack, so I
hurried on east to Valleyermo Rd and on to the campgrounds east of the Punchbowl and
overtnighted there. That was Saturday night, very crowded with
families chatting well into the evening, campfires blazing dangerously in very windy weather in tinder-dry surroundings. I decided to sleep in the car, ready to evacuate the area on short notice.
Very cold and windy next morning still, I walked the first leg of the
PCT detour in reverse up the ridge to Islip Saddle where I had quit
last year. most of the hike was in clouds. This trail traversed an
extremely steep slope most of which was an active landslide, sliding
into a ravine so obviously an active fault. Returned from this 11
mile round-trip early afternoon, and decided I'd drive up to the ridge
above the town of Wrightwood, planning to overnight at Guffy
Campground, expecting to wake up the next morning to snow. Actually
only made it to the lower "Blue Ridge" campground. Slept in the car.
Woke up next morning to sleet but little accumulated snow. A
backpacker iin shorts walked by and I offered him a ride back to town
to warm up. (He said he was 70yrs old.) I brought him to the hardware store
in Wrightwood that had a "welcome PCT hikers" sign posted. They had a
notebook there with a bunch of info on local "Angels" that hosted PCT
hikers. A few other hikers showed up. He called many of the angels leaving
msgs or learning that they no longer did that. He also called some
Hotels and most were closed for the summer (Wrightwood has some ski
slopes nearby.) He bought himself some rain pants and we had some
lunch. He decided he'd try to hike on so I drove him back up the
ridge, drove a bit west along the ridge to the saddle at the base of
Mt Baden Powell, that he would be climbing the next day (these were
areas I had already done last year - sections of trail criss-crossing
hwy 2 on the ridge, that I did in various combinations of forward &
backward using my bike to "close the loop". It was getting colder &
windier. He decided he'd rather try again in town at a more expensive hotel.
I dropped him off at one hotel and we parted ways.
I had been vacillating between many alternative plans. I had
originally thought I could take advantage of the cooler weather to
finish up the only section of trail I had skipped last year because it
happened to be very hot at the time - the climb from Cajon Pass up to
the ridge above Wrightwood. (I had instead out&back-hiked the upper
section of that climb.) What I needed to do (should have done last
year) is leave my car on the ridge at Guffy CG, bicycle back down the
ridge through Wrightwood, leave my bike near Cajon Pass and hike back
up. An alternative was to leave my car in Wrightwood, bicycle down
hike up the ridge and take a spur trail (that most hikers take) back
down to Wrightwood. A third alternative reason for me to be up there
is to complete a section of trail along "Pleasantview Ridge" that had
been detoured but not specifically closed as part of the frog closure.
None of these alternatives were attractive today. I didn't want to
bicycle in sleet on wet roads, and I didn't want to hike a trail with
spectacular views while the views were obscured by clouds. So I
decided I'd take care of another piece of unfinished business, to drop
off a resupply package for myself at the "Hiker Heaven" Trail-Angel
Hostel in Agua Dulce that I would be passing by midway through my 120
mile hike from the Punchbowl Park to the "Hikertown" place where I
would have my car. Also, I wanted to work out some details about my
bike ride from the Pearblossom bus drop-off point.
So first did the resupply dropoff, then explored some alternative routes
from Pearblossom to either the park or the campground, and found that
Vallyermo Rd to the campground would avoid climbing a small ridge to
the park, and the park was also at higher elevation. The campground
would also put me in position to hike the other two legs of the
detour in proper direction and without another out&back of the bottom
leg. (now that I had already hiked the first leg up&back.) So, I would
be leaving my pack at the park, but my bicycle at or near the
campground. Also, since the "first afternoon bus" would get me to
Pearblossom at around 6pm with another hour of bicycling to do, I
could just camp "legally' in a campground, whereas there was no camping permitted in the park. I decided I'd check with
the ranger to make sure I could leave my pack with then for two days,
but found the park closed on Mondays. So back to the campground for
another night. Packed my pack the next morning, dropped it off at the park's visitor center, having a nice chat with the ranger there, then drove
back west to "Hikertown".
Parked behind a bunch of boats stored at that place per instructiuons,
sorted some things for the bike ride, tried to copy my picts to date
onto a disk drive using my little eeepc but ran into problems (disk drive would not spin up.) Started this email, now its
much later than I would like. Still need to T-shoot the disk drive
issue and another problem - for some reason my cell phone is hung up
"out of memory" even though I've been deleting apps I don't absolutely
need for this trip. Aargh. I'm writing this on the eeepc.
I've left my big laptop safely in storage in Santa Rosa. Ah well, get some sleep, worry
about it in the morning.
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