appalachian thrail thru hike

read about my last long hike of surrender, a thru-hike of the appalachian trail from march 11th to july 1st, 2012 at timsatthruhike2012.blogspot.com

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

pct day 11 - 05/16/13

holy wind, batman! it was so windy last night that one of the guy lines on my tent actually snapped in half! i heard the tell-tale signs - that thrumming sound right before it goes poing! and my tent falls down on top of me. i seriously could not stop laughing. it must have been a fairly comical sight.

so, needless to say, at 04:00 i decided to start hiking. this actually proved to be a divinely inspired little trick. the hike down san jacinto, while extremely gradual, unbelievably gradual, in fact, was completely exposed to a baking hot sun and very windy. then you get down 9,800 feet from the peak and you have to cross the desert. i knew it was going to be windy because i could see the biggest array of wind collectors from the peak that i have ever seen. countless wind collectors. so needless to say again, it was a wee bit windy crossing the desert. i almost got blown over on to my face several times and it was quite entertaining. i was very happy that it was only 09:30 when i crossed under i-10 and made my way back up into the mountains. here is a pic of san jacinto having just climbed down it since yesterday afternoon and also a pic of some wind collectors.






so it was about 10:30 when i crossed mile 210 and had already done 15 miles when a crazy idea occured to me: what if i were to do back-to-back 35 mile days and get into big bear by friday afternoon. i just kind of laughed and kept on trekking.

i made it another 10 miles to this old fish hatchery on whitewater river called whitewater preserve. they turned the old fish pool in to a wading pool and i must say that the cool mountain water felt oh so good on my tired feet. i met several amazing souls at the pools, but decided to keep on going.

i ended up doing another 10 miles before and set up camp along the mission springs creek at mile 230.

my lesson for today is just to have a thought and observe the thought and let the body decide what is possible. :)

35 miles from san jacinto to mission creek. 230 miles total.

- tribhu (tree-boo)

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