Sunday, April 23 — day 28

PCT mile 369.4 to 383.6

My weekend with Liz has been fun, but as she says “_somebody_ needs to be bringing in a salary to pay the bills”, and so she will be driving back to Silicon Valley and I’ll be getting back on the trail. Liz did want to do some hiking with me so we packed everything up and drove to where I exited the PCT on Friday morning.  

373 miles — nearly halfway!

We hiked up a small ridge and were rewarded of views of the desert to the north. I see some big clouds and some snow covered mountains far, far away and a bit to the west — is that the Sierras on a he left?

My goal today is to hike to a trailhead where I will then hike to the summit of mount Baden-Powell and then descend along a ridge to a campground and spring named Little Jimmy. The ascent started off well enough — lots of long switchbacks rapidly bringing me up the mountain. This is a popular trail and there were a lot of day hikers.  

Higher up the mountain the trail became increasingly covered in snow and many day hikers decided that it was not what they were prepared for and turned around. I donned my microspikes and kept hiking. Somewhere around switchback 19 the footprints I was following gave up trying to track the trail and just went straight up the mountain. And so I did too.

Baden-Powell has a false summit, so just when you think you are near the top, you glimpse the real peak further away.

I climbed that peak and found the top to be free of snow. My shoes and socks had gotten a little wet from the snow climb but they are already drying nicely.  

Soon after I summited, “Medic” arrived on top. He’s really a plumber in a small Swiss village, but he got that trail name Medic because he hangs a Swiss flag on the back of his pack. The flag resembles, but is the color inverse of, the medic insignia.

There were 3 day hikers on the summit who had hiked up from the direction we are going so we tagged along. They knew the route to avoid snow fields which was awesome! No frozen shoes tomorrow morning!
One the day at down to our campsite we had a good view of where LA was, but it was covered in clouds.  

Medic and I got to the springs and camp and found no other PCTers there. We chose our campsites, set up, ate dinner and discussed tomorrows hike.  

Four PCTers arrived and started a fire in the fire pit to dry their boots and socks.  I’ve not yet enjoyed a campfire on this trip.  I rewarmed myself and chatted but soon felt the need to retire, so I said my goodbyes and retired to my tent for a great nights sleep.

Thanks for reading!

Soon 4 other hikers showed up and setup camp. One group started a fire in a fire ring to dry out their soaked boots and socks.