Good morning!

Day 28: (24 miles…with a trail angel hitch)
mile 352 – 376 / 5401 ft – 7768

Today was fairly easy miles. We had  some lingering snow drifts to walk through, but they were manageable.

We finally encountered actual poodle dog bush.  It is tall, stinky and does it’s best to reach into the trail. 

We did our best to avoid it.  At times we felt like contortionists.  Other than that the trail was “easy” so we decided to “challenge” ourselves (we heard the call of beer and burgers) and take the dreaded Acorn Trail into Wrightwood to pick up our resupply for the trek to Agua Dulce. 

We found the nearly 3 mile road walk from the base of the Acorn Trail into town harder on our feet than the 2.7 mile downhill from the PCT.  While in town saw “Bambi” and “Zombie” and caught up with “Big Easy” and “Bulldog II” over a cheeseburger and a pitcher of beer at the Yolderer.  The owner let me charge my phone as we ate and talked. As we ate, who should appear but “Why Not”, ” Grasshopper”, “Poco Loco”, “Atlas” and “Spirit”. We were sure they were well ahead seeing we got such a late start and mainly because we are slow and they are fast., but they were either doing a zero or a nero in Wrightwood.  As we had not scheduled a Nero for Wrightwood, we needed to get going .  Big Easy and Bulldog had to stay another night as Big Easy’s new shoes hadn’t come in yet.  We hastily packed up our resupply food and realized at once that possibly had too much.  We have got to stop this as this stuff gets heavy…even more so as we had A LOT of uphill and elevation to gain right out of the shoot.  We decided that rather than backtrack up the Acorn Trail, (as we had walked the equivalent of the PCT miles which would have required a hitch back into town on Hwy 2) we would hitch to the trailhead where we would have walked out of had we not taken the Acorn Trail.  We were warned that it could take awhile to get a hitch out of town to the trail as there was not much traffic on the hwy.  We decided to take our chances.  As luck would have it, it only took about 5 minutes and we had a ride. 

Thankfully Dave was on his way to do a hike off the PCT and graciously offered us a ride.  He fed us homemade beef jerky and hiked with us for a while before he had to head home (he’s training for Mt. Whitney).  We ended up just past Lamel Springs (it appears we hike much better after a few beers) and put up our tarp in hopes of staying just a bit warmer against the building wind gusts.  Tonight is going to be interesting.