Day 14 - PCT 2024
Miles Hiked: 14.8
Total Ascent: 4,303.8 ft.
Total Decent: 3,006.2 ft.
I barely slept. Off and on for a couple hours but the search and rescue search for Sasha coupled with the high winds and heavy rain made the night somber. I heard Failure to Launch throw up in her tent a couple of times, and the loud air mattress noises from my groups toss and turning made me believe that none of us slept well. It was a long night.
We got up early knowing it would be a long hard push to the road to hitch hike into Idyllwild. We packed up our wet tents and gear and set off before we even had a chance to eat breakfast.
I was ahead of the group for the first 5 miles. We hadn’t heard anything about Sasha since 2:30am with search and rescue. As I was hiking, I stumbled upon a note in the sand that Sasha was okay. I let out a huge sigh of relief. What a terrifying ordeal. I later found out she got ahead of her hiking partner Freddie and was a bit lost. This could have turned out much worse so I’m grateful she’s safe.
It was a lot of uphill today. My body was sore from yesterday; bruised, scraped and scratched. I tried to take it easy but the thought of a town night got the best of me. I pushed hard. We all did. We took a breakfast pit stop at the 5 mile mark and that gave me the energy I needed to continue. We arranged to break in another 5 miles but as I sat down the sleet started so I got up and carried on with Impulse. We had a good hike to the road, despite getting soaked in hail and sleet practically the entire way. It was muddy in places and we slipped a lot. Impulse having a close call on a ledge at one point. Every time we thought we had walked a mile, our FarOut maps would tell us we had hiked 0.2-0.4 miles. This was a frustrating long section of the day due to the sleet and mud. I was so happy when I reached the top. I didn’t take out my rain jacket or puffy because I didn’t want to put my backpack down in the mud but the endless shivering from my soaked sun hoodie later told me that was a bad decision.
Impulse and I got to the road and I started hitch hiking. By this time the snow had started. We were both frozen and wet. Two cars passed us. After a couple minutes, a lady pulled up and said she’d give us a ride to Idyllwild. We happily hopped in. What we didn’t know was that Failure to Launch and Snax were so much closer to us than we thought. They were about 10 minutes behind us, following our fresh mud tracks through the sleet. They had called a trail angel to pick us all up and the lady who stopped from our hitch was actually there for all of us! The trail angel, named Sandy, was in contact with them and thought they said an hour so she assured us we had time even though Failure to Launch Garmined me when we were ten minutes up the road saying they were 0.1 mile from the road I felt awful!! Especially with the bad weather. It was definitely a misunderstanding but hoo boy, I never wanted to steal someone’s ride!
We’re all safely in Idyllwild and I was able to meet up with the OG tramily, Kyle (now known as No Way), Riley, Michiel and John. Air Drop is in town but I didn’t see him. They're all hiking out tomorrow and I believe Impulse will be joining them. Failure to Launch, Snax and I will be zeroing in Idyllwild tomorrow to wait out the winter storm. We rented a beautiful cabin! Great to sleep in a warm bed!
