Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles Read online

  As if to welcome me to the mountains and remind me I’d left the desert light rain fell during the evening, the first of the walk. The morning dawned sunny though and I set off in shorts, enjoying the views. There were a few patches of soft snow but nothing to impede progress. Then out of nowhere came a furious storm. Within minutes I was being lashed by wind-driven rain. The visibility dropped to less than ten yards. The first real mountains of the walk had brought the first real mountain weather. As I climbed the snow grew deeper. The firm surface the ranger had mentioned had gone, softened by the rain and the sun. Soon I was slogging through two-feet deep snow, raising each leg high then plunging it back down into the snow, an arduous and slow method of progress that I was to learn is known as post-holing. My lower legs and feet were soaked by the snow and soon felt very cold as I didn’t have any gaiters. As the terrain steepened I used my ice axe for balance and security. It had seemed incongruous in the desert. I was glad of it now. I lost the line of the trail in the deep snow but pushed on in roughly the right direction, using my compass for the first time. Eventually the rain stopped but the wind and mist continued with gusts lifting the edge of the clouds occasionally to give unreal glimpses 7,000 feet down to the desert floor where the city of Palm Springs basked in bright sunlight.

  Suddenly a bright red tent loomed up in the gloom. The four hikers inside told me they’d turned back due to the storm and the deep snow. They were just out for a few days but told me that three PCT hikers weren’t far ahead. I wouldn’t meet those hikers for a while but they were to prove very important for my walk. I pushed on into the storm but soon decided to camp. Going on seemed pointless as I wasn’t sure where I was or how severe conditions might become. Trees gave shelter from the wind and the snow provided water, melted over my little gasoline stove. I considered my options and decided that if the storm or the snow worsened I would have to descend west to the town of Idyllwild and go round the rest of the San Jacintos at a lower level. Despite the storm and the hard going and the uncertainty I felt elated. It had been an exciting mountain day. Now I hoped for the temperature to drop enough overnight to harden the snow.

  I woke to thick mist, strong winds and a temperature of +8ºC (47ºF). The snow was even softer than the day before. After an hour of great effort and little progress I decided retreat was sensible. The terrain was steepening, balls of snow were sliding down the slopes around me and navigation was difficult. The reward for my prudence was a second breakfast of blueberry cobbler and coffee with the four campers in the red tent. Continuing down I reached a road and was soon in the pleasant mountain resort of Idyllwild. The rain was still pouring down. At the ranger station I learnt that the PCT down the San Jacintos wasn’t complete and the Forest Service advised taking the road through Idyllwild anyway.

  On the campground I discovered five other PCT hikers who’d all walked the road from Anza to avoid the snow. Joel and Jeannie I’d met before. New were another couple, Ron and Cheryl, and a solo hiker named Ken, whose ski tracks I’d seen in the Laguna Mountains. Inevitably discussion turned to the snow in the Sierra Nevada. I hadn’t considered not going through, snow or no snow, despite my experience in the San Jacintos. Only Ken was of like mind. The others were all going to road walk until the snow thawed. Various birds fluttered round the campground. The others identified them for me - bright blue beautiful but raucous Stellar’s jays and red-capped black and white acorn woodpeckers, which hammered acorns into holes in trees as food stores. I’d noticed a pine riddled with acorns and had wondered how they’d got there. I’d also seen both birds before but not known what they were. I added a natural history guide to my shopping list.

  I’d now been out ten days, of which the last two had been tough, so I decided to have a rest day in Idyllwild and hope that the storm would fade. I also needed to see a dentist, having cracked a couple of fillings. The last meant a second day in Idyllwild as I couldn’t get an appointment until the next afternoon. The rest would probably be beneficial, I decided, though I quickly felt very restless even though Idyllwild, set amongst magnificent tall trees and with towering rock peaks rising high above, was a good place for a stop. The town offered facilities I hadn’t seen elsewhere too, which I undoubtedly needed, namely showers and a laundromat

  A two-day road walk led down through the wooded foothills of the San Jacintos to Cabazon and the San Gorgonio Pass, a tongue of desert protruding into the mountains between the massive 10,000 foot walls of San Jacinto Peak and Mount San Gorgonio. Wandering round Cabazon I encountered three battered, weatherworn and somewhat haggard figures walking towards me. They could only be PCT hikers and so it turned out. Scott Steiner, Dave Rehbehn and Larry Lake had battled the storm in the San Jacintos while I’d been in Idyllwild, at times totally lost and once only making three miles in a whole day. But they had snowshoes, crampons and gaiters and so were better equipped for the snow than me. Finally they’d bushwhacked down to Cabazon through steep, spiny chaparral that left them scratched and scarred.

  The five other hikers from Idyllwild arrived and we all crammed onto a small patch of grass behind the fire station with sprinklers all around us as there was no campground in Cabazon. I was relieved that my supplies had reached the post office and delighted to find a store selling a huge variety of dried fruit. Most of my food was pretty stodgy so a substitute for fresh fruit was welcome and I stocked up on dried figs, dates, bananas, apples and those strips of mixed dried fruit known as fruit leathers. My plan was to reach the next town, Big Bear City, in five days but I knew it might take longer in the snow so I wanted extra supplies. Dried fruit was much healthier than more candy bars, the only alternative, though I did buy some of the latter as well. The evening was spent in a rather sleazy pizza and beer parlour (just right for scruffy hikers!) where, over several pitchers of beer, we discussed future plans and struck a deal. Scott, Dave and Larry were intending on going through the Sierra in the snow and I was pleased when they invited me to join them. I knew that being in a group would be safer and also make it more likely that I would succeed in getting through the snow. The others intended to hitch-hike round the Sierra or, in Ken’s case, hike the road in Owen’s Valley below the mountains.

  Before leaving Cabazon I needed stove fuel, as did the others. But nowhere sold the refined white gas we’d all been using. Risking death and arrest we crossed the Interstate 10 freeway to a massive gas station. One of the giant dinosaur sculptures that make Cabazon noteworthy reared overhead. In the gas station we filled our little half litre fuel bottles from the high pressure pumps. Gasoline sprayed everywhere but eventually the bottles were full. Luckily the attendant thought it was hilarious. Back in 1982 gasoline stoves were the standard for long-distance backpacking, partly because of reliability and partly because of fuel availability. Today they are rare. Now ultralight stoves running on alcohol, solid fuel tablets or butane/propane canisters are used by almost every hiker, including myself. There were few of these available back then though and fuel was hard to find.

  Having completed 150 miles I felt that the first part of the journey was over. This breaking-in stage was when I became used to the life of a hiker and shed worries about food, route finding, equipment and other factors that could detract from my enjoyment of the PCT. I no longer felt like a novice on the trail and I no longer looked like one either! My face and arms were brown from the sun, my legs were muscled and hard. My equipment, so shiny and pristine at the start, already looked quite battered and worn. I was also revelling in the adventure and loving the life of a hiker.

  Ahead lay the wooded slopes of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains and beyond them the arid wastes of the Mohave Desert. First though came half a day’s road walking in searing heat. Cabazon, at 1400 feet, was the lowest point on the trail yet and this was a walk in real desert. I was soaked in sweat and felt exhausted after eleven miles. Interest to the trudge was provided by the first cacti in bloom I’d seen, with lovely purple flowers, and, to the south, the steep, snowy and impr
essive north face of San Jacinto Peak towering into the sky. I wanted to be away from roads and back in the wilds though. Leaving the unbelievably noisy, smelly and hot San Gorgonio Pass, threaded as it is by both Interstate 10 and the Southern Pacific Railroad, was a relief. I climbed thankfully into the hills beside the dirt-filled, grey rushing waters of Whitewater Creek. I met up with Scott, Dave and Larry again and we camped in the shade of a canyon live oak tree. For the first time I didn’t bother with the tent and lay outside in my sleeping bag watching the last light of the day fading on the red and orange strata of the canyon walls.

  For the next three days I hiked with my three prospective Sierra companions and we began to get to know each other. Larry had also set out on his own but had met the others within a few days of leaving the Mexican border and had travelled with them ever since. Like Scott he was a veteran of the 2,000 mile Appalachian Trail in the Eastern USA while Dave was on his first long backpacking trip. Although this was their country they were still 4,000 miles from home as they were all from eastern states (Maryland and New Jersey) and on their first visit to the West. This distance from home gave us something in common as most of the other PCT hikers we met were close enough to home to return there for a rest or to wait for the snow to melt. None of us had that option.

  The climb up into the San Bernardino Mountains was difficult and frustrating as it mostly followed a flood-swept, boulder-strewn canyon in which we kept losing the trail and having to crash through dense undergrowth as well as ford Mission Creek many times. It was very hard and hot work. However there were many flowers and trees and in my journal I wrote ‘more fun than the road’. The reward for our efforts came the next day when we left the canyon for a magnificent forest of pine and fir and superb views of the surrounding mountains. Deep snow drifts covered the trail in places but these were never extensive enough to impede our progress much. Our camp in the woods was at 7900 feet, the highest yet. The night was cold and, sleeping under the stars again, I woke to frost coating my sleeping bag for the first time. Our leather boots, wet from the previous days postholing, were frozen hard. The morning sun was hot though and soon thawed them out. Pleasant forest walking led down to Big Bear City, the next resupply point. Although only a small town, despite the name, with a population of around 12,000 it seemed big to huge to me. I was already unused to traffic and people and an urban setting. In British terms it was small for somewhere called a city but I was soon to learn that in the USA much smaller places that would be villages at home could be called cities. Although Big Bear City is a tourist town with two ski resorts nearby there was no campground. However Scott chatted to a man curious about our appearance and big packs and when he found what we were doing he said we could camp on his front lawn. Richard also drove us to a restaurant for a huge meal and then entertained us with beer and blues rock in his house. More trail magic!

  One problem in town stops was that I had little in the way of spare clothing to wear and my trail clothes were usually in dire need of washing. Often I sat in a laundromat wearing nothing but my waterproof trousers while my clothes were being washed. Luckily, although much of my gear was what would now be called traditional or old-fashioned, my clothing was modern and wouldn’t look out of place on the PCT today. This meant it was lightweight and fast drying. Only a few years before the walk I’d been wearing woollen trousers, shirts and sweaters and cotton windproof jackets. These garments were heavy, absorbent, slow-drying and hard to clean. However shortly before my walk a new clothing company, Rohan, had launched a range of thin, light, polyester-cotton mix clothing that was windproof, breathable, fast drying and very comfortable. I thought the clothing looked ideal for backpacking and Paul and Sarah Howcroft of Rohan kindly offered to supply me with a full set – shorts, trousers, windshirt – plus synthetic base layers. They even made me up experimental waterproof garments from a very light version of the then still new fabric Gore-Tex. All this clothing was easy to wash and dried very quickly so I spent less time in laundromats than I would otherwise have done. When there was water available I could also rinse garments out along the trail too and know they would dry fast. Overall the Rohan clothing was a great success, especially the polyester-cotton garments, and I never went back to the heavy wool and cotton stuff. Now of course such lightweight clothing is standard wear for hiking.

  In every town I also had to buy soap powder, shampoo and other items I didn’t want to carry with me. Food supplies were often only available in larger amounts than I needed too. Today I would use a bounce box but this idea hadn’t been dreamed up back then. Now using one is common practice amongst thru-hikers. A bounce box is a box that is posted on from post office to post office. It can contain clothes for town wear, maps, unneeded gear, surplus supplies and more. It’s a simple but brilliant concept. I wish I’d thought of it in 1982. Also common today are hiker boxes in trail towns and resorts. These contain surplus gear and supplies left by hikers for other hikers to use if needed. My surplus town items would have gone in these if they’d existed.

  My companions were having a rest day in Big Bear City as their next supply point was a long ten days away. Mine was in five days so I went on. I was also quite happy to be on my own again. I’d enjoyed being with the others but conversation and companionship, although pleasant, distracted from the subtle beauty of the landscape and intruded into the silence and into my feeling of contact with nature. Alone again my attention returned to the landscape and the wildlife. After more forest walking on snow and another camp in the woods I began a slow farewell to the San Bernardino Mountains as I descended beside Holcomb Creek. Once out of the snow the trail wound in and out of large sandy boulders, chaparral and scattered Jeffrey pines. The weather was hot but the snow-fed creek was cold as I found during three knee-deep fords. Camping on a deserted campground beneath big pines I lit a camp fire for the first time and sat watching the flickering flames and the dark starry sky. Suddenly I felt very self-contained and very remote, huddled by my pathetically tiny orange spot of warmth with all around the vast dark wilderness. A sense of euphoria at being alone in the natural world I had come to seek swept over me. This was perfect!

  Deep Creek followed Holcomb Creek and these desert rivers, golden brown in the sunlight and black with pools and white with rapids, led enticingly on to the snowy San Gabriel Mountains, edged by the endless flatness of the Mohave Desert. Down on the desert floor there were roads and people - day hikers, anglers and car campers. The banks of the creek were awash with flowers - purple, blue, yellow and white. A great swathe of bright colours in an area my guidebook described as barren. Camped on a roadside campground I experienced the first mosquitoes of the trip though they faded away as the temperature dropped. For the first time I still felt hungry after my evening meal. I’d been out for three weeks and had already lost a great deal of weight. The food I’d chosen back at Trail Foods, which already seemed another world, was mostly okay, though there were a few meals I hoped didn’t turn up often, but was going to need supplementing from now on.

  The PCT became rather fractured now as it linked too many miles of paved roads with stretches of dirt road and bits of trail as I approached the great gash of the Cajon Pass, which separates the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains. The convoluted sedimentary rocks around the pass formed deep tortuous canyons with names like Little Horsethief and hot, barren desert hills like Cleghorn Mountain. Unstable, narrow, alluvial arêtes of soft sand slopes set at impossible angles dominated the sides of the pass, which lies on the notorious San Andreas Fault, one of the world’s major earthquake zones. This tongue of the Mohave Desert is hot and arid and the walking was enervating. Roads and railways and power lines threaded the pass. I found a pleasant enough site by a flowing creek in Crowder Canyon but I could hear traffic and trains and the crackle of the power lines. Although down in the desert it was the coldest night of the walk so far and I woke to a thick white frost coating my sleeping bag and my gear, which I’d foolishly left strewn around. Again tho
ugh the sun soon dried everything. I was still surprised at how fast it heated the world and how quickly it was high in the sky. I was used to the long dawns of home, far to the north of here.

  The PCT crossed Cajon Pass in a rather ignominious fashion, passing under the freeway and two railway lines via slogan-sprayed concrete culverts. Above the freeway tunnel I could hear the high-speed traffic screaming past. This was a long way from wilderness. Finally I waited at yet another railroad while a mile-long goods train slowly negotiated a steep curve. Once across the tracks I started my ascent out of the pass, the trail climbing above the pale desert sandstone sentinels of the Mormon Rocks, named by the Mormon pioneers who were some of the first white settlers to come through the pass en route for Salt Lake City in 1851. There followed a long strenuous haul up and along Upper Lyttle Creek Ridge - ‘hot, waterless, shadeless & never-ending’ I wrote in my journal. The ascent was made worse by latter day manifestations of the pioneer spirit as for much of the way I appeared to be in the middle of a gunfight. From each little side canyon came the cracks and echoes of small arms fire as weekend gunmen practised their skills. All the PCT signs in the area were peppered with bullet holes. Finally after 3,500 feet of climbing I reached the welcome shade of the first pines and the first snow. Soon the gunshots faded along with the desert. Camp was amongst pines and mountain mahogany bushes and again I had to melt snow for water. I was back in the mountains. Birds sang in the trees, a ground squirrel scampered past the tent. A squat, armoured, prehistoric-looking small lizard crawled across the ground.

  A long traverse followed, on the firm snow of Blue Ridge. There were views of mountains all around - Dawson Peak, Pine Mountain, very snowy Mount Baden-Powell, the white mass of 10,064 foot Mount San Antonio, highest in the San Gabriels. West the air was hazy with smog that was insidiously creeping up the mountains from the ever closer Los Angeles basin, a poisonous brew of automobile fumes that was to be an unpleasant presence over the next few weeks as I passed the huge sprawling city.