Brad's Adventure

No, this isn’t a Norovirus post.

Miles 369.4 – 444.3

Days 28-31

We grabbed a coffee in the morning and I started to get concerned I’m gonna have withdrawals because we’ve somehow managed to have coffee 3 days in a row.

The trail angel drove us back out to the road and we set off for Mt Baden-Powell! We crushed some easy miles and at the trailhead for the summit we ran into some trail magic. Three ladies who just liked hiking and were in the area. They had salad, lasagna, drinks, candy, baked goods, etc. They were even offering to make PB and Js for us to pack out. You rarely see food that high quality at trail magic, usually it’s dogs and burgers. Unfortunately we both had half a family-sized in our packs that had to be eaten soon, so we weren’t able to fully capitalize.

The hike up to the summit was steep but not so bad, we’re in good shape now and only needed to pack out 3 days of food. After we’d been there a little bit one of the stoners showed up. He walked up, and all he said was “I had to pop my last zyn for this” and grabbed his portable campstove and fired it full blast and ripped a dab. I’ve never done it but it’s basically the weed equivalent of moonshine instead of beer, using a heated pyrex tube to vaporize concentrated THC. This guy is just too cool, everyone on the trail loves him. He’s got a crazy mullet and this is his triple crown; meaning he’s already completed the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide Trail.

We shot the shit on the summit with Milk and Cigarettes (Mac) and Dancer. It was cool to meet Mac because we’d seen his Farout comments always a day or two ahead of us. Dancer is an extroverted ultralighter, and very Californian. We made it to little Jimmy campground, where a guy named Bear already had a fire going. He’s a super chatty interesting fellow. He’s been into backpacking since before water filters were even a thing. He smokes big cigars, drinks whiskey, and is quite the yapper. His wife is following him in an RV with his dog so he gets those luxuries whenever the trail is near a paved road. We listened to his stories for a while and cowboy camped that night.

The next 20 miles were uneventful, we descended back into the desert-y area and road walked 5 miles on highway 2 that’s been closed due to erosion. That part of the PCT has been closed to protect endangered frogs so the road walk was the detour. We made it to sulphur springs campground reasonably early and hung out a bit. The workaholics (our name for the stoners) showed up later and Seth went to chat for a bit but I was tired so I went to bed early.

In Wrightwood Seth and I had a conundrum. PCT permits are issued in two waves, and each wave is a lottery system with staggered time slots to log in and choose a date. Seth had an unlucky time slot in the second wave, I had missed the second wave entirely because at that time I was taking care of my Grandma and didn’t think I’d be doing the trail this year. Seth and I ended up getting a really crappy start date, May 22. The ideal date is usually between April 15-30, depending on snow in the sierra. You might wonder then, how were we able to start April 22 when our permits weren’t valid until May 22? PCT permits require you to be hiking at least 500 continuous miles along the trail. So when we got our permits we figured in one month we’d be in Auga Dulce, so we just set our start location as Agua Dulce. There were only two local permits we needed to bridge the gap to when our PCT permit was valid.

All this is to say, we had to make it from Wrightwood(mi 369) to Agua Dulce(mi 454) in four days otherwise our permits would technically be invalid. The odds that this would become an issue are extremely low but nonetheless we didn’t want to risk running into a grumpy ranger on a power trip. Seth’s idea was to hitch from a small fire station at mi 419 and my idea of course was to just power through and do big miles. We actually both ended up going through with our own plans. Upon closer inspection my start location was actually mi 444, 10 miles earlier, so I knew I could make the miles in time no problem. Seth however would have to go 10 miles further and had been dealing with an abomination of a heel blister that was basically 4 blisters stacked on top of each other that he felt might get infected.

When we got to the fire station that day we once again went our separate ways. He would just skip the 26 miles and hitch to Akton and I’d meet him there tomorrow. We parted around 2, and I immediately had to climb up 1500ft with no shade, when it was 85 out. After about an hour of suffering Seth sent me this:

Well I’m at least glad he was able to get a hitch…

The rest of the evening was chill. I got up on a ridge back up around 6000ft so there were some trees and reasonable shade. I called Corey to talk about his job interview and have him ship me a resupply box for hikertown. I pushed hard and ended up at a dubious tentsite around 730 that ended up being incredibly slanted but I was too tired/lazy to hike .25 up the road to the better sites. One of my tent poles broke while I was settiing up my tent. It was at the joint where it connects to another pole. I just taped them together and it looked like it would hold so I went to bed.

I slept like crap but I didn’t really care because at this point in the trail I’m in good enough shape I was able to bust out the remaining 13 miles before 10am. It helps having almost no food left. I got a ride into Alton to the ’49er saloon and had lunch and a coffee with Seth. We did some errands around town, and managed to find a tent repair kit at ace hardware which was great because I was almost ready to just impulse buy a new one. I managed to fix it with a small piece of aluminum tube and some gorilla tape. At the saloon that night we met Lil John. It’s his trail name, not the rapper. We picked up some beers to pregame the saloon with because we’re hiker trash and it was a little expensive.

Lil Jon was section hiking and was catching a train in the morning to go back home, so we reminisced with him about the mission creek washout, other totally unprepared hikers he’d seen, and cool people he’d met.

The 3 of us went to the saloon for a few drinks. I rarely drink a lot these days but even so it’s nice being at a bar when your bed is a tent out back. We chatted for a while and Seth ordered some onion rings. I’d never tried an onion ring before and I tried one and immediately ordered my own. They were amazing, very greasy but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Fast forward to 2am I wake up and immediately feel extremely nauseous. Like waayyyy sicker that I should be from a few drinks over the whole evening. I scramble for my Tums, and I hear Seth throw up. My immediate thought is Norovirus, but then I taste them and it dawns on me, the onion rings. The warning signs were there: binge eating all day, the drinks, and most of all the puddle of oil I had noticed as I finished my last onion ring 5 hours ago.

After 10-15 minutes of laying in my tent it became apparent that tums + going back to bed was not the angle. I went to the bathroom, still felt on the verge of throwing up. I thought maybe some light walking would help, it did not. Eventually I ended up just sitting in a chair in some alley, used Uber eats to order Pepto bismol from a gas station 35 min away, and played slay the spire on my phone while I waited. As I sat there in that chair in the alley, now sober, I was able to recall clearly just how disgustingly greasy those onion rings were. At least it was warm outside and not windy. Eventually around 430 my stomach settled enough to fall asleep. Probably not gonna have onion rings for a while…