CHAPTER ONE
DESERTS & SNOW: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Campo to Weldon

April 3 to May 9

513 miles

 

A broken-down barbed wire fence by a dirt road in nondescript desert scrub marked the border with Mexico. There were no notices, no signs, nothing to indicate the start of the PCT (there’s a monument now). I didn’t mind. I felt happy to be there alone and happy there was no signpost saying ‘Canada, 2650 miles’. This was my journey and I suddenly felt very possessive of it. For this year the PCT was my personal and private trail, no matter how many others I met along the way. Starting alone gave me the chance to absorb these early feelings and relish the beginning of a great adventure.

I took a few self-portraits, the camera balanced on a rock, then turned away from the border and took my first steps northwards. The journey really had begun. I felt a little unreal, elated yet calm. I didn’t know what to think about what lay ahead. The landscape here wasn’t spectacular or even particularly wild. Locals probably wouldn’t give it a second glance. For me it was quite unusual though, a semi-desert environment totally unlike anywhere in Britain. A sparse scrub of tough, drought-resistant bushes covered the ground, interspersed with small cacti and clumps of rough-barked Live Oak trees. Lizards and ground squirrels darted over the ground. This was the chaparral, vegetation I was to become very familiar with over the next few weeks. I thought it superb. The route led along dirt roads past a few ranches then after a few miles the PCT became a footpath. And I promptly lost it! I was heading in the right direction though and soon picked it up again.

After 14 miles I reached the campground where I planned on stopping for the night. To my surprise it had no water. I’d never heard of a campground without water before. I had none left either and was thirsty, having set off with far less than I needed. I hadn’t really registered that early April this far south would be so hot or that there would be little water on the trail. I quickly learnt that I must carry plenty of water. And know where the next water was to be found and drink deeply from every source. This was desert hiking and heat and thirst were major hazards. Luckily for me this first evening there was a campground host and she kindly gave me some water. This was the first example of a ‘trail angel’, a term I hadn’t heard yet but which was to become familiar. Trail angels are people who help hikers, often going out of their way to do so, and one of the aspects of trail life that gives faith in the essential goodness of humanity. The host’s son, a local volunteer ranger, gave me some tips about the next few days hiking, including possible water sources. I was on my way.

That first day my feet had become very sore and swollen in my heavy leather boots, another hazard of desert hiking. I’d removed the insoles to allow them more room but they still ached. My arms and neck were sunburnt too, despite applying sunscreen liberally several times. Time for my sunhat, I thought the next day. The sun really was the dominant feature of the first few days on the trail; hot, white and relentless. There was little shade and few shadows. Just blazing light. The sky was vast in this flat landscape, the horizons far distant. Used to the rapidly changing scenery and landscape of the British hills I felt at times as though I was walking on the spot. Only the movement of the sun showed the progression of time.

On day two I walked mostly on wide sandy and gravelly trails through the dense, often shoulder-height, impenetrable chaparral. Towards the end of the day the first hills appeared; the Laguna Mountains. The trail climbed upwards beside big red rock boulders. In the shade of one of these I met my first other PCT hikers, Scott and Jim, sitting next to huge packs with gear strapped all over the outside that looked frighteningly heavy. I gazed at them wonderingly. Was I under-equipped? I was relieved when they told me this was their third day out and the weight of their packs was already a problem. I never saw them again or heard how much further they hiked. The PCTA says only 50% of thru hikers actually complete the trail today. Back in 1982 with far less information available, and heavier gear, the percentage was lower. At least 120 through-permits were issued by the Forest Service in 1982. Only eleven of us completed a through-hike to Canada. Of the others some dropped out completely while some skipped snowbound sections and only did part of the trail.

The Laguna Mountains only reach a little over 6,000 feet, small in Western U.S. terms, but are still high enough to have a different environment to the desert not far below (and still more than 1500 feet higher than the highest mountain in Britain but then the PCT at the Mexican border is nearly 3,000 feet high). As I climbed into the Lagunas the chaparral gave way to sparse oak woods and then denser pine forest, my first experience of the wonderful pine forests I was to revel in all the way to Canada. Out to the east I could see the lifeless orange void of the Anza-Borrego Desert shimmering in a heat haze. The rich, reddish-barked pines gave welcome shade under their spreading boughs. These were Jeffery pines, the commonest conifers in Southern California as they are extremely drought resistant. Growing between 5000 and 9000 feet they cloak the mountains that rise out of the desert.

The change as I entered the pine forest was abrupt and dramatic. Here it was cool and humid with moist air rising from the snow patches that dotted the ground between the widely spaced trees. Someone had even been skiing here, their parallel tracks following the line of the trail. I found this unusual as I hadn’t discovered cross-country skiing at the time – later in the walk I was to travel with two skiers and realise how useful skis were for crossing deep snow. I’d meet this skier in a week’s time but for now I was alone. I camped beside a little creek in the forest, the first wild camp of the walk. I wasn’t far from a road though and a little exploration revealed a Mexican restaurant. I’d already learnt on my British long walks that passing by any opportunity for food was unwise so I forgot the instant noodles and packet soup I’d brought from home for these first few days and dined on much more appetising tortillas and enchiladas.

Two days and twenty-eight miles into the walk and my feet were already in tatters. I had four blisters, many sore spots and they were badly swollen and ached all over. I knew I wouldn’t get much further without doing something about this. I’d brought some light running shoes for town and camp wear so on day three I hiked in these. The difference was astounding. My feet felt fine again. The boots went in the pack and were to be carried many miles over the coming weeks. They were much more comfortable on my back than on my feet and proved to my satisfaction the old adage that a pound on the feet is equivalent to five pounds on the back. I could have dispensed with them altogether but I knew that much bigger mountains lay ahead where there was likely to be much more snow than these thin patches.

Early the next morning I reached my first supply point, the tiny little mountain hamlet of Mount Laguna. After collecting my supply parcel from the Post Office I called in at the little store, my journal in hand, open at the page with the first of many shopping lists that were to decorate its pages. This list read:

 

Pot scourer

Loo paper

Toothpaste

Candles

7 choc.bars

Biscuits

Margarine

Band Aids

1lb. sugar

1 pkt.soup

Trail mix

Dried fruit

Instant breakfast

Jam/honey

Postcards

Vit.pills

 

Eight items were checked, eight would have to wait until the next store in, I hoped, five days’ time. I also marked my supply parcel list with the day of arrival, a day earlier than my estimate. Doing so brought home to me that the walk really had begun. Twenty-five parcels to go.

Mount Laguna was a secretive little place. The dark brown, low wooden houses and wide, dusty roads blended into the surrounding forest, a forest that the town had not quite escaped from, so that the buildings seemed to be hiding cautiously amongst the trees. It vanished within minutes of my heading back to my trail. All I could see behind me were the pines.

The Laguna Mountains are a tilted block of granite with the steep slope to the east. The PCT followed the crest on a path marked as the Desert Divide Trail which gave striking views down to the ridged badlands of the Anza-Borrego Desert, some 4,000 feet below. A sterile brown colour, the hills in the desert came to life at dawn and dusk when they caught the rays of the setting and rising sun and glowed red and gold. Then Oriflamme Mountain was aptly named. To the west the mountains dipped slowly away into rolling pine and oak forest that in turn changed abruptly to the undulating chaparral country. Ahead lay the next mountain range, the San Jacinto Mountains, with 10,834 foot San Jacinto Peak looking very white. I would be there within a week.

A storm is approaching, I’d been told in Mount Laguna. By early afternoon flat saucer-shaped clouds indicated high winds. Soon the first cold gusts arrived and for the first time I needed to wear my warm fibre-pile jacket and balaclava. Clouds piled in on the wind but broke up as they reached the crest. There was no rain but snowmelt meant there were dozens of seasonal streams so I didn’t need to carry any water. The wind and the streams continued the next day during which I descended back to the chaparral and passed boarded up old gold mines outside the tiny hamlet of Banner before road walking across the San Felipe Ranch and along a highway to San Felipe itself, another small hamlet. Here the next trail angel appeared. There was a combined gas station/sandwich store/caravan site called The Log Cabin. It was closed but as I’d run out of water I knocked on the door to ask for some. The owner appeared, welcomed me in and gave me tea and a piece of her birthday cake. Friends there to celebrate with her told me there were record snows in the Sierra Nevada, something I was to hear regularly over the next few weeks. I was given the key to an outside water tap and allowed to camp behind the building sheltered from the still strong wind.

Three more mostly uneventful and not very inspiring days on rock-hard dirt roads through flat verdant cattle country took me to the edge of the San Jacinto Mountains and the welcome shade of wooded canyons. More interesting than the walking was my first encounter with the annual gathering of ‘trailers’, as PCT thru-hikers were then known. Warner Springs was yet another place consisting of just a few houses - something I was already becoming used to and which was typical of towns along the PCT all the way to Canada. Here I met Joel and Jeannie sprawled in front of the post office with their dog, Riley. They’d set off two days before me and were footsore and weary. Soon two other PCT hikers arrived. They were from Finland so I wasn’t the only European on the trail. Over the next few weeks I would regularly meet and here of other trailers struggling northwards from Mexico until it felt as though a small community was on the move. Key contact points were post offices and restaurants, both essential to the wellbeing of hikers. Most post offices had PCT registers where you could check who’d already been through and look for messages and hints of what lay ahead. As this was long before the days of text messages, emails and online journals the registers were one of the few ways of finding out about other hikers and leaving messages. Some hikers also left notes along the trail both for individuals and giving general advice. Often though weeks would go by with no idea what was happening with people I’d met. Some of them I never heard about again.

Two topics dominated the register at Warner Springs: the state of people’s feet and the state of the snow in the mountains to come. Rumours were spreading of the deep, late snow in the Sierra Nevada and there were stories of avalanches and even deaths (the last referred to a huge avalanche that killed seven people at the Alpine Meadows ski resort though I didn’t find out about this until years later). Today of course finding out information about snow in the mountains is easy – though that wouldn’t allay concerns.

None of the four hikers at Warner Springs had any snow gear - I was carrying an ice axe - and they were all concerned about the snow ahead. A phone call was made to the San Jacinto Ranger Station. There’s about ten feet of snow above six thousand feet but it’s quite firm, we were told. In Anza, just a few hours walk from the San Jacintos, there was a note in the PCT register advising a different route down from the mountains if the snow was deep. I had more immediate problems. My second supply parcel hadn’t arrived (the only one that didn’t on the whole walk). The local store provided instant noodles, packet soups and boxes of macaroni and cheese sauce (mac n’cheese - a hiker staple). It would have to do. A road walk led to the start of the climb into the mountains and the snow. I read a paperback along this rather dull stretch of walking, something that was to become a habit on this and future long walks.

Not far beyond a last cafe, which provided coffee and sandwiches (I already knew never to pass one by, it could be the last for a long time) I entered the San Bernardino National Forest and camped amongst the pines. I’d been out a week and had walked 115 miles. The going had been easy other than the heat but there’d been rather too many roads. I was looking forward to bigger mountains and wilder terrain.

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 impressive 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 though 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.

The little town of Wrightwood was just three miles from the PCT, which is why I’d decided to use it as a supply point, preferring to walk the extra six miles in and out than carry ten days food in one go. What I didn’t know was that the descent from Blue Ridge was very steep. There was supposed to be a trail but I couldn’t find it in the snow and ended up descending what was probably the wrong canyon. The terrain was treacherous and the steepness unnerving. This descent was the scariest part of the walk so far. Initially I was on hard icy snow where I wished I’d had crampons and was very glad of my ice axe. This changed lower down to equally steep soft and loose snow mixed in with steep loose scree and steep loose mud. At every step the ground slipped from under me. Very scared I slithered and skidded down 3,000 feet of this, hanging off my ice axe. Finally the slope eased off and I could walk normally. Soon I was in Wrightwood, another pleasant town in the woods, where I discovered the clocks had gone forward the night before so there would be an extra hour of daylight in the evening. On the trail this didn’t really matter as I didn’t walk to the clock anyway. I’m not one of those hikers who’s walking within minutes of waking up and who does most of the day’s distance before noon (I have read that this is the mark of a serious walker). I struggle to be walking an hour after waking up. Mostly I don’t even try for an early start and just wake up slowly and set off when I’m relaxed and ready then walk into the evening. I don’t try and follow a set pattern either. I prefer to follow how I feel at the time and to react to my surroundings. Of course I had to plan supplies but whilst I might know that it was 90 miles to the next supply point and that I had to be there in 6 days if I wasn’t to run out of food that didn’t mean that I set out to walk 15 miles every day. I might walk 10 miles one day and 20 the next. I might stop to camp at a lovely site early in the afternoon or I might walk on into the night because I felt energetic. I didn’t plan breaks either, unlike some walkers who like to stop for ten minutes every hour or always have an hours break half way through the day. I stopped when I felt like it, often because there was a good view or a water source, and sometimes walked for many hours without a break. Where knowing the time did matter was so that I could arrive in places before the post office closed.

As I’d arrived in Wrightwood on a Sunday I couldn’t pick up my supply parcel until the next day. While I waited I went shopping for extra food, film and books so I could leave reasonably early the following morning. Remembering how hungry I’d been feeling I made up some very rich trail mix from M&Ms, butterscotch flavoured pieces, carob-coated walnuts and raisins. That should pack a high-energy punch, I thought (it did but also turned out to be rather too sweet). Then, on Warren Roger’s recommendation, I visited two stalwarts of the Pacific Crest Club, Phil and Bing Le Fouvre, who kept the Wrightwood PCT Register and had a reputation for hospitality to long distance hikers. Sure enough they welcomed me in and let me take a bath (so much more soothing than a shower!) and wash my clothes (it would be chary to say this was in self-defence but I expect I did stink). When my fibre-pile jacket (for those curious fibre-pile was the precursor to fleece) came out of the drier I was amazed at how fluffy it was. I hadn’t realised just how matted it had become. Leafing through the register I was interested to find two more British hikers who’d done the PCT.

That night I slept out in some woods at the edge of town. The night was warm and humid and for the first time my sleeping bag felt a little too hot. Traffic disturbed me early in the morning and when the first coffee shop opened for breakfast at 7 a.m. I was outside waiting. Full of a giant cooked breakfast I was then outside the Post Office when it opened. The contents of my parcel decanted into the pack I took the latter back to the Le Fouvre’s to weigh it. 56lbs. That was with a week’s food, 11/2 litres of white gas and two paperback books. I was pleased to see that there were four evening meals I hadn’t tried yet in my supplies but disappointed that two of them required simmering for twenty-five minutes. Why ever had I bought those? It wasn’t the time that bothered me but the fuel use. I just hoped they were tasty.

Wrightwood being a ski town with the Mountain High Resort just outside it I thought it might have an outdoor gear shop. It didn’t. For the High Sierra I wanted crampons, gaiters and snowshoes. Maybe I would have to leave the trail to go out and buy them.

The climb back up to the PCT from Wrightwood took two hours. Heading uphill I took a better route and although steep the terrain didn’t feel threatening. There followed several hours on a mix of trails and dirt roads past closed ski tows, the winter season being over, and closed campgrounds, the summer season not having started. The immediate environs weren’t inspiring but looking back I could see Mount San Antonio while ahead was Mount Baden-Powell. I stopped for the day right at the start of the ascent of the latter in Vincent Gap and made camp under a spreading interior live oak tree by a snowmelt stream. Setting up camp had now become almost automatic. Lay out my groundsheet, inflate my sleeping mat, spread my sleeping bag out on it. The pack was propped up with my ice axe or propped against a tree. The stove was set up by the groundsheet. Once my water containers were full I could sit on the mat and relax, light the stove and make dinner. I loved creating this little haven in the wilds each night. Camping is an important part of the backpacking experience for me and I liked to have time to enjoy staying in one place a short while and watch the wildlife and the landscape and the sky, especially when I could sleep under the stars and didn’t need the tent. In fact one of the most delightful experiences of the whole walk was to lie under the trees listening to the quiet subtle sounds of the night and looking out to the distant lights of the universe. This spot was quite pleasant but sadly over-used with several blackened fire rings full of rusty cans and broken glass. The Angeles Crest Highway was not far away, making access easy in summer. Now the road was still closed for the winter so there was no traffic.

The previous day I’d seen three fresh sets of prints on the trail and suspected they might be from Scott, Dave and Larry. They tracks had vanished before I’d reached Vincent Gap though and I’d forgotten all about them until the next morning when I heard voices approaching as I ate breakfast. And there they were, having been camped just a few miles back. I must have walked right past. Having no ice axe or crampons Larry decided to walk the road round Mount Baden-Powell while Scott, Dave and I set off up the steep snowy mountain. The climb took us through pine and fir forest and then 2000 year old gnarled and wind-stunted limber pines. The snow was just soft enough to kick firm steps. This 9407 foot peak was the first real mountain of the walk and the view from the small summit was superb. Looking back I could see Mount San Antonio and Blue Ridge and, far in the distance now, San Gorgonio Peak and San Jacinto Peak. Ahead the mountain fell away to dusty foothills and the Mohave Desert. The sun was hot and the air sharp and crisp, making the summit a delightful place to linger. Unsurprisingly Mount Baden-Powell, named for the founder of the Boy Scouts back in the 1930s, is very popular with Scout groups when snow-free. There were no other people or even any tracks this early in the spring however.

Descent was on a neat little corniced ridge that undulated over a succession of lower summits. It was afternoon now and the sun was hot so the snow was soon soft and the going more arduous than on the ascent. Finally I realised it was easier to slide than trudge and had a 400 foot sitting glissade down to the highway at the bottom of the mountain. Here we camped at a closed picnic area, ignoring the sign that read No Overnight Camping. Soon after we’d set up camp we were surprised to be joined by two other PCT hikers, Gary and Tom, and their dog Hershey, who’d followed our tracks in the snow. It was nearly two weeks since we’d last met any other PCT hikers and we’d forgotten there were others on the trail. Writing in my journal by candlelight I noted ‘Today possibly the best of the trip yet. A real mountain day’. We’d only walked ten miles but the distance didn’t matter.

A mix of snowy hills, pine forests, sandy washes and chaparral occupied the next three days as we dipped in and out of mountains and desert. We met three more PCT hikers and only the second group of non-PCT hikers I’d seen. The walking was pleasant without being dramatic. My head was still on Mount Baden-Powell. A final descent, looking out over a cloud inversion to desert hills, took us to the old mining town of Acton where we found Larry and two PCT hikers who’d set off a month before me. Larry had a fresh salad and strawberries waiting for us, a delicious feast after all the days on dried food. Even better he’d met a local woman, Delree, who’d offered to give us a lift into Los Angeles the next day. I didn’t particularly want to visit L.A. but this did solve my problem regarding gear for the High Sierra.

A strange day followed. An urban day of freeways, cars and buildings. We visited four outdoor stores in the San Fernando Valley. I spent $250 and came away with crampons, snowshoes, gaiters, insulated bootees, High Sierra topo maps, a quart water bottle to replace one that had cracked and, most pleasing of all, a copy of The Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Sierra Nevada. Now I just had to carry it all across the Mohave Desert. Unusual though it was, the day off from hiking felt good. It was 17 days since my last one in Idyllwild.

Back in Acton other PCT hikers had arrived and soon there were eleven of us discussing the trail. The big Transverse Ranges lay behind us now. Ahead only the Mohave Desert separated us from the Sierra Nevada. Only the Mohave Desert, only excessive heat and lack of water, only a real desert. And then would come the snow. The Mohave Desert isn’t the barren sandy desert of the imagination though. It’s not the Sahara. Although it receives less than five inches of rain a year the Mohave is rich in plants and animals with over 250 species of the latter. I was looking forward to crossing it, though not to the heat.

Initially the walking was in more chaparral and dusty brush through the low Sierra Palona Mountains. The air was hot and dry and we were thankful for the trickles of the last snowmelt water in the creeks, creeks that would be dry soon. There were many dirt roads and many dirt bikes roaring past with a stench of petrol. But there were also flowers, masses of flowers, especially tall yellow Western Wallflowers. On the second day out from Acton we saw our first rattlesnake, a big one, about four feet long, which rattled at Larry. It was the first of many and almost subconsciously I soon began avoiding long grass and the vicinity of bushes. Once when the tall grass was unavoidable we were walking on the narrow trail in single file when a loud rattle came from the grass at Larry’s feet. Chaos ensued as Larry leapt backwards and collided heavily with Scott whilst Dave and I piled into the two of them. Then we saw the snake, a dark four foot long thickset coil that slowly straightened out and slid into the grass.

As we approached the flat expanse of the real desert the weather changed unexpectedly. It had been mostly hot and clear for over two weeks but overnight the skies greyed and we woke to a thick wet mist and moisture dripping off the trees and bushes. A day of drizzle, cold wind and low cloud followed. Again the flowers were the main joy of the walking, particularly the great swathes of bright orange poppies. The desert was in bloom, a short-lived event. Little settlements provided relief from the weather. At Lake Hughes we stocked up with the last food supplies for a while, and ate plenty too. At the Fairmont Inn Betty and Ralph Morgan cooked us a superb meal. We met few people but those we did were all friendly and curious about our walk. One local man gave us half a dozen fresh eggs each. That evening I broke four into my Mushroom Pilaf, keeping two for breakfast.

The route here and right across the Mohave Desert was a temporary one whilst negotiations went on with the large private Tejon Ranch for a permanent one. Today’s route is very different from the one I hiked, the only place on the trail where this is so for any distance. Some books though still suggest that the route I took is preferable to the official one, which sounds very much a compromise. The crossing of the Mohave began on a dirt road signed 140th St.West which we followed for ten miles towards the distant Tehachapi Mountains, at first through alfalfa fields where sprinklers were running constantly and then out into the dry desert and the first Joshua trees. I found these giant members of the yucca genus fascinating. Slightly sinister and slightly animate I kept expecting them to move. The biblical names comes from Mormon settlers who crossed the Mohave in the nineteenth century. On this long road section I read the natural history guide to the Sierra Nevada, which amused the others.

Across the Mohave there was a series of isolated homes whose residents had built up a network of overnight stops and water supply points for PCT hikers, an almost essential service. We were heading for a remote house belonging to an elderly lady called Mrs Davison who welcomed hikers. She made us coffee and let us sleep on her covered porch as rain still looked likely. The sky cleared though and a bright nearly full moon rose into the sky. In the distance we could see the lights of the desert towns of Lancaster and Palmdale. Wind chimes hung from the porch, their sound soothing and melodic in the warm desert wind.

From Mrs Davison’s the next thirty-five miles mostly followed the Los Angeles Aqueduct through an arm of the Mohave Desert known as Antelope Valley. The aqueduct was built in 1913 to bring water from Owens Valley below the High Sierra to rapidly growing and thirsty Los Angeles. Every mile there is an inspection cap and back in 1982 these could be opened (I believe most are now locked). There was just room to insert a water bottle and reach down and fill it with the cold rushing snowmelt water that was essential to Los Angeles and, at the time, to PCT hikers. Ten miles out from Mrs Davison’s we stopped at one of these water sources and decided to sit out the heat of the day. We pitched our groundsheets as awnings to provide shade and cooled off by dowsing each other with the cold water. Under the awnings it was 27ºC. In the sun it was much, much hotter.

Rattlesnakes were common in the Mohave Desert. That first day we encountered four, including two big Mojave Greens. One of these lay in the middle of the dirt road and rattled aggressively at us, only moving when Scott lobbed stones towards it. After our siesta we saw two more that quickly slithered away as we walked into the night watching the sun set and the moon rise over the desert. We also saw large tortoises moving slowly over the stony ground. Finally after a 24-mile day we camped next to the Aqueduct. Despite the late night a bright moon and a strong gusty wind made sleep difficult and I was awake early to see a spectacular desert sunrise, the whole land glowing gold and red.

We were through the flat heart of the desert now and entering the foothills that would lead to the Sierra Nevada. This was still desert terrain though - the Mohave ranges in altitude from below sea level to over 8,000 feet - and still hot and dry. Tiny settlements provided liquid and breaks from the heat - Cinco, which started out as a work camp for workers on the Aqueduct, where we had a meal at Spragues Restaurant, the only building, then Cantil, founded as a station on the Nevada and California Railroad, which had a good little store and a post office. At the last place we sat out the heat of the day again, resting from noon until late afternoon and drinking fruit juice and eating enchiladas and ice cream. Another PCT hiker wandered in. Wayne Fuiten was ex-military and highly organised, clicking off every step on a counter, resting for five minutes every hour and averaging nineteen miles a day. He’d left Campo nine days after me and had taken no rest days. So far I’d had three. We were to see Wayne frequently over the next three days and I was to meet him again in northern Oregon but we never hiked together as my random stops and widely varying daily mileages couldn’t have fitted with his organised progress.

Continuing along the aqueduct after our siesta we eventually camped beside it in Jawbone Canyon. I just loved these Western names! I pitched the tent to keep the wind off but slept on top of my sleeping bag because of the heat. I was looking forward to cooler nights. They would come as the trail was climbing now, up through pleasant high desert mountains past Butterbredt Spring, a nice spot with cottonwood trees and a small pool, and along Butterbredt Canyon to Butterbredt Well, where there was a windmill to pump the water. The water in the well was green and polluted by cattle but we managed to extract clean water from the inlet pipe. The repeated occurrence of the name Butterbredt made me wonder just where it came from. Research after the walk revealed a German immigrant called Frederick Butterbredt who prospected in the area in the late 1860s and whose descendants lived in the area for many years.*

The day ended under more cottonwoods beside Kelso Creek (cottonwoods are a type of poplar that grows by water - I was to learn on other desert walks that the sight of cottonwoods in the distance meant there would probably be water there). People from a nearby house, the Plants, gave us fresh water. The scenery was pleasant, the walking not difficult and there were still masses of flowers. Even so I would be glad to leave the desert. The heat was overwhelming and the sandy landscape changed very slowly at walking pace. Never having been to a desert before I’d been excited at the thought of hiking through one and was glad I’d experienced it. Now though I was excited at the thought of leaving it. I also felt elated because at Kelso Creek I passed the 500-mile mark. I could let myself be excited too as only nineteen miles remained to the town of Weldon, which since Campo had meant the end of the beginning, the end of the initiation and the start of the Range of Light, the magical Sierra Nevada. The knowledge that these mountains were still snowbound and as far as I knew no-one had yet hiked the PCT through them this year only added spice to my anticipation. These were the mountains that had sparked the whole adventure and now I was almost there.

We were three thousand feet higher than Jawbone Canyon and thankfully that meant a cooler night. I fell asleep watching bats flying round the cottonwoods. The last desert day saw a change in the weather, which felt like a welcome to the mountains, and it was very windy and quite cold. The walk to Weldon was along a road, hard on the feet but fast, and with the weather keeping us moving we were soon there. Weldon was a dusty little town strung out along the highway. We established a base at the KOA Campground, which was to be home for three nights as we spent two days in Weldon. Apart from one small store at Kennedy Meadows this was the last place I’d see for twenty-six days so it was here that preparations for the snow and the mountains were made. I collected my supply parcel from the post office and was delighted to find five tubes of glacier cream, which I’d need in the sun and the snow at high altitude, and excited by Warren’s maps and the next sections of the trail guide. Scott and Dave collected skis, which they’d stashed here when they drove over from home. Larry’s snow gear arrived, sent from his home, so he would be able to come through the Sierra. Wayne however, who turned up soon after us, was going to hitch-hike round the Sierra, intending to return and hike this section after the snow had melted. I guessed his strict schedule wouldn’t work in high snowy terrain. Another PCT hiker, Ken, who I’d first met in Idyllwild, had changed his mind about going through the snow and was going to walk roads round the Sierra. We’d met no-one else who was planning on hiking through the snow.

The weather in Weldon was chilly and damp, with drizzle and the occasional rumble of thunder. What would it be like up in the mountains? Soon we would know.

*More information can be found on the Desert Explorer website - http://www.dustyway.com/2007/09/pioneer-frederick-butterbredt.html