We are at mile 566 already, and hiking for more than a month already. Keeping trekking of this blog is pretty difficult we noticed, since we just want to eat and sleep after a full day off hiking. But since I am now on a comfortable soft bed, I ll try to give a short summary of the last week(s)...

So... Bubble bath jacuzzi was the last thing I remember talking about. That was cajon pass. We had to wait two days for the heavy snowstorm to calm down. We never expected that to happen here in sunny California. So we did wait. And on the last afternoon, we happily hiked out again. Confident about our hiking skills, we found a path that seemed to be a short cut. After 1,5 hour of bush whacking, we ended up 5 min walk from the motel where we stayed, eating junk food at McDonald's. We got to do 1,2 miles that evening. So no more short cuts for us. ( a bit later we learned that we only had been 10 meters away from the trail, at the point where we decided to go back...)

The day after that we walked to Wrightwood. Our friends tutone and methinks had enough resupply for the coming days, so Felix and I walked a bit further to be able to get to wrightwood in one day, for our resupply. It was a long day ( about 24 miles) and during the last hours I was feeling worse with every step. At that point we were in the snow at relatively high elevation, so I thought about altitude sickness. But as we were decending via the acorn path, I wasn't feeling better.

And there they were again,...trailangels. As we were walking in town, a married couple called Corrine and Tom, stopped by with their car and asked us if they could give us a ride. We jumped in and explained that we were heading out for a hostel and pizza. Instead of driving us there, they offered us a place to stay. And we were very happy with that. Especially when we saw the wonderful cosy room with shower. After cleaning up they called us and served us pizza and wine. I still wasn't feeling too well, so Felix was again a pizza king, but the circumstances already made me feel way better. The next morning I felt so bad, that I didn't want to hike. It felt a bit uncomfortable to ask, but Tom and Corrine let us stay another night. They made lunch for us, took us out for dinner to a authentic Mexican restaurant and told us about their two sons, fresh born grandson, rescued dog called Summit, work, wildfires, climbing mount Whitney....It was fun and wonderful. So incredible friendly people.

The day after we summited snowy mount. Balden powel (9399 something feet). I was able to get 1 mile per hour (even after Felix took my water) and we hit the record of a 10mile day ;p, but it was worth it. The view was stunning. And we were happy to not been hiking in the snow storm. You could see the power of the storm leftovers everywhere. And with the illness; after we were in Acton, we heard about a virus that got around and slowed a big group of hikers down at wrightwood. Some even were picked up by a helicopter because they couldn't stop throwing up... :s I might possibly been effected a bit.

After this, winter ended and summer started while we were descending back into the heat of the desert. We were lucky with relatively mild temperatures till now though, but we are probably going to be grilled tomorrow. We are in Mojave right now ( seen "wild"? Sherryll strayed started her journey here). Tomorrow morning we will through our heavy monster packs (7 days of food, 7 liters of water) on our backs, and we will start our last heavy and hard goodbye hike through the Californian desert. We will be rewarded with one of the most beautiful places on earth: the Sierra Nevada. Only one more week, only 135 miles to go.

See you in Kennedy meadows!!

ps: I need to go to sleep, but I will put some pics of a weird guy we met on a campground while searching for water. He was hunting rattle snakes and showed us one. He was very friendly and helped us out, but also a bit freaky. But we saw a rattle snake now and even touched one ;).

S.

mi 266 (Big bear Lake) to mi 342 (Cajon Pass)

DAY 20 - 266 to 285

Izzy, the 18year old graduate who is walking the pct just before she is going to college in August, was just around the corner of our Honey Bear Lodge in Big Bear Lake and happen to be there with her grandma, who happen to had a car with her. So after we tried to eat all the mountains of food that we had bought two days earlier, she gave us a ride to the start of the trail again.

We were happy to be active again. The king size beds, showers, food...where great, but it was just enough. Off we went. We started hiking again and it felt great. We left late, but we easily made 20miles before dark and slept cowboy style again under the stars. While I was sleeping like a princes, the others were a bit cold in there sleepingbags. Even Ivo, who has this amazing "Onesie" (he looks like Spider-Man in it: if I can I'll try to convince him that a picture is absolute necessary to picture the hiker subculture ;p ) was cold.

DAY 21 - 285 to 304

A bit sleep deprived, we started walking again. This time my blisters started to grow. I seem to get a new one every 100 miles (which is pretty decent considering black nails and infected wounds of others..). This day I couldn't get forward. Every step hurt and as I tried to not step on the sore parts of my feet, I started to get punished for my silly walk. Mr Backwise was still flying over the hills, without any problems,while my mood was getting worse, with every step I took. By the time that I felt the utmost selfpitty and felt that I had to sit down and cry with a bag of chocolate next to me, I heard honeystick calling me. I looked down, and saw that she was weaving at me, with next to her a sparkling fresh creek! I went down, took my narrow shoes from my swollen feet, got rid of my stinky warm hiker clothes and by the time the others arrived as well, I ran towards the water and jumped into the ice cold creek. Within a few minutes, everybody was splashing around like crazy and enjoying this magical thing called water.

After that I felt way better and we even got a 19 mile day out of it. We found a nice stop and didn't even think about getting the tent up. Cowboy camping it is..

DAY 22 - 304 to 328

This day was a looooong day. But a very nice one as well. Within 1,5h we arrived at the hot springs that we were actually aiming for one day earlier. Ivo shinsplins and the ladies blisters kept us from saving this as a warm early morning bath. And so we did. Two / three hours we bubbled around in this little paradise, where the tourism unfortunately leaves to much traces though.

As thru-hikers, we have been taught to leave no trace. Everything we take with us, should be taking care of with the least impact on nature. We even make decent catholes for poop and carry our used toilet paper with us till the next trashcontainer. (No it's not disgusting, double pack it and you are totally fine). Here, next to these lovely springs, where hot water comes from deep out of the earth and where the creek around it, is a important water source for lots of animals and (thru)hikers AND where big signs say: no camping, no campfires, leave no trace... Just 10 feet from these signs and water, you find toilet paper, human facis, sanitary pads, cans, plastic bags... next to a bunch of camping families and friends who obvesily had have a campfire party the night before. It's really irritating and a bit sad to see this. :(

We enjoyed it anyways. After this we walked further and passed by some very aggressively written graffiti in a bit less pretty region. In the middle we were very hot again and made a break to eat and check out our blisters. Just as I wanted to renew my moleskin, something crowl into my shirt. I directly thought about these bad Lyme ticks, so I jumped up trying to get the thing out of my shirt and of course it bite me. And it wasn't a tick, I don't know for sure what it did was. It's needle was still in me and left me a nice sore pain which stretched from my neck till almost my fingertips. While I was jumping around Felix and Tuntone started undressing me, I had to laugh, because it actually was a sort of funny situation. It turned out to be all fine, I just have a metal shoulder now and I hope that next time, I will act more accordingly; stay calm and you might not get bitten. Well, I ll do my best.

Because of this we got delayed a bit, still made it to silverwoodbridge before sunset. Here we thought to see a nice bridge where we could have dinner in the sunset, but it turned out to be a ugly paved road with green stinky water underneath it. We had dinner next to the road in a less windy spot. Our non-cooked diner, did taste like ***** and it was cold. Still we were having fun out there. Feeling like some happy homeless hippie hikers. After the break we walked on and met...TRAILMAGIC! Bananas, grapes, chocolate an water!

After that we all felt like superman and hiked on into the night. We past a huge lake and finnaly arrived at a parking with a restroom and picknick table. I was happy to be there, because I was almost falling a sleep while walking the last mile. Felix did took very good care of me though. Holding my hand and made sure that I could see al the ridges by shining extra light with his flashlight. What a gentleman..

DAY 23

The next morning Malibu found us again. With him, we walked towards milkshakes and tacos. The idea was to get as much food as possible (if you didn't noticed before, we need / want to eat a lot. 4000 calories a day is minimum). And so we did. We all ordered the 870calorie milkshake and fries at mc Donald's, then we moved on to Taco Bell to get a quessodilla and finally finished in the subway with a foot big sandwich and a 1,2 liter soda cup. (I couldn't resist laughing as Felix ordered a large soda and got this "bucket". My small cup was a large Europe size).

At subway, we read the weather report which said that storm would come into the mountain area of San Bernardino, just where we wanted to summit. Snowstorm with 9inch of snow within one day. This would mean very cold, dangerous windy situations at 9000 feet. So we went where all the hikers went. At a motel called "best western" next to highway 15. Very romantic, with tankstations and fastfoodchains as foodsupliers, but we have a jacuzzi and kingsize beds, so we will manage ;) .

We do not really like the situation, we want to continue our hike, but like they say: better save than sorry.

S.

Day 14
Idyllwild (179 mi) - Campground (190,5)

After a delicious breakfast we met Roadwalker at the bakery just before we left. Roadwalker is a Prof. of socioligy who is hiking and doing research on the hiking community...what a job...
We got a hitch to the trailhead and walked up the rather steep "Devils slide" to get back to the PCT. Because of a stormwarning we decided at a trailjunction not to summit San Jancinto, which is supposed to have amazing views. We walked on along Fuller Ridge (about 3000 meter elevation), where the wind became stronger an heavy dark clouds were coming closer. We prepared ourselfs for rain and walked on in a steady, rather fast pace to get to a lower elevation. On our way we met Velcro (he uses velcro to attach equipment to his backpack), who tried to set up is his tent close to the trail,  but then decided to walk with us to find a better campside. It was getting dark, but still there was no rain. We finally reached a campingspot that appeared to be more protected from the wind by big rocks, so we decided to set up our tents to have a fast dinner and fall asleep.

Day 15
Campground (190, 5) - Ziggy and the bear (210, 8)

After a rather cold night (about 0ºC), we walked mainly downhill, back into more desert like terrain. On our way down we had views over the valley, which had fields of windmills to produce electricity and really, really, really long trains driving through it.

Down in the valley, close by our planed destination of the day, hiking was slowed down by strong winds and loose sand. We finally arrived at Ziggy and the bear,  a trail-angels place close by the trail. Ziggy and the bear are an older couple who let thru hikers sleep in their backyard. Former thru-hikers and friends help them with the organization. It is so great to have trailangels: Showers, water, food, hikerboxes, (boxes where hikers can put their leftovers from their resupplypackages). After chatting with the other hikers we ate pizza from ceasars. We met Honeystick (Izzy), who also was at the Kickoff and who is a friend of Tutone and Methinks. Even with a huge wooden fence around the backyard it was very windy. We used tables to protect us from the wind when we cowboy camped in the backyard.It was windy but luckily not cold when we fell asleep...

Day 16
Izzy and the bear (210, 8) - Camping close to Mission Creek (230)

Velcro had already started earlier. We left at about 7.20 a.m., and walked along hundereds of windmills and entered San Bernardino National Forrest. Honeystick was in the lead (she is small, only 18 years old, has some kneeproblems but is hiking fast!!!)

After a steep climb, we caught up with Velcro. There Susanne had one of her famous sneeze attacks, which were described to sound similar to a machine gun (hitchhitchhitchhitchhitchhitchhitch). That was the birth of her trailname: Sneezl.
As we walked on we crossed our first creek, where we filtered water and cooled our feet. At the second small creek, Velcro an I were having a bath (after pre-washing) but we barely got wet. We passed the creek a few times and cowboycamped close to Mission creek at the end of the day. Honeystick walked faster and was ahead. Velcro (56, living in Israel, woodworker), showed us photos of a beautiful house that he has built. We made plans to get up early the next morning.

Day 17
Mission Creek (230) - campingspot (253)

We left at 5 a.m. Methinks was tired because he did not sleep well. Again we had to hike mainly uphill. Again the wheatherreport was giving a storm and snow warning. Again. In the desert. I expected the desert to be dry and warm...
After a long day of hiking, we were still on an higher elevation. Already tired we decided to walk on to find a protected campside. We passed an animal park with exotic animals, which are supposed be used as animal-actors in hollywood. We saw a bear in a small cage. It was sad and disturbung to see him walk up and down his small cage. We moved on and just before we reached the campingspot we were looking for we found ..... tatatat....TRAILMAGIC! A container filled with water, chocolate, bananas, jelly bellies...it is great. Not because we were starving, it was rather the surprise (ok, ok...also the chocolate) that improved our morale. After taking just a little bit, we hurried to set up our tents in expectation of the storm. We all were tired. everybody was preparing their dinner. Because of the drought in California alcohol stoves are not allowed. Susanne and I chose to not cook but just rehydrate our food (we have read about it, and a lot of hikers do it). Cold soacked macaroni cheese are kind of evil when it is already cold outside... We have to buy different food to rehydrate or get a gas stove. Idohan smashed potatoes are actually good, even cold;)

Day 18
Campingspot (253) - Highway to Big Bear City/Lake (266)

This was a cold night! Snow was on our tent, the condensation inside the tent was frozen and the waterbottles were frozen. Tutones tent was difficult to set up and nearly sacked under the weight of the snow and the wind.
It was still cold outside. With all our clothes on we hiked fast to become warm and to get to the highway to hitchhike to big bear city. At the highway a lot of cars drove by and for the first time it seemed like we are having a hard time getting a hitch. But then a car stopped and a hiker, who rented a car was doing the trailangel-job and took us to the post office in big bear city. "Doc"(not the fysiotherapist), also offered to bring us to big bear lake, where we planed to stay. We waited to get picked up again at a doughnut shop where we got the calories back that we had burned before. The owner of the shop was hiker-friendly and seemed to know everybody in town. We found a cozy cabin at the Honey bear lodge. After shopping at Vons we cooked a chili and had all the Vegetables we have missed, sitting by the fireplace and reciting monty python.

Day 19
Big Bare Lake (Zero)

Relaxing, Resupply and lost and found of mobile that got lost during a hitch in town (lucky Susanne;).

F.