Time flies and so did we.. We are already halfway Washington. Oregon went by in a blink of an eye. We calculated two weeks to get from Ashland to the Colombia river, with 30miles for every day. We heard that Oregon was flat and that it was easy to walk, easier at least. 

We totally underestimated the beauty of the state. Oregon indeed was easier to walk, and still very pretty. And it was fun to almost run over the hills. 

Again also in this state we encountered very nice and helpful people and we have a lot to tell. Maybe to much to sum it all up in one post. So what I'll do now is to post a bunch of pictures and tell you about Dave & Annie and team gnargnar.

We met Dave as he walked with us for 4 days in Northern California. Here he invited us to come and visit Portland. At this point we weren't sure if we would have time for that. But a few days before we were about to arrive at the bridge of the gods, we send him a message. Yay! We were most welcome and he had a surprise for us. 

After we walked through the very very gorgeous eagle creek, we saw the huge river that separates Oregon from Washington. Goose skin, mann...another state, crazy. Here along the river, we met Annie. Annie is the wife of Dave and we were both impressed by here appearance. She picked us up with the car which was filled with chocolate, drinks, popcorn, fruit,.... Before we started to go for Portland, she took us to a brewery for a home made cool cider drink.

In Portland she showed us our room. This room was filled with a 2 by 2 meter bed and had a bathroom with a long (enough for us!) real bath. This room turned out to be the sleeping room of Dave and Annie. During our stay, they would sleep in there daughters room, so we would have the most comfort. And it was. I soaked myself in the bath for about two hours (still the feet didn't looked fully sand cleaned haha). While Felix scrubed himself in the shower. 

After this, Dave came home. It was fun to see him again. Big smiling face as always :). 

They organized us healthy snacks and took us to the best Indian restaurant they knew of. The next day we were busy with our resupply for Washington. What a work....(see picture, than you will understand). 

In between, Dave told us to be in front of the supermarket around 4pm. Here he first picked me up and brought me to a.... Tatatatata WELLNESS CENTER! He had organized two one hour full body message scheduled for us! O.M.G!! This was SUCH a good idea for our stiff and sore bodies!!

Totally shiny and slippery from the essential oils, we tried to finish our resupply in the evening, which we didn't do. We decided to leave it and instead go into Portland to eat at some food trucks. Their son Bakus joint us (they have three absolutely beautiful kids, I'm no exaggeration)  

The next day we decided to stay one more day... :)

Again Dave took us to porque no? A super nice diner cafe. Here we drank mageritas, got a bit tipsy, laughed a lot,...just having a good time. 

The next morning, after making us a pancake breakfast, Dave brought us back to Cascade locks. As we walked over the famous bridge on the Gods, he waved us goodbye. 

Such a bummer that they don't live more close by. They are such fun and sweet people to be with, really.

After a few miles on trail, Possum caught up with us. Possssum!!!!! Yaa!!!

In Oregon we became closer with a group that signs the register as team gnargnar. This group of funny, crazy, badass, sweet ultra marathon runners  bumbed into us a few times and as time went by, and we started to blend in. 

Here we met Alpaca, chicory, leopard sauce, possum and hoho. 

Alpaca and chicory are brother and sister who both are amazing hikers (they all are though). When ever we walk, how fast we walk, they always will be the first to arrive. Crazy fast. Hoho travels around with a little windmill and became a couple with chicory on the trail, leopard sauce adds some crazy absurd fun in the group and possum brings warmth in chocolate and coffee form. We play games, swim on black tubes, frisbee, frickbee, sing and of course walk and camp together. We might even finish together. Here in Washington we stayed walking together, but more of that in the upcoming washinton post ;)

So... You might think; nice al these people and trailmagic, but what about the trail!? Well I can tell you, that what i can say about the trail is that we are in gorgeous nature every day. In here we walk in between 25- 30miles every day. This hiking is very tough and special at the same time. We have a shower and washing machine every 4-5 days. We live from nuts, bars, instant beans and rice and water. Because of this you get close to people more quickly and you appreciate the comfort of an daily life even more. This makes a experience like in Portland extra special. Something that you remember very very well. As well the community on trail which sometimes feels like a walking village with only nice people in it. I bet that this is going to be one of the biggest things that we are going to cherish and miss when we are back home.

So... Enough words. Time for some pics, I can not add so much to it I guess... It was again a superlative.

S.

On the trail it is obligated to use a bearcanister from Kennedy meadows (mile 700) up till Sonora pass, 200 miles further on the trail. A bear can play around with this canister, but it cannot open it, so it gets disencouraged after a while to try to get his hungry belly (up to 20.000 Cal a day) filled with trail-junk-food. By using a bear canister the bear doesn't get the food he wants so bad, and he doesn't get shot, because here they say: "a fed bear is a dead bear". If a bear does get to the food of hikers, he will try it again and again and again till he becomes a "problem" bear. 

Yosemite for example is a region where there are more of these problem (black)bears, because there are a lot of people (day)hiking in this area and with that comes more inappropriate food storage.

The thing about the bearcanister is, that it is heavy and difficult to pack, so a lot of hikers want to get rid of it as soon as possible. So did we. 

After we sold and shipped them, we changed our food storage into the ursack. This sack is made of bulletproof material, which you knot in a tree. Bears can chew on it, but they cannot get the food. 

We were walking around with our lite-no bearcanister packs for two days, as we came nearby shower lake. Just before Echo lake.  We stopped to set up camp earlier than planed, because some other hikers told us, that they heard stories about a problem bear around the lake. We fell a sleep pretty quick, but I woke up in the middle of the night, because the tent on my side came down and touched my head. A few minutes later I heard Mr. problem bear trying to get a party dinner for one, out of our ursacks. "Eh... Felix.. A bear is chewing on our sacks..." I searched for my glasses, flashlight, headlamp, jumped out of the tent and crapped some sticks. With my shoes half on, standing in my underwear I started to do what I learned to do. I started to shout, hit sticks and tried to look like some scary dominant crazy monkey. After a few seconds of my one man show, the bear stopped chewing, raised his head and just looked at me. The look could have said: " Is that all you got lady?..." As the bear looked at me and I looked in the nice sweet eyes that were lit up by the light, a wave of fear went through my whole body. Suddenly I was very conscious of the fact that I was standing just 30 feet from an animal that could make rice paper of me with one handshake. The bear looked back at his party sack and started the chewing procedure again. "Uh...Felix....the bear is not moving away." Felix had taken his time to put on his shoes properly, a long johns and even took the camera with him. As he was coming to join me, he gave me the camera and said: " Here, tape this." I took the camera and looked at Felix as he was preparing himself for the food fight. He inhaled very deeply, widens his chest, got into his gorilla posture and said: "WRAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!WHRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" The bear was more impressed by this performance. So I started to join him with shouting, roaring, hiding sticks, throwing rocks (near him). The bear stopped chewing and went away.  That was a relief, because the bear seem to be a bit persistent. We checked on our ursacks and saw that he had pierced through the sacks. "What shall we do?.." I then noticed the hundred mosquitos who did get their food party on my legs and ran back to the tent. As we were sitting inside and just started to get our bodies out of adrenaline mode, I heard the very deep breathing and heavy footsteps of our partypooper, just next to our tent. Geesebumps crawled back on my skin and I realized we had to go out again. As he was chewing again, we started our crazy animal dance. And also this time, a bit faster, he went away. We realized that there was no other option than to pack our stuff, and move on. So we did, at 1.30 am in the morning. We walked till the sun came up and set up the tent 4 hours later to get back some sleep. From echo lake, we went back to South Lake Tahoe, where we just came from two days earlier. There we checked our food and sorted out more than the half of our food. The bear had pierced through the ursack and into some of our ziplocs. He also pierced through a salmon packet, which had probably caused him to try a bit(e) longer. He didn't got the food, but most of our food was destroyed. This was the 3th of July. On this day Tutone came to Lake Tahoe too, so we decided to stay one more day to see and meet some 4th of July celebration here. We saw the HUGH firework at the lake and a day later we hiked on.

A bit traumatized though, at least I was. Joe Cocker....eh Felix is quite relaxed about it. Though I prefer not to meet a bear like this again, the situation was pretty interesting, because we experienced something very rural. We basically fought for our food. And in a way it was also good to see that were able to scare this bear away (maybe it was the underwear?..), and in way we were lucky to meet a bear at all, because normally they are already gone before you can even see them. In the end the bear wanted nothing else but a conflict free eve with a fancy trashy dinner of clifbars mixed with some salmon, ramen and idahoan mashed potatoes. 

After we left South Lake Tahoe (again;) the wheater got a bit worse. There were often big "thunderstormclouds" drifting over us. We were lucky that we often could see the thunderstorm from a distance raining down on a close by mountain rather than on us. Especially because we often had to hike on exposed ridgelines of mountains (where you do not want to be when a thunderstorm is hitting. )

One day after a long 30 mile day, I was about to knot my Ursack high on a tree, while I was standing on a dead tree. Suddenly some big mosquito bit, which was quite painful. When I was looking for the mosquito I found a few other insects at my legs biting me. I then realized that I probably made some wasp/bee type of insect angree by standing on that dead tree which probably was their home. I was running as fast as could back to the tent. Suus was shocked because she first thought that I was chased by some big wild animal. I am still not sure what bit me, but I was not curious enough to investigate that dead tree any further;)

The next miles we on and of hiked with Winedoc, who is a fast hiking 50 years old physician who also runs a winery (thats why he is called winedoc). Together we got a lift to Buckslake by two mexican-americans who, at the end of their workday, were still about to drive 400 miles home. Tired as they were, the driver also had the tendency too turn around to talk to us and fishtail. We were happy that this was just a short hitch and the streets were empty...I am exaggerating mama... (I am not;)
At Buckslake we stayed at a fantastic secret trailangelsplace. Reaaalllyy nice. Just open for hikers every now and then. We could do our laundry, got fed (dinner and breakfast) and we got a ride back to the trail. It is really nice when you are invited by trailangels. even more when it is a very nice place you haven't heared about before. Probably also nice for the trailangels since they can decide from day to day weather they want to invite hikers to their home or not, compared to "official trailangel places" where hordes of hikers pass by everyday.

Halfway point:1325 mile! Yippie!
We finally reached ...just half the way? But it took us 2/3 of the time we have...how does that fit? Well the first half takes longer because you are less fit and the terrain is more difficult (dessert/ high sierra)...I hope so at least...

Our next town stop Chester took longer than expected. Pizza in the morning with Malibu and Queen B, Resupply, Laundry, Shower, milkshake (huuuge!), leaving town? no, again hungry, so one last Garden burger. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m....that was efficient; )

We hiked on, sleeping at Swan lake where Suus could not sleep because she heared noises outside...again a bear? We ended up chasing deer which seemed to like our campside.

Because we heared that Drakesbad is supposed to have a good lunch buffet (it is all about food), we hiked really fast to be their in time. When we got there, a few other hikers (Velcro, pinklady...) where already waiting. And it was worth it. Really good food and ...real healthy food. It I s difficult to get something else than burgers or pizza at the trail. The food was espescially delisious because a women spontaneously decided to invite us for lunch after she talked to Suus and heard that we are PCT hikers. I am everytime fascinated how friendly people are to us...

We spend an afternoon at Old station (I am not going to list the food) to escape the heat. We had to walk a 32 mile waterless strech and we planed to walk most of it late evening and early morning. We hiked untill 10p.m. because we then found velcro and zackly, cowboycamping at a nice  lookout point and decided to cowboycamp there too. We slept untill 1a.m., when it started to rain on us. we all packed our stuff and hiked on...we did not want to hike in the heat anyway. we stopped at 5a.m. slept for two hours and then hiked on. we messed up our biorhythm.

Our next resupply point was Burney city, where we hitched in together wuth winedoc and leanderthal which ended up being as time (and food) consuming as Chester. Out of Burney in the afternoon we stopped after one mile, because trailangels builded an amazing hiking paradise in the middle of nowhere: dart, picknicktables, solarshowers, food...it took us another hour.  We decided that we are now going to hike on for sure, doing more miles. Well, at Burney Falls state park we actually just wanted to shower, but we ended up getting invited for dinner. Ok, the dinner, then we leave...we ate a lot of the left over food of a family reunion. And because some family members already left, we were invited to sleep in a free cabin. Who can say "no" to such an offer. That was our 7 mile day.

At the highway to our next resupply point, Mount Shasta, we got picked up by Dave, a friend of winedoc, who wanted to hike with winedoc and us for the next section. He welcomed us with a beer, told winedoc how old he looked like with a beard,  and as we got in the car he laughed loud telling us how much we stank and that he nearly had to puke.

The next days with Dave and winedoc were fun. Dave was excited to hike with us. He was funny and impressed about the amount of miles we were hiking. We were impressed by how he kept up hiking with us (up to 31, 5 miles), by the enormous blisters he developed and by the amount of chocolate he carried and shared with us. In this short section, Dave got a good impression what-thru-hiking is like, cowboycamping at a ridge line of a mountain with a beautiful view, seeing deer on the trail, chafing, hitching back to town with a stoned couple with an right a rather aggressive dog, having a dinner in town (which tastes much better after a hike). He was so nice to hitch back early in the morning to get back his car and to be able to give us a ride back to the trail again. On his hitch back to Mount Shasta he even was stopped by the police (hitchhiking is not allowed at highways), but instead of a ticked, he got a ride.

After we left Etna and said goodbye to Dave (who's unofficial trailname became "sugarman" because of the chocolate he gave to us), we saw another rattlesnake (no.4), met the very nice "Lady with the Lama" (she is mentioned in the book "wild") and "Wildhorse".

On the way to our next resupply point Seiad Valley we got slowed down by tasty blackbeeries that were growing next to the trail. Seiad Valley was so hot. (106degrees) that we had to wait untill 8p.m. before we started to climb the long 12 mile long ascend. "Leopard sauce" was joining us. We arrived very tired at 0.30 at the next campside, where we hurried to get in our sleeping bags to get some sleep.

F.

Its the 4th of July and we are in south Lake Tahoe. Tonight we will go to the lake to see one of Americas most impressive fireworks. We didn't really plan to be here on Independence Day, but resupply, laundry and shower pulled us back into town.

Since the last post, we have been hiking through the last bits of Yosemite and left this beautiful piece of nature. Because methinks had a car at tuolomne, because his girlfriend was visiting him, we had the option to get a ride to Yosemite valley. There we saw very beautiful things like el Capitain and Half Dome, but it probably wasn't that impressive as John Muir experienced it. It was so full of people and cars that we couldn't enjoy the scenery so much as you can when you are alone. But still, they are gorgeous.

In Tuolomne we said goodbye to Methinks and Tutone. Tutone is trying to heal her plenta feciatus, a foot problem. Methinks was staying with girlfriend for two more days and after that decided to take a week more of rest because his back was girding pretty bad. So from than mi942, we are walking with just the two of us. And it actually quite nice again. Less crazy funny people though ;)

In between there and here we went to a country full of thunderstorms, looooooots of Mosquitos, bears, deer... The worst Mosquitos were only two days but they are one of te most innoying creatures on earth. They got us to hike very quickly though!

The terrain is less difficult now, so we can get in more miles. We try to do 25 now, and might try 30 after south Lake Tahoe. With this we hope to 'earn' some extra zero days and get on time to destination Canada.

But now first dinner and fireworks. Walking we will do tomorrow.

S.

Kearsage pass 788+ 7.5miles back to pct) - Mammoth Lakes 906

To get back to the PCT we had to ascend to Kearsage Pass. Full of energy we passed all the day-hikers and John Muir Trail hikers on the way uphill (Suus and Kristy passed some young athletic hikers- which made them proud and left the hikers amazed and frustrated).

We hiked about 20miles per day, with one to two passes per day and up tp 6000 feet of ascending ...sorry, we are just proud of ourselves and we need to show off a little bit.

The Sierras are just beautiful: mountain passes, small streams, trees, mosquitos, mosquitos, mosquitos...yeah, there are Mosquitos, it is not thaaaat bad, but it seems like every section has it's poison. If you keep on walking, you're fine. But if you have a brake to filter water, you get bitten. I tried to ignore them. Now my legs look like the Sierras. Kristy said that my Kryptonite is mosquitos, since I did not have any physical problems so far.

But it is wonderful here. We slept in the stone hut on the Muir pass and swam in lakes and streams.

After I bought new sunglasses in Bishop, Khaki, an experienced hiker we walked with for a while, found them in a stream we were swimming in. I was surprised that I lost them and when I got out of the water I found my glasses still being on their place. So now Suus and I have the same glasses...couple-style...isn't that a coincidence?

Khaki (the color of his clothes) makes his gear himself. He walks the PCT because he just retired at 56. He has a lot of stories to tell about hiking the Sierras and ultralight-gear. He also was bitten by a spider in the desert while he was sleeping and still has an ugly wound on his arm from that... We also talked about cultural differences and it was interesting for me to hear his opinion about the right to own guns in the U.S., which is written down in their constitution.

After six long days of hiking we reached Red's Meadows in the morning,  where Khaki waited for us (he is fast) to have breakfast together. We took the bus to Mammoth lakes,  which is hiker-friendly but a touristy place. Here we resupplied and met Methinks and his girlfriend (Robertos has delicious Mexican food!)

We are now going on to Toulomne,  Markleeville and South lake Tahoe... so we will reach the 1000 mile mark within the next week (Yippie!)

F.

MILE 788 - in the shuttle bus to Kiersage pass

We made it. We left the desert and are in the Sierra Nevada now. At this point we are in a shuttle bus, getting back to the trailhead. We stayed in Bischop for a day, it was hard to leave here...:

But the Sierra is breathtaking. We summited Mount Whitney (4300m /14505feet)) and Forester Pass ( highest point of the PCT 14300feet). We got hailed on, walked through snow, rain and sun. It was exiting, exhausting and stunning. Just look at the pictures and imagine that in real its 10x as beautiful.

The storm has done is job, the sun is shining. Yosemite here we come.

S.

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.