Short one, it’s cold up here also i wrote a bunch already today but do this daily boi it’s good for the brain. I picked up mismatched gaiters so i’m pretty jazzed about that. Also a purple cotton town shirt, we’ll see how long i carry that before giving up tho.
Shelled out another 40$ for a new Sawyer filter. My old and busted one took minutes to do what this new one can achieve in seconds. I’m excited to not dread filtering water anymore.
whatever this building was supposed to be for is irrelevant, it’s just for graffiti and probably drugs now
On the hitch back to trail we had four guys squeezed into the backseat, it felt like college all over again. Five of us hit the trail at the same time and of course i quickly fell to the back of the pack. We passed by two pit toilets on the way, both of which i stopped at because i ate nothing but mcdonalds for 36 hours and actions have consequences.
The big news is how SpaceX has a launch tomorrow morning. I pushed 8 miles after the late hitch up the side of Mount Baden-Powell so i could have a good vantage point for sometime between 4am and 6am when it’s going down. or up i guess
this tree is freakin old and very out of focus because i am only okay at taking pictures
update: didn’t see it yo
space is fake you heard it here first folks
i’d like to put on record that it was also cold and windy so there were multiple factors messing with my ability to take a picture of a very old tree okay
bah, the blog. daily the caliber may vary. foolish force folly, focused forte fantastic
idyllwild had a dog for a mayor. i didn’t get to see him, but i saw this graffiti instead and that felt more special i think
Way to regularly update this thing boi. Well first day out of Idyllwild was interesting, i was a part of what we thought at the time was a medical emergency that ended in a helicopter pickup from the woods but we found out the next day was actually a pot brownie overdose. But that let me end the day next to a bomb sunset that i was all about.
The next day i did San Jacinto partly because it was right there but also because i had read enough John Muir and that guy couldn’t shut up about that mountain.
this is on san jacinto, it was pretty okay
The next day after a long descent into the valley next to Jacinto i got a ride with some hikers to Cabazon to the casino buffet. It was a massacre, we each got at least 4 plates and loudly talked about poo and how smelly we were. I hitched out of there with plans for miles and a bag of In N Out for dinner that night.
Plans changed, as i spent the rest of the day playing guitar under the highway with a bunch of other hikers hiding from the brutal desert heat.
this was the underpass i hung out at as i sat off my buffet baby. shoutout to smokey, he’s the one with the cigarette you might be able to see in this picture? joints were flowing freely from his bag this day
I night hiked up to the windmills up on the hill next door. That was a treacherous hike, i wound up off trail a couple times also i saw a sign that warned me of a feral dog pack that was running wild in the area.
Oof see this is why i need to write more it’s getting hazy. I ended up in Big Bear Lake next after a few days. I ate a massive breakfast and saw Infinity War also listened to the new Kanye which was magical i love that man no joke.
this dish is called the mess. i ate all of it.
the pancakes at this grizzly breakfast place were bigger than the plates the lived on. some men dare to dream
The next highlight was the hot springs. I didn’t get any pictures of there cuz it was clothing optional. I met a guru of the springs chain smoking out of his orange bong, passing it around peace pipe style, rambling wisdom off.
The next day i made it to a picnic area that you could get pizza delivered to. The weather got spooky so i stayed there while some more nervous hikers set up in the bathrooms there.
The weather didn’t really open up the following morning, but i pushed through it to a McDonald’s.
this place was cool, a lot of birds lived here and were very active
mcdonalds had a sign up on the trail. hikers don’t mess around when it comes to food
A challenge exists out here: get a food resupply from the McDonald’s to the next town, Wrightwood, 28 miles up trail. I’m not one to hide from a silly challenge, so i walked out of there with 12 burgers. It was just enough for the 25 mile day i pulled the next day to roll into Wrightwood early this morning.
yeesh there was too much to recap here dude hows about you write more often? this was pretty cut and dry, I think you have more voice when you’re not churning through the days like this.
i also met this cat at the bookstore here in wrightwood it was super chill
it’s true, my sloth led to hasty anecdotes and poor editing. airlifting that poor fellow off of san jacinto is a story i am so glad that i have. the hills and valleys beyond the cabazon underpass are still with me as well.
i hit a full moon hike away from the hot springs, a cool blue hike after a day steeping in the hot.
mcdonalds lived before many uphills going nobo. chaining mcdoubles on a day long ascent
i shared the evening after mcdonalds with a man named Cashew and his family. they shared footage of themselves saying ‘wow’ like owen wilson while walking through tunnels, a tradition i continue to observe.
The baggage beasts have many stories, all of them painted upon their fractal hides, each worth a couple few million dollars. Any one of these majestic beasts could easily kill mcu, despite his imposing size. Their pen was uncomfortably small. The fence was bulging out, struggling to keep these great beasts at bay. A stern look on his face, mcu calls to his farm hands to bring more, more baggage. But why, mcu, can’t you see your herd is starting to suffer? Mcu ignored their cries, and planned the dates in 2019 that again he would call his farm hands to action.
Spoiler free: Infinity War was a delight. If you’ve done your homework and are all caught up on your Marvel Cinematic Universe movies then watch it. If you’re almost caught up then finish your homework and watch this one, it’s worth it. If you are more than a few movies behind then don’t bother, this movie has a whole lot of baggage with it. I’ma be callous with spoilers from here out so watch out.
It bugs me when different media forms fall into similar traps. For example, the awkward position that Game of Thrones is at now that it’s passed the source material. We already learned about how this gets clunky from Full Metal Alchemist. There exist two FMA series: one that caught up to the source material’s releases and made up an ending, the other that stays true to the sacred texts but rushes through the early storylines. Both adaptations are good for different reasons, but both lack something the other one has, so there doesn’t exist an optimal adaptation. Will this too be the fate of Westeros?
I’m nervous about how inevitable the baggage singularity is for the MCU because of its source material. It’s not uncommon for a comic to collapse in on itself and need to be rebooted. DC made a huge effort to ditch the baggage with their New 52 reboot because man was it sloppy. One of my boys got me all the files of the Civil War arc from comic form and it came with a messy list of every issue that had some relevance to the overall arc. #128 of this guy, #81-83 of that team, it felt like homework trying to seek out this story. Disney even just pulled a baggage burn when they cast aside the vast seas of the Star Wars expanded universe cuz hoo baby that was a thing. Baggage can be great, baggage is one of the reasons why i loved Infinity War. I knew all the characters and it was a delight to see them bounce off each other. Too much baggage weighs a story down and turns people away.
Hey look at that i have another example, this one is from the world of video games and it’s about oversaturation. For a while last decade, all the big studios were convinced that WW2 shooters were the best money pots and the market was filled with Nazis and Normandys. Up until the market got sick of it and the interest switched to modern shooters all gritty and just like CoD4. Up until the market got sick of it and you get the idea. If you don’t then you can look at the whole rhythm games market and how volatile that bubble is. Even just after Age of Ultron i heard people start to lose interest in keeping up with all the superhero movies. Especially after Thor Ragnarok i heard that. We’ve been in a wave of superhero movies that has been crashing relentlessly since Iron Man. We need a break please.
After the ending of Infinity War i don’t really want to watch the new Ant Man. I was super on board with the original Ant Man, i thought it was a blast. But half the galaxy just disappeared, is this really the time for a silly heist romp? No, i wanna see Avengers 4: Okay Can We Talk About What The Hell Just Happened? At the end of that movie when Rocket gets the infinity gauntlet and brings everyone back and also creates infinite habitable planets with infinite bounty (infinite possibilities and thanos goes straight to death and sometimes bubbles) and makes himself giant and also Coulson is there high fives, then what? Do you have more compelling stories for us now that our humble heroes saved half the universe and also warped reality? How long will the actors hang around after that crazy feat?
I don’t want the MCU to sputter out and die because it stopped being profitable. I don’t want it to collapse under its baggage. The conclusion of the infinity stones arc would be a perfect time to close out this crazy adaptation experiment called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s been a fantastic story lads, but in order for a story to be cemented as fantastic it’s gotta have an ending. Then they come back in a few years with fresh eyes and a fresh universe just waiting to be filled with extra thirsty box office records. Universe 2 can build up to some other huge plot thread, and maybe more gradually than Thanos now that they know they can do a franchise like this.
mmmm i think that’s enough. infinity war was a fantastic movie. it’s been ten years since iron man and its crazy that you guys pulled this off. marvel studios take a bow because you earned this one. but please know when to take a break
big oof, eh? at least endgame was fun even though the story falls apart quickly under scrutiny
big shoutouts to all the disney+ products being thrown out there for these consumers to consume and get excited for the next product. you’ve truly done it lads.
Can’t say that i’m surprised to have seen some snow but that doesn’t make it the best. But i’m getting ahead of myself.
frost on the tent after that nero but my 0° quilt is tha tru mvp
Heading out from Warner Springs was nice. I got some hugs from a few more meadows before heading up into the mountains. Most of that climb i spent listening to The Adventure Zone: Commitment which was fun, i had a good time with it.
chair lives don’t matter at mike’s place
The next day i rolled into Mike’s Place for some water at around 10. They had made a bunch of pancakes for the big group of hikers who had stayed there the night before. I did my best to chip away at the massive pile of carbs over the next few hours chatting with the people there and cooking in the sun. They sang songs of dread about a storm coming the following evening. I rolled out a decent 18 that day after losing some time stuffing my face with pancakes.
mike wasn’t there and the two men who were there expressed displeasure about photos of them
The next morning was a brisk one. The water cache i hit up at around 830 had a log book that my frozen fingers struggled to write in. They were slightly more thawed when i rolled up to trail angel Mary’s spot which was ironic because it started snowing. Almost the whole was a gloomy one, only specks of sunshine peeked through the clouds but they were usually off in the distance.
the journal here had a quote by john muir about how one should saunter through the woods as a writing prompt. the bitter winds and snow didn’t feel like a saunter
Someone left some water at highway 74 so i thankfully didn’t have to do the mile down to Paradise Cafe into the sweet temptation of town food. Instead i made some ramen with pizza flavored Cheez-its and continued on.
The trail got interesting in the next bit. It zigzagged through giant boulders and dipped into cute little tastes of pine forests. On its way up to Pine Mountain i stopped for the night and set up my tent just in time for the snow to hit.
It only came down for maybe 15 minutes? I was listening to an interview with Sid Meier at the time so i’m not too sure. The next morning the snow was still hanging out in the shadows of all the trees up there on the ridge.
the ~5 on trail miles that broke my spirits and my legs
I dared to dream about a ~24 mile day to Idyllwild that day. The last bit of trail followed by the 2500 ft descent to Lake Hemet shook me, and the attendant at Hurkey Creek Park telling me i had 4 miles more to go than i thought stopped me in my tracks. I set up camp there and took an easy nero into Idyllwild today.
i did the whole shebang up to the closure tho let it be known that i ain’t no chump ass busta
Eating a beefy omelet at the Red Kettle was delightful. Also this town has a gnarly infestation of hikers, it’s like a dang reunion tour. I got my gear at Mt. San Jacinto Park in the smelly PCT hiker area, but it’s already pretty crowded. I’ll probably have to cowboy tonight since it’s so packed. I still have to get my resupply though, but i’d like to do the rounds at some hiker boxes first to score some free food.
I’m hiking out with some bananas though ain’t no doubt about that
the path down from the closure was gnarly as well, with miles of road walk to boot. the desert sang soothing songs to my soul though, the muscular stress of the day as faded while the moment remains
idyllwild has a dog mayor, we didn’t have the pleasure of meeting
man i dunno 