12 — Idylwild Zero

Mile 151.8 Idylwild (0.0 miles)

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Rose: meeting Mayor Max Thorn: repeatedly going back and forth to the different stores Bud: the simplicity of trail, one last sleep in a bed

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Oh glorious bed. I slept like a rock. No waking up in the middle of the night to reinflate my mattress. Then I made hash browns in the morning.

Rebekah and Angel went off to boulder (Idylwild is known for its climbing). Mitch and Lucy made some calls then fell asleep again. I throughly emptied out my pack and cleaned everything. I even washed my pack and hung it up to dry on the cedar tree.

Idylwild is an adorable vacation town plopped amongst the pines with granite spires and Mt San Jacinto looming overhead. Unfortunately, you get the feeling that the whole place will burn down in a forest fire some day. It’s just so dry and the trees so tall.

We all went to the Brewpub for lunch (very overpriced). I didn’t want to spend money on food, so I just got a tasting flight, which made me tipsy. The crew then started resupplying food. I just bought some Hot Pockets to take back to the room.

The rest of the afternoon was spent crisscrossing town running errands, sometimes with the tramily, sometimes alone, and running into other hikers along the way. I ran into two people who started from CLEEF on my date. They had put on big miles from the start and now had injuries. This seems to be a common tale: Tanner did 20 mile days and bothered his Achilles, Shortcut got shin splints, Laura got Runner’s Knee, the Brit fell down and hurt his shoulder. All of them pushing miles while we go along moderately and eventually catch up to them uninjured.

The food stores around here have been cleaned out by other hikers. It meant that I was wandering between the two grocery stores multiple times looking for this and that that the other store inevitably had. It was incredibly frustrating. My feet hurt by the end of the day, just like they do on trail.

Amongst the errands, Rebekah, Angel, and I met Major Max, the dog major of Idylwild. Rebekah spotted him first and texted the group text. When Angel saw the group text, she sprinted from the cabin to the Fairway Market. The owner was incredibly generous and posed Max for pictures and told us his whole story.

Rebekah, Lucy, and I all wanted haircuts, so we borrowed the scissors from the hotel office and cut each other’s hair. Rebekah and Lucy chopped off a few inches. I just got a trim to get rid of the dead ends.

For dinner, we bought too much food and made a salad and pasta—we’ll be adding a lot of food to the hiker box. Our gear is strewn everywhere, but we made an effort to clean it up so that Semi and Sandy could come over for beers.

We’re all a little nervous about the next 4–5 days on Jacinto. It will be long water carries and heavy packs while we summit and then descend.