Day 19: Dam Dam Dam

Unmarked Tentsite (303.9) - Silverwood Lake Campground (328.8) | Mileage: 24.9 + 0.6 (To the PCT site and beach)

I woke up from weird stress dreams about crossword puzzles and hockey teams and the flu and multi-story tents and was slow to pack up. I think we were moving by 7:35 but Katie was annoyed at my slowness (as though she was so fast yesterday) and told me it was already 8. The ridge was sunny so I dropped my puffy at the second switchback. A woman close to our age caught us as we were sunscreening and she had also avoided the noro so far (you have to sneak the question in early) so we talked for a while and her name was Abby and she was from Maine and her mom works for the CDC so she had lots of info and opinions about the outbreak. Apparently they did finally test Mission Creek and it was clean (at least from norovirus; Sweet Pea said hikers have still been getting sick and there’s speculation on FB that it’s from red algae blooms?), so people are probably just infecting each other directly like normal. I can’t decide if that’s reassuring or not. We used the last of our Aquatabs yesterday, so it’s convenient to no longer chemically treat our water, but it’s impossible to tell who might still be contagious.

Besides the rushing river far below and the purple petal-less flowers and the clothing-optional hot spring and the arched wooden bridge, the trail was pretty unremarkable this morning. Just an infinite dusty shelf cut into the steep desert slope weaving in and out with the hills. Saturday meant lots of day hikers in flip flops with no water or food? smelling of laundry detergent (I always thought this was rhetorical but it’s real). We cold-soaked oats with Bear Naked in the shade of a boulder (the little chocolate rectangles are a game changer) and talked about how bad cream of wheat is. I don’t remember if we had any actually interesting ideas this morning. I probably just speculated who could be sick and if we had already passed them over and over.

The ridge dropped into a valley with a huge concrete emergency flood dam thing and the river shallowed and slowed and we took our shoes off to cross because the bottom looked smooth and level and Katie was concerned soggy feet would irritate the blisters between her pads and toes. A lot of hikers were chilling on the opposite bank (so many people since Big Bear!) and I was anxious balancing so close to them while finagling my toe socks back on. I had asked two of the women about tentsites the night before, and they seemed quiet and cool and introduced themselves as Garnet and Roadrunner. Garnet saw Katie’s hat and asked if we were from Washington. Turns out she was from Anacortes and had long brown hair and wide set eyes and that uniquely friendly and eclectic and thoughtful and outdoorsy aura about her that all the women from Washington state seem to have. Must be something in the air.

The trail skirted the edge of a green and relatively developed valley and climbed up into the foothills again. There wasn’t much shade in the early afternoon, and I felt like every bit of exposed skin was burning but was too tired and sweaty and resigned to do anything about it. The regular ups and downs tightened up Katie’s quad and she stopped occasionally to stretch, but we still moved faster than the guy behind us. I talked to my dad (it’s duck relocation season again) and lost service just before another stream crossing that was easily avoided with a game of hopscotch over some rocks and logs. We found Sweet Pea sitting under a tree and were extremely surprised because he’d sent us a text implying he’d reached that point hours before (what would it be like to move early enough to have free time during the day?). Katie took off her shoes and pretended to be a faucet so I could wash my hands and peel an orange and we were about to have such a nice lunch break when the energetic woman next to us with the septum piercing and the yellow hoodie and the sun umbrella came over in her underwear dripping from dunking in the river and volunteered that she was having an excellent day because she was finally noro symptom free. I about spit out my orange with surprise and gave Katie nonnegotiable eyes that she needed to retrieve her shoes and evacuate immediately. And she gave me eyes back like she was irked out of her mind. And she put her shoes back on in slow motion and then the three of us sped out of there with some excuse about more miles and I itched to scrub all of the imaginary germs off of my skin for the next hour but instead I carried my poles in one hand and our half peeled orange in the other with the remaining sections exposed to every bit of dust I kicked up as I panted up the switchbacks, pack unbelted, stride erratic.

The hot uphill afternoon miles were hard and I was so thankful for the Jolly Ranchers we picked up in Big Bear. If I haven’t eaten enough, just one makes me crash and gives me a tummy ache within minutes of finishing it (which checks out because they are just solid high fructose corn syrup with chemical coloring), but in the afternoon they’re like little energy boosts and I can focus on sucking the yummy flavor out and temporarily forget that I don’t actually like walking at all. Cherry is still my favorite and I still do not like grape, but blue raspberry really grew on me. I think because the flavor is just so strong? Or maybe it’s just pretty? Either way I find it by far the most distracting.

The woman with the silver sun umbrella and the yellow sun shirt almost caught us at the next stream so I had to zoom up up up and away but the pace and the hill really drained me so I had to eat the trail mix out of the bag with the spoon while walking which actually worked quite well and was even more engaging than Jolly Ranchers and we gapped enough that we could stop in the shade of a big bush for me to drink some electrolytes and remove a sharp thing from my shoe and Katie and Sweet Pea probably thought I was extraordinarily out of shape based on how effortful it was for me to struggle up the hill but then it flattened and we were looking at the biggest pile of rocks I have ever seen in my entire life and I realized that it was a dam and we were standing underneath all of the water and that was unnerving so we kept moving and we were in a deteriorating parking lot with a chain link fence and large machinery and huuuuuge concrete tubes and I could not fathom what they could possibly be for. Is that how they funnel water or sewage or gas out here? We skirted the fence and walked up the road and over a bridge and I was keenly aware that we were walking to Canada for the first time (something about walking on the road next to speeding cars makes it more visceral). The trail reappeared but it was more of a dusty track below the shoulder with some bushes and blown truck tires and other litter and we scrambled through a cow gate up and around some sad sad trees and I would have been extremely confused if this were any other trail but it seems par for the course on the PCT.

I was daydreaming about having a beach day the entire way up the switchbacks and berating myself for not scheduling vacation time in San Diego when we reached the ugly barren scruffy sand top and looked out at a huge sparkling blue reservoir down between the green hills. There were boats with beer and loud music and people grilling on the beaches and the water extended into infinity. The scene was so unexpected and out of place I couldn’t believe it was real. FarOut implied there was lake access at the campground, so we decided to race the sunset and get into camp early enough to swim before it got dark and cold. So we sped the last six miles silently and single file and I was too hungry to truly appreciate the easy walking or the infinite fields of wildflowers along the trail or the orange glow across the water or the green triangular islands that looked like they should be off the coast of Italy, not in a reservoir in Southern California. For some reason the trail kept going up even though I knew we had to go down, and it felt like the end of a long run when you feel empty but keep chugging. Try to take longer strides but your hips just can’t reach any farther. I stayed on Sweet Pea’s heels but Katie disappeared so when we finally hit the bottom, I sat cross-legged in the middle of the road to wait. She didn’t come for a while and I was nervous but had no idea what could have happened on the smooth straight trail that only goes one direction for thousands of miles.

Eventually she emerged from the high bushes and limped toward me with her left leg locked straight, face screwed up with tears. She said she had made her quad worse by walking fast and then trying to stretch and now it felt like it was tearing every time she stepped. I said oh no buddy let me take your pack we’re so close only 0.1 away and then we can rest and stretch and it will probably feel better tomorrow. But she’s got more pride than a man and would only give me a water bottle to carry. And then the campground was at the top of a steep winding paved road so we crawled up the shoulder and tried to look inconspicuous to the giant pickup trucks speeding by and I kept turning around to make sure she was still moving and hadn’t decided to sit down in the road and then we hit the campground entrance but the hike and bike in section was way at the far end so we passed about thirty RVs and people grilling delicious food and ended up walking at least another mile off trail. The hike in section was pretty full, but a nice older guy pointed us down a thin trail out the back of his site and there was a protected little area in the trees with way enough space for our and Sweet Pea’s tents where we could stay far away from the maybe recently sick hikers but the sun was setting now because we had walked so slow so Katie and I switched our shoes and rush limped around the campground looking for a path to the water. I’ve never seen a busier or more diverse state campground ever before in my entire life. It smelled like the Queens Night Market and there was thumping music and karaoke and kids speeding around barefoot on giant electric scooters and we walked the wrong way for a while and I was so hungry but even more determined to get in the lake so we hobbled down the steep rocky path and Katie’s leg seemed totally fine now without her pack so probably I should have taken it ages ago and we found a tiny beach where we could stand next to some teenagers fishing casting hooks wildly and three other hikers who looked our age and super queer (we finally found them!) and we listened to one of the guys tell the story of his childhood pet tortoise that he would let outside so it could be happy but that one day got eviscerated by some southwestern predator and I dunked in the reservoir but the wind had picked up and it was so so cold so I shivered back into my sweaty clothes and Katie walked in up to her knees and bailed and by that time the sun was really setting so we tried to crank back up the hill but all of the pokey rocks hurt my frozen feet and finally we were back at the site and I changed and hung all of my wet clothes in the tree and we sat on our ground sheet Sweet Pea came and sat next to us and Katie cooked couscous and let all the little ants crawl around and sometimes bite her feet and we ate avocado in tortillas and finally I felt cleanish and warmish and fullish and good.

Apparently a bear had been frequenting and terrorizing the campground of late, so the park had installed a temporary bear box and we packed all of our food into the bear bag and then carefully set it in the back of the box behind everyone else’s packs and washed our hands in case of the noro and then it was finally bed time so we got in the tent and snuggled to sleep and there wasn’t even a bear.