We got to Ziggy and the Bear Wednesday night. In following weekend the kick off took place. The Kick Off (or KO) is an event that mark the beginning of the hiking season of the PCT. hikers from current hiking season and previous seasons, trail angels, and people who cares about the PCT comes to lake Morena and have a big event about the PCT. Lectures about trail condition, hiking in snow, overuse injuries and more are given, several hiking gear vendors sell their equipment on site and the event is an opportunity to meet other hikers, some that are ahead of you on the trail and other that are behind.
Most hikers start their hike at the border the day before KO, hike those 20 mikes to Lake Morena and when KO is over, they continue with their hike.
Since we started our hike 2 weeks ago and were already 210 miles in the trail, so we had to find a ride to the KO. Lovely hiker named Sandy offered us a ride to lake Morena.
We spent most of the morning waiting for our ride, to Sandy. Around noon she got to Ziggy and we started the 3 hours drive down to lake Morena.
On the way, we stopped at a famous fast food restaurant, In-N-Out burgers.
We order their biggest meal option, the double double - double cheese and double patty. It took less than 5 min to finish the dish...
We arrived lake Morena around 5pm and set ourselves up in the campsite.
In the KO we saw a lot of hikers we already met on the trail that we passed them, or they passed us. We also saw Noam and Idan we didn't see since all of us were together at Scout and Frodo's place, and Gilad, another Israeli who just started his hike. We spent most of our time there talking with other hikers and catching up with them. One of them is Santa's Helper, 80 year old hiker we already met at Monty's place and ran into him in other places.
The KO was also opportunity for Roi to play his Ukulele with others, such as Scout and Honest Abe, who also gave us a ride back to Ziggy and the Bear once KO was over.
The KO was also opportunity for Roi to play his Ukulele with others, such as Scout and Honest Abe, who also gave us a ride back to Ziggy and the Bear once KO was over.
Friday night we had rain storm that continued into Saturday noon. 2 good things about this storm: 1. We're glad we were at KO when the storm hit us and not somewhere on the trail. 2. Our tent can handle such storm, we stayed mostly dry that night.
Group photo of 2014 PCT hikers:
Group photo of 2014 PCT hikers:
We came back to Ziggy's at Sunday noon and felt like we spent too many days off the trail. We were glad to start walking again.
One last photo with Abe, who gave us a ride and we were ready to go.
One last photo with Abe, who gave us a ride and we were ready to go.
After one hour we were already back on the trail, and it felt like those 3.5 zero days were a big mistake. We were slow and with every step we felt pain. Luckily we only had to walk ~9 miles that day.
We camped at a beautiful camp ground with small lakes, bunnies, fish, picnic tables...
By evening we were about 10 PCT hikers in the camp ground. All of us sat around one picnic table, eating dinner. At some point Roi started playing the ukulele, and suddenly everyone started to sing together. And there we were, sitting at the dark, singing 'somewhere over the rainbow'. It was what I called a trail magic moment.
Roi and Blake discussing the views... :)
We camped at a beautiful camp ground with small lakes, bunnies, fish, picnic tables...
By evening we were about 10 PCT hikers in the camp ground. All of us sat around one picnic table, eating dinner. At some point Roi started playing the ukulele, and suddenly everyone started to sing together. And there we were, sitting at the dark, singing 'somewhere over the rainbow'. It was what I called a trail magic moment.
The next day was sunny and clear. We were hiking pretty fast, enjoying the beautiful views on the way.
We knew a long climb is ahead of us, but we didn't really prepare for that, because Roi though it would be ~6,000 feet climb over 2-3 days...He was wrong!
Without any notice we were in the middle of a 6000 feet climb on one of the hottest days we had so far. I noted to myself double check the map from now on and stop trusting Roi on that matter.
It was freezing. While Roi was scoping water he lost the feeling in his hands for the next 2 hours...
We were sure our friends will join us any minute at the camp, but it never happened. It was the first night Roi and I camped completely alone... Well, we survived :)
The morning was so windy, our tent was almost blown away. We looked at the map and figured out the 26 miles left to Big Bear are quite easy and flat (comparing to yesterday...), doing the whole way to Big Bear in a single day and sleeping the night in a real bed... Challenge accepted!
At some point we bumped into a trail magic. Packs of Soda cans on the side of the trail. Roi soaked a can of soda in less than 10 seconds.
2 miles after that, we bumped into another trail magic, this time 2 cans of soda, 15 seconds :)
And I ate some cookies... It was one of the biggest trail magic we had so far.
This cheered us up for the next miles.
But of course after few miles you get hungry again... So we stopped for a rest and lunch. A typical lunch is a tortilla with peanut butter sprinkled with trail mix (nuts and dried fruits).
We arrived to the Highway (that leads to Big Bear) at around 7 pm, and called a local trail angels, Papa Smurf and Mountain Mama, who picked us up from the Highway and hosted us for the night (including wonderful dinner and lovely breakfast). The day after we took a zero day (no hiking) and stayed at the Big Bear hostel, where we saw lots of hikers we didn't see for quite a few days. The next morning began at 6 am with a breakfast at a local restaurant call Grizzly Manor. We had their famous dish, which includes scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon and 2 big pancakes. Quite a big breakfast, fueled us for hours...
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