After our stressful day yesterday both mentally and physically we awoke feeling completely refreshed as neither of us even so much as stirred in our sleep last night. The campsite we chose ended up only a half mile from the PCT. The trail, aside from freezing cold snow now cutting a channel directly down the path and thorn bushes covering both sides, was mostly clear of the snow and we made our way back to the PCT. Today was a big day for us, and a day we have been anticipating and looking ahead to since our trip began. We would be hiking on Fuller Ridge. Fuller Ridge has a reputation of being a particularly difficult section of the PCT. Anyone who does Internet research on the trail will quickly run across videos of people planning, attempting, or contemplating this sketchy part of the trail. Hikers routinely get injured in this section and even some unfortunate souls are lost and have never been found.
With all this in mind we set off with our micro spikes in arms reach so we could wrap them around our shoes at the first sign of ice and snow. Fuller Ridge was difficult, not as scary as I may have imagined and never did I feel as if I could fall off into oblivion. Truthfully it was a cake walk compared to our experience yesterday while descending Mount Jacinto. It was definitely slow going and hard on our bodies, we both slid and slipped a few times but managed to make it through the 5 mile stretch out of harms way. With this ridge behind us we stopped for lunch, regrouped, napped briefly, and geared back up for the afternoon. Without much of a plan we walked mostly down hill the entire way. Miles disappeared and we were happy to be hiking away from Mount Jacinto, happy to have it in the rearview mirror. After the slow hard morning we should have only gone 4 or 5 miles after lunch. Instead, trying to get as far away from the mountain as possible and make yesterday’s mishap a distant memory, we hiked a full 10 more miles after lunch to land at mile 200 for the day. As we lay in our tent I can still see the peak, mountains are big especially when you’re trying to out walk one.
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