Day 26: ⛺ @ mile 347 - Wrightwood

Day: 03.05.2018 Miles hiked today: 22 miles Total Mileage: Mile 369 Alarm is set for 4.45am! We would like to try to get to Wrightwood today which is 22 miles and about 5'500 feet in hight ahead of us. Quite a mission!

The fog left and we could see blue sky without any clouds and a beautiful sun rise. But my tent and sleeping bag were wet/moist of the foggy night. We managed to start hiking at 5.46am, the earliest start so far. We promised ourselves to walk slowly and take enough time so we are not in too much pain when arriving in wrightwood. Well said and also done. The problem with this is that hiking miles takes sooo long, how shall we ever get to wrightwood today with this pace?! We stopped for breakfast 5 miles in and enjoyed the spot for an hour. Time flies when breaking and not as fast while hiking :) we stopped again 5 miles later to dry our tent and sleeping bags in the sun. The sun is fully out now and we can feel the heat. Luckily we are quite high in altitude already and some wind is keeping us cooler. The trail is thanks God not as steep as we were worrying but some parts are really steep in between. And it is continously uphill. I carry 5.5 liters of water and re-filled 0.5 liters again after the first 5 miles were some water in a water cache was left, so still got about 5 liters for today. It turned out that I was not very thirsty all of today and that I carried about 3.5 liters too much with me. Bugger! Water adds a lot of weight to your backpack. About 3 miles later we stopped again for lunch. Joanne and me were really tired today. May because of the early start or the all day uphill hike. We napped for a couple of minutes before hiking on. Still on the uphill part for about 6 miles before some downhill starts. The downhill turned out to be a ski area with skilifts! They have fenced water ponts for making more snow. It's crazy to have a ski area there where you can just look down to the desesert! It's less than 1 hour drive to the desert!

The downhill was very steep downhill with some steep uphill parts in between. We arrived at the highway where we plan to hitch-hike to Wrightwood just before 6pm. What a long day! All uf us were exhausted, just looking for a bed to sleep. In wrightwood I got us a place to stay. It turned out to be a quite a weird place but serves for tonight! The people however are friendly and the place is cheap. We can shower and wash our close and they drive us around to town. However, there is a pig walking around in the kitchen! :) we still did make it to the pizza place for dinner before falling into our beds.