5/20/17 – Mt. Baden-Powell | thirst 4 adventure

5/20/17 – Mt. Baden-Powell

May 23, 2017

Day 27
Miles: 369 to 384

How did we forget to buy ibuprofen when shopping yesterday I do not know, it’s such an essential here on the trail, but in the end it worked to our advantage.

At first Dave wasn’t happy about walking 0.2 miles back to town where we could pick a 20 pack at the small mini mart, his grumpiness dissolved; however, when this short walk got us a super fast hitch from a teacher who hikes pieces of the PCT during school breaks. He was headed the other direction but when he saw us, he turned and offered to take us to the trailhead few miles up the road.

We were equally excited to climb another high peak today, Mt. Baden-Powell which stands at 9,400 feet and on a clear day offers views stretching all the way to pacific coast and dreading the climb which gains 3,000 feet in 4 miles and would be one of the toughest on the trail so far.

The trail was luckily well graded and maintained for the hoards of people that hit it every weekend so the climb, even though long, did not completely kill us.

What killed us was the descend on the other side of the mountain. Here the trail was narrow and rocky and the downhill was often uncomfortably steep, and just when we though we saw it all, the trail threw a 600 foot climb at us to conquer Sheep Mountain, small bump on the ridge.

It seemed to take forever to reach Little Jimmy Spring, our water source for the night. About 20 people however around it. It was Saturday, and surely we expected company but suddenly people were popping everywhere and so instead of water stop we decided to buggy to camp to make sure we had a site. I was glad we did. 40 tents or so were erected in the main area with many more everywhere around. We snatched last flat spot just above the main area which gave us little privacy but not a shield from the noise.

Eventually we backtracked the 0.2 miles to the spring and completed our other evening chores. We were done just before 8:00 p.m., our usual on trail bed time so we crawled in the tent and hoped the noise wouldn’t last too long.