Campsite near Mission Creek to Mission Creek Trail Camp, CA
So, about last night. The wind continued to blow and then around 10:30 pm it started to rain. I thought, great. Now that is is raining the front is going to pass over us and the wind will stop. Nope. It rained for a few hours and then the wind continued. The good news is that the wind wasn't nearly as bad as the other night, so we were able to sleep. However, when we woke at 6:30 am,, there was freezing rain. We thought about staying in our sleeping bags, but we both had to...you know...go, so we put on our rain jacket and went outside. Good news...the guy who cowboy camped got soaked (this is not the good news) and needed to dry out how stuff, so he built a fire (this is the good news). Bad news...we wound up standing around the fire till 11:00 am when we finally realized the time and had to get on the trail.
We finally started hiking around 11:15 am and knew that we were now in a bit of a hurry since the campsite for the night is 10 miles away and it is mostly up hill. We started today at 3,927 feet and we will be climbing to 7,921 feet.
The start of the hike we were feeling good as we usually do when we have a good night sleep and the fire today made us feel even better.
The trail, like yesterday, was very diverse. It followed a creek for the first half of the day, so even though we are in the desert, it was pretty green.
Here are some looks at the changes of the trail today:
Today we left the San Gogornio Forest and entered the San Bernadino Forest.
We also came across a new plant. I know, it's not much to look at, but it smells wonderful. Kinda like lemongrass or citrus or something.
As the day progressed, and we were 3 miles from the campsite, the trail got steeper and steeper. Now we were worried about getting there before dark. We tried speeding up, but between the altitude and the steepness of the trail, it was difficult. I began checking more frequently than usually how much further, which only makes it seem like we weren't getting anywhere. Finally, we were only 1/3 mile away and terrain leveled out. Oh, did I mention that as we were getting higher, it was getting colder. Notice the snow.
Finally we made it and saw 2 of the hikers we shared a site with last night already in thier tents at only 7 pm. Why? Because it is so very cold. As I type this I am sitting in my sleeping bag a hivering. It is most definitely below freezing, but the wind seems to finally be slowing down. Tonight we will be testing our 20 degree rated sleeping bags! Hopefully the sun will hit our tent in the morning and warm us up, or else, we may wind up sleeping in again and having to fight the sunset.
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