139 to 154 miles
“To be clear, you are not bothering me.” -Animal Style
4/20, also known as Day 16, also known as Laura’s birthday, also known as the day Adam and Liz woke up before the crack of dawn and nearly ran 12 miles uphill without getting passed – not even once! - to the beacon we had been dreaming of for days, Paradise Valley Cafe. By 11:30am, we had arrived at the junction, rang the cafe, and were soon swept one mile down the road by the owner (wearing business casual, driving a fancy, clean pick-up truck) to the cafe/hiker haven where at least 30 icky hikers were eating way too fast, talking way too loud, and smelling frankly terrible. When we thanked our superwoman server for the millionth time for so graciously handling the chaos, she said, “One time another server said ‘I can’t stand the hikers – they smell,’ and I said, ‘Really? Cuz to me they smell like MONEY!’” And that is the summary of the relationship between hikers and the pass-through towns.
This was not some typical laid-back burger and fries kind of day; the hikers were wrapped it heated debate. 10 miles down the trail there was a closure due to a forest fire several years back. The options included: hike those ten (uphill) miles, and then take an alternative route an additional 17 miles on iffy trails and downright crappy roads into the rockin’ town of Idyllwild (aka hike for two more days) OR hitch right now into Idyllwild. Well, PCT hikers are really just as lazy as any normal person, so we watched from the patio, conducting an unofficial sociological study, as groups of twos and threes headed to the corner to wait for a hitch. (To our surprise, “Barbie and Ken” waited about 30 minutes, while three large, smelly dudes waited only 5. God bless America.)
Throughout the hemming and hawing, our little group kept asserting that it would stay together despite the fact that the opinions of whether to walk or ride were split down the middle. The temptation became too much for Kiwi, who eventually broke down, threw his backpack in the back of a pickup, and waved goodbye. The rest of us followed Laura’s lead: we would walk.
So instead of heading into town for beers and soap, we packed up our bags, walked a mile down the road, and then started up the trail again that evening. We were finally hiking the PCT old school-style: without a person in sight.
