We got up bright and early (well not actually bright because it was before sunrise) at 4:15AM. We packed up and were off around 5:00AM and believe it or not we weren’t even the first to leave our camping area! We had a beautiful walk along what seemed like an old road right along a ridge line as the sun rose. It was so beautiful and peaceful.
There was an area with all these plaques that I guess was a place to memorialized loved ones that passed away.
We had an enjoyable and quick seven mile hike to the Sunrise Trailhead, where we stocked up on water. A guy was dropping off his friend to hike and gave Wolf Bird 4 liters of water which he graciously shared with me. We opted to carry a reasonable amount of water which meant we would have to walk extra later in the day to restock our water supply. Others opted to carry a heavy load of water (think 6+ liters or 12+ pounds) to avoid having to walk more/stock up later.
Today it was really noticeable how meandering the trail is. Since it’s so open, we can often see where the trail will take us for the next half hour or more. Today we went way up up (at a very gradual grade) only to then do a switch back and walk way down in the totally opposite direction. Then we crossed the valley floor and went right back up again. It can feel frustrating since we can literally see all this back and forth ahead of us.
It got very hot by 10AM but we powered on until about noon where we would stop at Rodriguez Road for our siesta. This was where we had to stock up on water which meant we had to walk off trail a mile down a dirt road to a spring. The walk down wasn’t too bad but we then had to walk a mile back uphill in the blazing hot sun awkwardly trying to juggle about 5 liters of water each. I was really struggling near the end so Wolf Bird went ahead of me and disappeared out of site. Minutes later, as I was struggling even more, I saw him walking in my direction. He had set down his water at the top of the hill and walked back down to me to help me carry my water the rest of the way up. 100 points for Wolf Bird!
Wolf Bird found a pretty sweet spot with some shade and also rigged up our tent fly to create some extra shade. It wasn’t perfect but it was very nice to get out of the sun. The tent fly “shade” turned out to be more of a sweat lodge but Wolf Bird is weird and enjoyed it. We laid about snacking and relaxing and Wolf Bird also read some of The Alchemist to me.
After our long break we finally set out around 5PM to walk our final four miles. It still felt pretty hot, as we were walking uphill and in the sun for most of the miles. We finally made it to our Tentsite which turned out to be a bit windy but also beautiful.
Our plan was tomorrow to walk four miles to the road and hitch into Julian, as we’d heard a storm with strong winds and potential for snow was on the way.
