Day 19

14 miles

Not the last to leave camp this morning; small victories. Some climbing in the morning, but, even with the early start, it was still kinda hot. We dropped down to the first crossing of Mission Creek and took a break and filled water bottles. Honeybear and Pricepoint joined us after a bit. We would walk the next 9 miles trying to stay on trail. While it’s nice to be near a water source all day, the struggle comes from the trail constantly being lost in washed out parts of dry riverbed or hidden in overgrown vegetation and down trees. We did our best with following cairns, spotting non-descript wooden posts, and following shoe prints, but eventually had to get our phones out a few times to be sure of which path we should follow. Also, going upstream meant climbing all day. More to do tomorrow before we leave the creek. We leapfrogged Honeybear and Pricepoint a couple times throughout the day, ate lunch with them too. We stopped for the day about 3 miles before the rest of the group was headed. We’re planning to nero with them all on Monday in Big Bear. Met a man that goes by FedEx as we setup camp. He said the campsite we were using was packed full of tents four years ago when he hiked. Sounds like there are much fewer hikers around this year, as we expected.