I slept poorly last night, probably because of my aching feet and body. I took some ibuprofen around 1 am and finally was able to relax. Up at 5 again but I forced myself to shut my eyes a little longer and woke up around 5:45 to start getting ready.
The morning miles were pretty easy but it started to warm up fast. We saw our first fancy bridge with water deep enough to swim in the creek below. No stopping for water here because we had plenty. Another 3 miles and we took a break in a sandy, beachy area to get water and eat a snack. This place is close to a forest service road and there was trash & tp everywhere. Jake was feeling yesterday’s miles pretty hard so we took a longer morning break than normal.
It was so hot already at 10:30 which meant the rest of our day was going to be pretty brutal. We pushed on through the canyon along Deep Creek to find a lunch spot near our next water source. We got near the source and could hear the creek flowing and decided to go rest there. As we were bushwhacking down to the water Jake noticed that the area we were standing in was covered in poison oak. Not good. He had gone through and I was in the middle of it so I just pushed on to the end. I immediately washed my legs off and wiped them down. I have no idea if that did anything but in my mind it helped. We decided not to stay in this spot for lunch but I really needed to get in the river so we stripped down and got in as far as we could manage for a bit just to cool off, it was glorious and cold. After afternoon swimsies we went back up the hill a bit to a shady spot for lunch. It ended up being about a 3.5 hour break. After yesterday’s big miles we needed it.
Onward towards the hot springs and further to camp. The hot springs was a party but we didn’t stop to check it out. From the stories of other hikers we missed out on naked old dudes and party tunes until 1am…so we didn’t miss anything. I had originally thought we could find a spot to camp before we reached the dam but I didn’t realize we’d be walking the edge of the canyon so we pushed on to find a spot out of the Deep Creek area.
We got to camp late for us as the sun was starting to go down. The spot was very windy so we tried our best to get everything tied down right. We ate dinner pretty quickly and tucked in for the night. Parts of the tent were flapping around all night but I finally passed out. Jake said he was up late listening to the wind and fixing parts of the tent that had come up.
PCT Hike 