Today was a good day! We hiked 17 miles to Mile 77 by 4pm. I was hardly sore at all this morning and we set a good pace most of the day with minimal stops, like good thru-hikers should. All we need to do is increase the number of hours we walk (like all the way to sunset instead of four), and will be pulling some big miles. Maybe my amibitous itinerary won’t be so far off after all.
Needless to say, I am shocked and amazed at how fast my body is responding, and how much better I feel today after seventeen miles, compared to fewer miles just a few days ago. If this keeps up I will have no trouble making it to Canada. We’re already thinking of a Nero in Warner Springs instead of a Zero, since we can probably get there mid-morning. We’re also thinking about four days from there to Idyllwild instead of five. That would be an average of 19 and some change per day. Maybe we’re counting our chickens, but I don’t think so.
Also, my appetite has returned. I wouldn’t exactly call it hiker hunger, but it’s not nothing. I am eating again.
We’re really getting into the desert now. Much hotter today and tomorrow should be considerably worse. We can see the trail on the other side of the valley climbing up into some desolate looking country. We’ll be carrying 24 miles of water. I think that’s six plus liters for me which easily doubles my pack weight. Needless to say, we’ll try to get the climb done as early as we can.
Cousin David is close to the center of this photo. See him?
At mile 77.1 we stopped at really nice camp spot. There was a big rock face to shade us as we sat on a nice sandy floor. It wasn’t right on the trail, but we could see hikers when they went by. It even had a “backyard”. I cowboy camped back there to give me and David some privacy.
Any hope you have for now of seeing my pictures is to go to Instagram and search for me (Adam Dresser) and follow me. I didn’t take a lot of pictures today. Was kind of ugly.
A New Place To Dream 
Hey Adam…just saw your “About you” page. I’m a hydrologist on the San Bernardino NF and started section hiking the PCT last year. I’ve got the week of April 19th off and was planning on backpacking a portion of the Big Bear section…thinking mile 240 (Mission Springs) to 299 (Splinters Cabin) or anywhere in between. I did mile 299 (Splinters Cabin) to mile 329 (Silverwood Lake) this weekend and am now nursing some blisters (I tried some different shoes this weekend that obviously didn’t work out). Let me know if you think you’ll be in the area in the next 7 days or so and want to backpack with a fellow hydro from R5. You can get a hold me at the SO in San Bernardino or respond via my e-mail or this page? Enjoy the hike and hope we can meet up in/around Big Bear.
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Hi Bill, I can’t seem to find your email. I’d walk down to the Ranger Station and call you but you said you were off this week. Can you send me an email to adamtdresser@gmail.com ?
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On Instagram, search for “Adam Dresser” yields “No users found”
It says you can set it to copy photos to Tumblr, maybe that would work.
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NVM, search for Adam t dresser works. 🙂
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https://instagram.com/adamdresser/ Doesn’t work for me. Is your profile public? What is your user name or profile name? Jay, can you post a link to this blog?
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https://instagram.com/adamtdresser/
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Adam, I’m not sure if you have geotagging turned on for iPhone but the JPGs I downloaded from Instagram don’t have any; they may “scrub” the data when they convert them. It would be cool to know the lat/long of the pictures, or at least when you make a blog post. If it’s easy for you to add then it’s nice to follow along.
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