Mile 374 to mile 396 : Cloudy campsite to Cooper Canyon trailcamp
Mileage : 22 + 3
After a poor showing yesterday, I was determined to get some real miles in today. But the hiking gods were definitely not making it easy. I packed two stuff sacks away in my sleeping bag, and thought i'd lost them to the wind for a good 15 minutes, and also left my sun hat at the campsite, although it was less than a campsite and more of carpark at the base of the Mt Baden Powell. I realised a few hundred steep metres up the trail, Doh! The view from the summit was perhaps the best so far on the trail. 360 degrees in all directions, and even a view of Mt Harwood hiding behind the larger Mt San Antonio. Just after the summit I took my first USD (Unscheduled Scenic Detour), it took me a mile and half and couple hundred feet of descent before i realised. This warranted the 2nd Doh! of the day, ah well it was bound to happen at some point. Towards the end of the day we also had our first road detour. The detour was due to a small endangered frog that makes its home in a small canyon through which the PCT is usually routed. There is an official trail detour, but it adds an extra 15 miles so that was vetoed pretty quickly. The alternative is a 2.7 mile road walk. Roads it turns out are extremely hard on the feet. My feet are sensitive enough from the endless trail pounding without having to subject them to a road surface, but there wasn't really another option.
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| Team PRT in action at the top of Mt Baden Powell |
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| Somewhere below the clouds LA is going to work |
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| The monument to Lord Baden Powell, founder of the boyscout movement |
I never knew that there was a Mt. Harwood! I wonder if that was an enterprising ancestor... Can you find out some more history of it please..? :)
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