Day 9, part 2

I had just finished to pitch my tent and was admiring the beautiful view of the sun, clouds and mountains when…

SNAP! I hear something break and the metallic sound makes me sure it’s not just another branch.

I look back and my tent pole is broken, my tent flapping and swinging with the wind as if it was a weird flag attached to the ground. It took me a few seconds (or minutes) to assess the situation. The forecast is 4 degrees (surely colder here on top of the mountain), sustained winds of 40 mph (64km/h), cold and wet feet and no tent. It seemed difficult not to break the only rule I’m trying to follow here. What could I possibly do?

“Hiiii Bruuuunoooo” I hear. Holy shit, I’m delirious I think. I’m so exhausted that I’m hearing the wind saying my name.

“Bruno!!!” I hear, but now it’s a different voice. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Toni, Noelle, Tenor and Virginia were crossing the last patch of snow before where I am. When I met them earlier today we brielfly exchanged our plans: I was going to Idyllwild via the Devil’s Slide trail and they would be camping in the last camp spot, which is where we are now. My plan obviously changed and I’m so happy to see them!

Dude you’re crazy to camp here with this storm, Tenor said. We’ll push to Idyllwild, he continued.

Once more I couldn’t believe what I was listening.

I looked at each one of them. They also looked exhausted. How are you guys possibly going to Idyllwild still? It’s going to take at least two hours and the path ahead is really full of snow, I asked. We know, but we won’t be here in this storm tonight. We’ll push it though, one of them said.

Can I please join you guys? I need five minutes to disassemble this… tent?

Of course! The four of them replied in unison.

There I was. 5:30 in the evening, exhausted and still a good 2-3 hours of hike ahead of me. Let’s do this!

The evening was stunning. The sky was clear and even the wind was milder. And even though we had to hike mainly on ice and snow, it was not sketchy or dangerous at all (I guess).

I was happy to be with other people that had more experience than me in these conditions. Also, whenever something would happen, like somebody sinking knee deep jnto the snow, sliding or even falling, instead of thinking “oh shit I’m going to die” there was always a “are you ok?” checkup followed by some laughs. I didn’t realize that, but I missed laughing.

The problems was that we were slow. Besides the terrain not being the friendliest and us being super tired, we were stopping more than normal to take pictures. There was a beautiful sunset and nobody wanted to miss it. Until someone realizes that at the sunset, the sun… sets! We’re going to be in the darkness!

We started rushing a bit, but there was no way to espace our destiny. At some point some commanded: everybody: head lamps on! Yes, sir 🫡! I put my head lamp on and… yeah, I remembered that it had been on probably for the whole day and past night by accident, so I have no light. I stayed in the middle of the pack and thankfully their lights were enough to show me the way.

Then it was 7, 7:30, 8… and we were still in the mountain. At 8 we started our decent and at 8:30 there was — finally! — no more snow. We took off our micro spikes and started almost to run downhill. At 9:30 in the evening, after hiking in the complete darkness for more than one and a half hour, we arrived at the trailhead parking lot where a trail angel was waiting to pick us up. We couldn’t believe it (at least I couldn’t!). We all high fived and prepared to go to town!

Except…

We were five people. The trail angel rightfully only wanted to bring 4 at a time. Because I was new

in the group (and I was so thankful that they “rescued” me) I decided to stay. The trail

angel said she would be back in 20-30 minutes to pick me up. Before leaving, the trail angel said: please be safe, I’ll be back for you. And be careful with mountain lions, we do have some in this region.

BE CAREFUL WITH WHAT WHY DID YOU TELL

ME THIS?

And off they went.

It was pitch dark (no head lamp!) and getting very cold, very quickly, but I had no other choice. I wore all my clothes (literally!) and waited in the dark. I could barely use my phone because I didn’t want to take my hands out of my pockets. It was the longest 20 minutes of my life. I felt that I was in a movie terror. A crime scene. A mountain lion’s dinning table. Every single sound in the mountains (and I was surrounded by them) caused a shiver down my spine. And I couldn’t even see it. Was it a mountain lion or just a leaf falling? Who knows.

Finally my trail angel arrived (omg thank you for coming back). When I said thank you so much she said it’s my pleasure Bruno, I said I was coming back for you, I came back the fastest as I could.

It was 10 o’clock already, one hour past hiker’s midnight. I didn’t have a place to sleep in town. All the inns and hotels were already closed, since usually they don’t get late night unannounced guests. I went to the city’s campground. I couldn’t find nobody to check-in (and pay) so I just entered, found a spot and set my tent. In the end I could book a tent spot online, so at least I could sleep without possibly being woken up at 6am by the campground patrol.

Before falling in deep sleep, I cooked water and mixed everything else that I had in a single meal. My spaghetti-couscous-olive-oil-peanut-butter was absolutely delicious!

Even though I was depleted, I couldn’t fall asleep. My mind wanted to think about all the bad things, all the risks, all the exhaustion. I put in my mind that I wouldn’t think about anything or make any plans. I put my headphones on and fell asleep almost instantly.