The Life in the Desert

After leaving Warner Springs I did a couple twenty mile days to get to highway 74, leading into Idyllwild. This is not the closest road into town, but a few miles past highway 74 there is a section of trail closed due to a wildfire a few years ago. There is an official alternate route that bypasses this closed section of trail but it looked decidedly uninteresting so I decided to hitch into Idyllwild from there and pick up the trail on the other side of the closed section at mile 177. The past few days have been full of lovely views and fairly easy trails. The PCT continues to be much more gradual on the elevation changes than the AT. There is also not much vegetation taller than I am to obstruct the views. It is kind of nice to feel like I am being rewarded with views, but not punished with grueling climbs, straight up mountains, like the trails back home. The following photos provide a fair representation of what I look at all day as I hike.

Water continues to be annoyingly sparse. There are specific locations that have it (some of them questionable, at best) but I don't know if I will ever get over the habits that much of the AT taught me. The AT has abundant water sources along the trail and thinking about the distance to the next reliable source of water never took up much of my mental energy. On this trail, water is always an event. Water sources are where hikers tend to gather for breaks during the day and socialize. So far my experience on the PCT has not been on of people clumping up to camp at night, which is the opposite of the AT. The trend of spreading out more to camp seems to drive people to hang out longer at water sources just to chat with the people around them on the trail.

When the water source is less than desirable such gatherings don't seem to happen. (There was a dead rat in this one.)

Besides hikers at water sources, I have also seen a plethora of other wildlife. I had not expected to see more wildlife in the desert than I did in the woodlands of the AT, but it feels like that's the case. Along the AT, I saw squirrels, chipmunks, and deer almost exclusively. So far on the PCT I have seen dozens of rabbits, countless lizards of multiple varieties, three rattlesnakes, a few other snakes I am not knowledgeable enough to identify, as well as the multitudes of small rodents that populate the desert. The plant life also seems to be more diverse with different kinds of cacti and bushes along the trail. I recognize that the variety of the flora and fauna probably stands out to me more since it is all things that exist outside my normal climate zone but it still surprises me to see so much life in the desert. 

Tomorrow I will be leaving Idyllwild and summiting San Jacinto Peak. The summit is at elevation 10,834 feet, which will be the tallest of the hike so far (by quite a bit!). It is supposed to have some of the most spectacular views on the southern section of the PCT so I am looking forward to it. Hopefully the trail doesn't throw too many hurdles my way, or at least ones I can't make it over.