Mile 73 to 80 (3 miles past Scissors Crossing)

I cowboy camped again last night and while the stars were beautiful, the wind was ridiculous. It was constantly blowing in my face and wipping my quilt around. Luckily, it wasn’t very cold, but needless to say I didn’t get much sleep.

At first light, Mowgli and I left the campsite to make the short 4 mile walk to Scissors Crossing to hitch into Julian. As we walked up, their was a trail angel named Brew Hiker waiting. He got his name because he brewed beer along his 1,700 mile hike on the PCT last year. He used local ingredients he found along the trail.

We got dropped off at Mom’s, which makes some of the best pies around and gives PCT hikers a free slice and drink. I can attest that the strawberry rhubarb is delicious.

After pie, I met up with Scott Wilkinson, who is the Director of Marketing and Communications for the Pacific Crest Trail Association. He is in charge of the P3 Hiker program of which I am a part. We did a short video interview about my experience on trail so far and Leave No Trace.

Next, I headed to Carmen’s which is a Mexican restaurant. The sign out front says “closed, except for hiker trash.” Hikers get a free beer and a giant $3 breakfast burrito. As you can expect, the place was full of hikers.

She decided to close the place to the public for the day and proceeded to give out epson salt foot baths, let us do laundry, and of course make us more food. I have a feeling that the place is closed to the public a lot during hiker season.

I hung out with Burnout and Boldazore most of the time. They are a couple and both are really friendly and nice. It was good to get to know them more.

As you can imagine, it could be hard to leave Julian and there were certainly a large number of people debating on whether to stay the night or head out and hike a couple of miles. I was leaning towards the later and so we’re Burnout and Boldazore. We all got a quick hitch back to the trail from a kind gentleman and hiked about 3 miles to some small campsites.

The wind is howling again so my prospects for sleep are slim, but I decided to set up my tent and use earplugs tonight. Hopefully that works!

We are in a long waterless stretch of about 24 miles with a potential water cache at mile 91 known as the Third Gate Cache. We packed out 5 liters each and our packs were definitely weighing us down on our climb up from Scissors Crossing,  not to mention all the Mexican food.

My IT band started tweaking on the way up…I stretched it at camp and hope it feels better tomorrow.