May 6

231.1- 262.9

We wake up and continue up mission creek, weaving our way up the drainage and through dozens of crossings across the creek.

We avoid touching the water with our hands, for fear of norovirus contamination. The skills I developed while working through COVID- constant attention to avoid touching my face, and a cognizance of routes of transmission seem to serve me well here. We finally leave the wash of mission creek and climb to a point where many hikers take an off trail ridge climb to avoid another stretch of trail that was destroyed by hurricane Hillary.

The bushwhack has us climb 2,000 feet in under 2 miles. We huff and puff our way up the ridge and meet back up with the official PCT. We we climb we can see the wash of mission creek thousands of feet below us.

In the past day and a half, we have climbed from 1500 feet up to nearly 9,000 feet. We are back up in the pines. We hustle through the late afternoon, finding campsites where hikers have recently been sick. We are grossed out by soiled toilet paper littering the trail in one particular site.

We pass by some of the most spectacular trees we have seen on the trip. They look ancient, with thick, fibrous sheets of bark covering their trunks.

We make camp about 5 miles outside of Big Bear, CA