Slow getting started this morning as it was very cold – my water bottles were more frozen than liquid. The trail took a long climb out of the canyon on a very poorly maintained trail. It is eroded and overgrown and heavily infested with Poodle Dog Bush. This was still avoidable with slow and careful walking, but in a couple of weeks it will be impossible to not get exposed.
Got to the Ranger Station before running out of water. The station looks new and modern – it must have been built after the 2000 fire – but there were no rangers to be found, nor any sign indicating where hikers might get water. Fortunately there was a very friendly road crew worker who had a cooler full of water bottles that he was happy to give away to hikers. Which was quite a few bottles, as it is 17 hot miles to the next water.
Burned and dry, looking out to the Tehachapis, mi 415
Jill and Marce were there along with Jamie, and Strider soon showed up. Lunch was brief as there was no shade.
As my mind wandered while hiking the next stretch, I found myself remembering images of my daughters as babies, and thinking about how, like every parent, I tried to give them what I felt I lacked as a child. In my case it was roughousing and play with my Dad. He worked so long at his garage that we often saw very little of him, and when he was home, he had little energy for horsing around or throwing a ball. His dad had left his family when he was young, and I know that Dad felt betrayed and abandoned by this to the end of his life. He was trying to give us the thing that he had lacked just by being there. I, in turn, always made sure I was home in time for a game of Hop on Pop with my wild little girls. But I’m sure there is something they wanted from me that I didn’t manage to give.
The trail got even worse after the ranger station, at times little better than a bushwhack. There have been other bad sections of trail in the other National Forests, but the degree of neglect by the Angeles NF is pretty shameful. The PCT is a world-class trail, but ANF appears to have no interest in trail stewardship and are the weak link.
I finally tired of bushwhacking the trail and bailed out on to the Mt Gleason road. This passed through a burned out fire camp, and it was very much like hiking through a zombie apocalypse.
Finally made it to Messenger Flats, another apparently abandoned FS campground, and enjoyed a campfire, whiskey and conversation with Marce, Jill and Jamie.