Date Tags hiking / pct

Trying to figure out what to do. Snow is expected on Tue and Wed for the mountains west, beyond Wrightwood.

Right now, I'm in my nice hotel room at the Best Western Cajon Pass. I'd planned to leave here today (Sunday), and camp on the trail tonight at Gobbler's Knob (giggle), then keep on heading up the trail. On Monday I'd drop down into Wrightwood and take a zero day there, staying at a motel in town on Monday and Tuesday nights.

The weather is messing all that up. A cold Alaskan storm will come through the area on Tuesday and early Wednesday, with temperatures in the 20s and dropping a couple of inches of snow at Wrightwood's elevation (5000'). The trail goes up to above 9000 feet around Mount Baden-Powell, and there will be quite a bit more snow at those higher elevations than just one to two inches. I'm just not equipped for that; the three miles I trudged through on Fuller Ridge was definitely sketchy and slowed me down quite a bit.

Today's supposed to get real windy here in the Cajon Pass area (gusts to 45mph) and much cooler as well, with winds to 40mph on the trail up to Wrightwood. That trail ascends to 8000 feet before heading down as well.

So my choices are:

  1. Hike today and tomorrow. It will be very windy, and quite cold tonight. Then stay in Wrightwood for three nights, maybe four. The big rain is on Tuesday, so I'd get hiking again on Thursday or Friday. The snow will certainly still be up there (temperatures will be around 20 at night in that 7 to 8000 foot elevation up there) but it'll be sunny.

  2. Skip around this section. Just cut the days out of the schedule, and start up again at an easily reachable spot (Acton? Agua Dulce?) next weekend. Pick up the section later in the year.

I'm thinking I'm fine with Option 2. Now it's time to figure out where to stay for the week--oddly, I could actually just go home; it's only two hours drive south, or a few hours farther by train.

Time to investigate Metrolink and Amtrak schedules, and figure out a way down to the nearest station in Ontario or Berdoo or wherever. And get some sleep for once, this has been keeping me up all night.