Day 20 - Wrightwood Resupply

Tuesday, May 5

It seems odd to wake up in the morning and take a shower even though I'm not filthy dirty!

Here is a view of the Pines Motel, the place where I am staying.


As a piece of trivia, I am staying at a place less than a mile from the San Andreas Fault. The mountains near here are rising at an average rate of about 0.1 inches per year, or 8000' per million years, making them one of the fastest-growing mountain ranges in the world. Hope there are no earthquakes while I am here!

Although this is a "rest day", there is a lot to do.

The first thing I do is to charge up my battery backup and iPhone. I also charge my camera.

I then take everything (I mean EVERYTHING) out of my pack. Often there's something that needs to be done that I'll forget if I don't look at it. Do I have toilet paper? Do I need Ziplock bags? Am I running low on olive oil or bleach to treat my water? You get the picture.

This is everything laid out.


Once I see everything, I start making a list of what I need. I know from my hiking plan that I need 5 days of food to get to Agua Dulce, my next resupply town. You can see that I had one day of food left, so I need to buy 4 days of food. The same is true for the snacks.

I headed over to the local grocery store to shop.


Here is the food after I made purchases at the grocery store.


You can tell I like Idahoan mashed potatoes!

In addition to buying food, a town stop means ENJOYING town food. For breakfast, I went to the Grizzly Cafe. Their Denver Omelette with potatoes and pancakes was delicious. The place had a moose head that moved and blinked its eyes. Kinda odd...creepy?


For lunch, I returned to the Yodeler for a hamburger and frosty beer. They have a good IPA, although it was a little pricey.


Tonight, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, I had Mexican food. The first margarita was just 5 cents!





At midday I called the customer service representative for my ULA backpack, and discussed the problem I am having with my lopsided pack. Chris, the customer rep, walked me through the checklist of potential issues, and he is going to send a smaller hip belt to the Action KOA campground which is 3 or 4 days away. He thinks that the smaller belt might solve the problem by allowing the pack to better transfer its' load to my hips. The KOA campground is within a quarter mile of the trail at mile 444. I hope that it works!

My last task for the day was to review my maps to determine how much water I needed to carry. It appears that I will need about 3 liters to get me to the next reliable water source. I know where the reliable water sources are from the PCT water report (on-line) and from my PCT Gutthooks iPhone app.

It also looks like I will have an upcoming detour due to the endangered frogs.

I'll try to get back on the trail after breakfast tomorrow, hopefully by 9 AM. The Pines Motel offers rides back to the trail, so I signed up for a ride at 8:30.

It is strange how taking a day off makes me want to stay longer. The town acts like a vortex trying to trap me here. But, the trail calls, and I must go!

So you can see a "zero day" in town takes a lot of time and planning. Rest day? Not really!