We woke up earlier than usual this morning anxious to make it through a couple of steep snow banks before the sun had a chance to soften the snow. I was even more anxious about my broken pack frame holding up for one more day.

This section of trail worked its way up over 8,000 ft of elevation through towering pine trees, huge boulders, dramatic cliffs and awesome views.

We reached the first of several steep snow chutes, donned our micro spikes and kept our ice axes ready.

Later we reached the site of a rockslide that sent a huge boulder crashing onto the narrow path. With a rock wall on our left and a sheer cliff to our right, we had to scramble around the outside of the boulder to make it to the trail on the far side. The pictures don’t really do it justice!

No sooner did we work our way over and around the rockslide, we ran into another obstacle. A massive tree that fell across the trail. I trekked uphill and climbed over it, while Amy crawled underneath it.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the last of the fallen trees. This section was hit pretty hard by a wildfire and the trail was littered with fallen trees. It was tedious and tiring climbing over, around and under several dozen fallen trees.

We were forced to pull out our ice axes and once again don our microspikes to traverse a steeply angled snow bank section.

As we climbed higher, we could see back to the mountains and ridgelines we traversed yesterday.

Eventually, the trail wound to the north side of the mountain where a thick blanket of snow covered everything. The green pines and white snow were a beautiful sight. We would spend the next few miles working our way through the snow trying our best to find and stay on the trail with a combination of the guide, footprints before us and a healthy dose of swag(s).

As the day wore on, the sun softened the snow causing us to “post hole” or sink into the snow. Some footsteps would be solid, others would sink as far as waist deep into the snow. This really slowed us down and made for a long afternoon.

Late in the afternoon we finally made it to Saddle Junction. From there we took the Devil’s Slide trail 2.5 miles to get down the mountain and try to hitch a ride into Idyllwild for a resupply and gear repair.

On the way down, we met Paul and his dog, Roddy, hiking up trail. He said he had trail magic for us and pulled a couple of dehydrated meals and a couple Kate’s Real Food bars out of his pack for us. Thanks again!

We made it to the parking lot and were able to hitchhike into town with a rock climbing guide that had just finished with a client. We only intended to stay the night in town, but we are going to take an extra day off to get resupplied, repair my pack, and mail some extra gear further up trail.