So coming up short of my goal on day 4 (Mount Laguna) meant that I would be getting to Mount Laguna midday instead of the end of day. I started thinking about staying at the Lodge or the Tiny House hostel. When I accidentally ripped my tent’s rain fly, that made some time to fix it off trail more pressing.

Getting some real food would be nice too. 😀

With the heatwave that had been baking California for most of March starting to shift towards more normal spring temperatures, you’d think I’d be glad of cooler weather after the 4 days of fairly hot weather.

But being at a higher elevation and the general weather pattern changing meant it was windy and it was cold. FREEZING COLD. I had noticed that it had been a cooler night from inside my tent, but I was surprised at the frigid wind that sliced through my clothing when I woke up that morning and left my tent.

I kind of missed the heat at that point.

Oh well… I layered up my clothing (first time that I had to use my puffy insulated jacket) and headed north towards Mount Laguna. It was uneventful until I accidentally backtracked on the trail about a half mile after a rest.

Oops.

Sometimes it isn’t obvious which direction you’re going on a trail if the sun is not out.

I decided to go to the northern access trail to the town to get a little more mileage in for the day.

Along the way, I got a reminder that the desert was still all around me.

At the Desert View Picnic Area, I left the PCT and went into the town of Laguna. After getting a motel room, I found out that the only cafe in town closed at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, which is what day it was. 😮

I tried to get down to the cafe in time, but was too late. I’d have to settle for frozen pizza for dinner and breakfast at the cafe in the morning.

Sigh. I did my laundry and fixed my tent. I also decided to discard my ankle leg gaiters (I just wasn’t using them and my long pants kept dirt and stones out of my boots), discard the cape from my sun hat (the hooded sun shirt was working very well, so I wouldn’t need the cape), discard the non-working Piezo lighter (I’d just use normal pocket lighters going forward), and I would be carrying TWO 110g ISO butane gas canisters to avoid running out on trail again. Redundancy is a good thing.

Even after spending most of the previous year planning and buying my gear, I knew there would be changes needed on the trail as I found things that broke, didn’t work as expected, or were just not worth their weight after all.

Mile 37.1 to 42.8 – Only 5.7 miles hiked on the PCT

I was not happy with the daily and total mileage I’d been able to get on the first 5 days. 😒