Day 22 - Wednesday, May 19

Day 22 - Tenting at Sulphur Springs Trail Camp (mile 406.6).  Walked 8.4 trail miles, 1.5 road miles, and potentially 11 road miles.

Woke up about 5 and took my time getting ready.  Just after 8, the Spa owner's husband drove us back to the trail.  We took off and hiked about 4.7 miles on trails through a pine forest.  Somewhere out there on the salt flats is the back-up landing site for the space shuttles.

When we arrived at Vincent Gap, we found the road closed.

This area is something we've been struggling to come up with a plan to navigate for the past few days.  Normally it would be a straightforward hitch around the trail closure for the Bobcat Fire (which happened last year), skipping about 29 miles of trail.  Our path was complicated because highway 2, virtually the only road in the area (and the road that the trail parallels for a number of miles) has been closed for several days due to landslides.  We had gotten conflicting information as to the road's status but decided to go for it and hope that it was open to walk.  Of course it wasn't, so we had to make a decision.  The sign on the gate across the road said "pedestrians prohibited" and we'd heard that there could be a pretty steep fine for violating it.  Flying talked to a construction worker who had been plowing the rocks off the road and he told us about where they were working and that it was strongly discouraged to road walk it.

We discussed it and made a decision.  Because of the legalities of the closure, I can't say what we did, but if we HAD walked it, I think we would have seen 11 miles of great views and cool rock formations.  I bet the construction worker would have passed by us several times and waved and we would have taken a nice break in the shade for lunch.  I bet our trail (road) angel construction worker would have helped us past the front end loader who would have been clearing rocks from the roadway.  I bet we also would have seen a few smaller rockslides happen for no apparent reason. Near the end, I bet we would have seen some really badly burnt areas due to the fire.

How we got to the other side will remain a mystery, but somehow we found ourselves at Islip Saddle.

Here, we had hoped to hitch 11 miles to the Three Points trailhead where the trail was once again open.  We were counting on Hwy 39 to be open to bring cars up, but it was closed. Highway 2 (the road next to the trail) can be pretty hazardous with drivers from LA speeding up and down it, so we wanted to avoid as much as possible.  There were a few cars in the parking lot, but we started walking hoping somebody would come the other way and have to turn around due to the closure.

We walked through a couple of tunnels before finally being picked up by the first car by, a couple of Chinese guys from LA who didn't speak much English.  They were super nice and took us exactly where we needed to go.  Once back on the trail, we sped through 3.7 miles to end up at the campground tonight.  Dillon, a hiker we met yesterday at the trailhead when we were trying to get to town, showed up about 8, having done the entire 22-mile road walk.  Our hitch means that we skipped about 10 miles and we no longer have a continuous footpath, but that was going to be difficult to achieve this year anyway. We're happy with our decisions.