California – Page 2 – Twig Adventures

DWTH Day 26: Whipple Mountains

March 5, 2025 kaulua26 Desert Winter Thru Hike

Wednesday, Feb 26th 2025, 0540-1740Whipple Wash to HWY 95 mm3, Section 6A24 miles. The wind started blowing pretty hard in the middle of the night, flapping my tent annoyingly. I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I just started packing. Even though the time had changed by 1 hour, I was still waking up just before dawn…that just so happened to be before 5 am now. I needed all the time I could get this day, as I knew it would be a long and hard one. I would be climbing to a ridge, navigating the high country for something like 8 miles, all cross country. It also involved a gain of over 2k’. I’d climbed so[…]

DWTH Day 25: Whipple Wash

March 3, 2025 kaulua26 Desert Winter Thru Hike

Tuesday, Feb 25th 2025, 0800-1740Outside Parker mm2 to Whipple Wash mm22, Section 623 miles. My watch and phone were on different time zones in the morning, so not trusting either, I started the day a little late. California is one hour behind Arizona…but only for another few weeks when DST takes effect. Then they will both be on the same time, since AZ doesn’t observe DST. It was also just really hard to say goodbye to Alan and resume my lonely journey. I was very eager to get back on trail, just also apprehensive about the lack of water and the heat going into the Mojave. I knew the upcoming section was the longest and most difficult of the route.[…]

DWTH: 3 Day Midway Caching Hiatus

March 2, 2025 kaulua26 Desert Winter Thru Hike

Feb 22nd-24th, 3 zeros to cache food \ water through sections 6-8, and hang out with my friend Alan. Bonus 9 mile hike to Eureka peak in Joshua Tree NP. If you followed my blogs over the summer of 2024, you’d have noted a lot of posts about Alan. I first ran into him while I was hiking the Teton Crest Trail and he was hiking through on an alternate of the CDT. We hung out in Jackson Hole for a day, then hiked together for a few days in the Winds. Then I chased him down in Colorado and made him hike a bunch of 14ers. I last saw him in Lake City, CO as he was setting off[…]

DWTH Day 24: Parker

March 2, 2025 kaulua26 Desert Winter Thru Hike

Friday, Feb 21st 2025, 0720-1000Colorado river to Parker, mm 109.5 End Section 54 miles My stealth spot worked out just fine. A few vehicles drove by in the middle of the night and the highway traffic noise was pretty atrocious, but it was still a pretty awesome spot. I didn’t even feel the need to pack super early before I was discovered. I made coffee, took my time, and enjoyed the bird sounds along the river in the morning. The coots were really talkative I had an easy couple miles into town. It was a good thing I didn’t keep going the night before because I would have ended up on tribal land. There was actually legit camping along the[…]

Introducing the Desert Winter Thru Hike

January 23, 2025 kaulua26 Desert Winter Thru Hike

From the Hike Invention website: “The Desert Winter Thru-Hike (WTH!) is an adventurous 800-mile hiking route highlighting 20 Wilderness Areas, 7 National Parks and Monuments, and remote protected lands of the Sonoran, Colorado, and Mojave deserts. Featuring mainly low to mid elevation (2000′) desert valleys and mountain ranges occurring at lower latitudes of the American Southwest (the highest point is Harquahala Mountain (5,691ft/1735m), the Desert WTH offers a true winter season thru-hiking option for very experienced walkers looking to extend the US hiking season into the December – February timeframe. And yet despite the aridity and remoteness of this warmer region, the route has been carefully crafted to greatly reduce or eliminate the need for caching water in advance, while[…]

PCBCRT Bonus Hike: The Pinecrest Loop Trail

January 12, 2024 kaulua26 Pacific Coast Bigfoot Crest Rim Trail, Pacific Crest Trail

Scott and Sailor, the hosts of the Sonora Pass PCT Hiker Cabin, were keen to share a 78 mile loop hike that they created. I met them at PCT Trail Days, which is where they told me about their cabin and the Pinecrest Loop Trail, or PLT. You can read more about this trail here. The idea behind it is for PCT hikers to be able to connect to Pinecrest on foot, if so desired, but to also provide the local community with a route encompassing nearby trails that connect all the way to the PCT and Yosemite National Park. I had some extra time at the end of my thru-hike from the Columbia River to the Tahoe Rim Trail[…]

PCBCRT Day 69: Sonora Peak

October 5, 2023 kaulua26 Pacific Coast Bigfoot Crest Rim Trail, Pacific Crest Trail

Saturday, Sep 16th, 2023, 0630-1440NE of Disaster Peak to Sonora Pass, then ride to Pinecrest, plus side trip to the top of Sonora Peak 20.5 miles, Gain 5100′, Loss 4600′, elevation 6200′ I got on the trail early as usual, but my neighbor got an even earlier start, disappearing into the dark. It was barely light by 6 am. I greeted some pink clouds at a saddle first thing. I recalled this vista from before, which then seemed parched and barren. This morning there was still snow and a green valley below. It felt like early summer. I descended for a bit but there were many short and punchy bumps as the trail worked through some rugged terrain. I had[…]

PCBCRT Day 68: Wolves or Huskies?

September 27, 2023 kaulua26 Pacific Coast Bigfoot Crest Rim Trail, Pacific Crest Trail

Friday, Sep 15th, 2023, 0630-1840South of the Nipple to just NE of Disaster Peak31.5 miles, Gain 6330′, Loss 5730′, elevation 9110′ Oddly, I was hearing tree frogs creaking a few times overnight…at least I think that’s what they were. What a strange place for them to be. Speaking of strange, when I camped in this section in 2018, I was next to the Lost Lakes only a few miles north of where I woke this morning. That night, I woke abruptly to something sniffing around my tent. I yelled at whatever it was to GET! Another hiker was cowboy camping nearby and he calmly explained “It’s ok, they’re just huskies.” They had been sniffing him too and he woke seeing[…]

PCBCRT Day 67: I Just Can’t Get Enough

September 26, 2023 kaulua26 Pacific Coast Bigfoot Crest Rim Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Tahoe Rim Trail

Thursday, Sep 14th, 2023, 0630-1900Finish TRT into Tahoe City, then ride to Carson Pass, then 10.5 mile hike SOBO on the PCT12 miles, Gain 1800′, Loss 1850′, elevation 8520′ The TRT was supposed to be the finish to my PCBCRT thru-hike. But I had some time to kill and the Sierra were calling me. A couple of other hikes I was interested in at the beginning of the summer seemed either too logistically complicated or not feasible due to weather events. To do the Uinta Highline trail required a rental car, buses, and difficult hitches. Sky informed me that the Lowest to Highest route was still not accessible because flooding from the hurricane had damaged many of the roads in[…]

PCBCRT Day 66: The Homestretch

September 24, 2023 kaulua26 Pacific Coast Bigfoot Crest Rim Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Tahoe Rim Trail

Wednesday, Sep 13th, 2023, 0630-1840Desolation wilderness border to Tahoe City 26.5 miles, Gain 2940′, Loss 4640′, elevation 6360′ It was a beautiful morning among the boulders…but wet. My tent had some condensation on the inside and my ground tarp was soaked for some reason. I couldn’t imagine how the gravely granite soil could hold so much moisture. Probably the snow had melted from my flat spot not all that long ago. The day was pretty ordinary, compared to the previous one. I continued down away from the wilderness, past the lake, and through a lot of woods. I climbed for some decent views around Barker Pass, then to the parting of the TRT from the PCT near Twin Peaks. I[…]

Tag: California