Acton – Wrightwood – Day 138 – Thurs Nov 9th

Day 138 Thurs Nov 9th
LA RV Resort – Acton – North Fork Ranger Station Coral
2210.7 – 2219.1
Approx. 2615 ft ascent 692 ft descent
8.6. Miles

We woke up to the sound of the train a couple of times and the busy road next to the campsite. It gets noisy very early due to people commutting to LA.

I felt terrible again, but after forcing down some paracetamol things improved a little.

Sarah and I sat in the common room finishing off our admin tasks for most of the morning, before heading back out onto the trail.
We have approx. 80 miles to Wrightwood, but we don’t want to get there too early as our trail runners will not arrive until Monday.

We also scheduled sime new Blog updates + it felt good getting the K.S – Tehachapi update done and dusted.
We are still a whole 7 days behind, but we will just do our best to keep the posts rolling. Worst case they may have to continue being published once we are done.
We have calculated that we should be done in between 18 – 22 days, but that doesn’t factor any zeros. The 18 days is also based on 25 mile days and the 22 days is based on 20 mile days.
Ultimately finishing the trail comes first and although we will need a few days off, the blog is taking too much time. Stopping every 5 days for a zero will mean we won’t make our flight home. That is unless we can adjust the date. But that is a whole different kettle of fish.
We finally got away from the campground around 1:30 pm after Sarah spent some more time polishing the Young Carer and MS charity campaign that should have been published by now.

Serena kept us entertained whilst we finished our admin and seemed to enjoy our company.
I told her that one day I think we’re going to see her on stage, as she was a very funny girl.

It wasn’t long before we were back in the mountains looking back at the campground and where we had pitched our tent.

Sarah commented how the powerlines over the mountain looked like tinsel draped around a Christmas tree, which I thought was a fitting description.

I have been struggling today and I’m definitely under the weather feeling achy and lacking in energy.
Fortunately Sarah’s taking the reins and is leading us up the mountain as I slowly make my way up behind her.

It looks like we’re about to go up again. We have a climb for around 14 miles to the top.
Far Out highlights water in 4 miles and there’s also a cache at the Rangers Station just 8 miles away.
We also think Smiles has been adding comments to Far Out which should help us identify whether water sources down trail a viable.
Smile’ summarised the differences between a NOBO and a SOBO hike well:

He thought a NOBO hike was similar to the classic storyline structure of most conventional films. A slow start, followed by rising action. Then a lull before a big ending.

If you look at a NOBO hike it starts in the relatively flat desert before hitting the epic hard Sierra’s.

Following on from this is the more straightforward North Cal and Oregon before hitting the epic Washington.

For us SOBOs we have epic Washington to begin with followed by Oregon and North Cal which are slightly less spicy.
Then we have the epic Sierras which is followed by potentially the less exciting desert (particularly at this time of year).

I guess it depends how you frame it and we certainly dont want the ending to just fizzle out. We want to enjoy the last 400 miles making the most of each step because before long this dream will be over.

As the afternoon turned into early evening I took a turn for the worst and started to feel really unwell. Feeling very cold achy and shivering as I hiked along the trail.

We arrived at North of Fork Ranger Station which has some designated campsites, but they were positioned such that they were in the direct path of the wind.

This was not what we had planned for. We had only managed to hike 8.6 miles away from the campground because I was feeling so unwell.

After doing a recky and dropping down the other side of the mountain. I noticed a number of eyes reflecting back under the light of my head torch.

We could see a metal corral below us so we weren’t sure whether they were lifestock or just deer or some other large animals.

I went to investigate banging my sticks together to scare them away.

Sarah was also being watched by some smaller critters near the Ranger Station which I thought were raccoons judging by the height of the eyes reflecting back

Because of what we’ve learnt previously about camping in areas where there’s livestock. We figured it would be safer to camp inside the coral, as at least then nothing can trample us at night.

As soon as the tent was up, I jumped into my sleeping bag feverish and shivering.

At one point I thought I was hallucinating. In my feverish state the dialogue between Sarah and I went as follows:

Me: What did she say?
Sarah: What did who say?
Me: The Lady
Sarah: What lady
Me: I’m halucinating

This went on a couple of times….
Neither of us really fancied dinner tonight as we ate pretty well back at the campground before we left.

Sarah rustled me up a hot chocolate and a swig of cinnamon whisky drink called Fireball. Strictly for medicinal purposes.