TRAIL JOURNAL
/ May 7, 2022
The wind nearly blew me off the trail! It has blown all day and is gusting around 50mph (my Dad’s best guess). There aren’t tall trees around to shelter the trail, so we are getting blown around a bit on the trail.
Strong gusts seem to come out of nowhere and push us sideways. Dad actually got blown into cholla cactus! These cacti already kind of jump, so he really copped it bad. The needles even went through his pant leg, OUCH! The needle extraction was really slow and painful. I pulled about a dozen really fine ones out for him using the tweezers on my Swiss army knife. They were hard to see and I accidentally pulled a hair or two out along the way. I think those ones might have hurt him more 🙂
I was expecting (and hoping) to see some old mines along the PCT, but not the unexploded ordnance variety! We didn’t see any, but I thought the signs were kind of cool.
When we got to Mt. Laguna, we found a funny post card that made fun of the all the trail hazards … although I noticed that the wind isn’t mentioned!
Thanks, Mt. Laguna!
- Magnus!