To late bro. The hike is over. Yeti wasn't kidding when he said the hike was "no joke". It was an a$$ kicker. We had an incredible time and would like to do more backpacking.

We left Temecula about 7am headed up to San Bernardino, we stopped at the IHOP for breakfast. Daniel ate about a third of his pancakes and I loaded up with carbs. We hit the trail at about 9:30 and began the treacherous switchbacks right away. A half hour in I was wondering if we had made a big mistake coming out here. It was BRUTAL!! About 3/4 of the way up the switchbacks Daniel is starting to look like he wants to quit. While i am considering giving him the speech about "some times you have to go through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff in life." he blows chunks and I mean everything in his belly comes out. He takes a drink, rinses his mouth and from there on out it was me struggling to keep up with him for the rest of the trip. There was no need for the speech.

The hike was amazing, the memories many, we had a bear in our camp area for about 3 hours Saturday while it was still light. We met some nice people and I learned that I am not in that great a shape especially when the 60 yo man blows by me like I was standing still and than a hundred feet behind him his chunky wife blows by me.

I told you Cort!!

Glad to hear you guys didnt die. Backpacking is a huge risk/reward type of activity. The trail usually sucks but once you get there the isolation makes it totally worth while.

As a side note the shorter hike that I was planning didnt end up going through. If anything comes of it I will let you know.

As far as backpacking, I highly recommend the Zion Narrows top-down hike. Amazing scenery and isolation during the entire hike. River hiking and the boulder challenges are hard enough to be really fun while easy enough to be relatively safe. Plus you pass through Vegas on the way there and back (Zion is about 6-7 hour drive from LA). The only downside is that you can only spend one night in the canyon due to flash flood risks. National Geographic ranked it #5 on there list of top 100 American adventures.

http://www...mages/albums/index15.htm
http://www...ark.com/zion-narrows.htm

Leave it to Trout to recommend a river hike...



A preemptive strike.

Speaking of rivers I was looking into a canoe trip the other day starting at the ­base­ of the hoover dam. I did it once about 9 years ago and had a blast.