Climbin' outta Cajon - May 23

We woke up in our king size bed at the Best Western at around 5AM and slowly got some stuff together as we waited for the 6AM start of the continental breakfast. It was the usual run if the mill stuff. Toaster waffles,
scrambled eggs, sausage, muffins, pastries, bagels, bread, cereals etc. I can't stomach a lot of that sort of thing, but I managed a bagel and some eggs. Julia had a bagel, some waffles, two cups of coffee and then took a bagel to have with the Nutella that we had in our room. There were about 8 or 9 of us hikers in there at one time.

We slowly packed up our heavy packs with 6 days of food and 3 liters of water and got ready to start climbing. We were at ~3000 feet and we'd be climbing up to around 7000 feet. Luckily there was a constant breeze for much of the day that helped keep us cool, especially since after mile 147.5, there's no water for ~17 miles. We had lunch at the cache and then around 1:30 we headed out to start some serious climbing. Not particularly steep, just constant and unrelenting. We only stopped for a couple short breaks as we were walking along the side of the mountains and then on the 4 mile poodle dog bush detour. After what seemed to take forever, we finally found a suitable spot to pitch our tent, and so we did. I cooked delicious ramen with pea soup while Julia set up the inside of the tent.

A solid 16 or 17 miles today and we're both exhausted from carrying our heavy packs up 4000+ feet.