Day 28 (1 June)

Miles 376.9 to 395.2. Bushcamp to Cooper Canyon Camp.

Today we get up very early, the clocks shows 4 am when we get ourselves out of our sleeping bags. After our daily routine of 45 minutes of packing we are all set and hit the trail again. It is still dark and we have to use our headlamps. The day before we planned to reach the top of Mount Baden Powell at sunrise, which happens to be at exactly 5.39 am. It is only a little more than a mile to the summit, but as it is a kind of steep way up there, we still have to hurry up a little to make it in time. We arrive 5 minutes before the sunrise! What a view! Absolutely amazing! And here comes the sunrise! Even more spectacular now! We take some pictures with an American flag (but mostly without the American flag), spend some time at the summit until we almost feel numb from the cold wind and then continue our hike for another 3 miles where we eventually have breakfast.

After breakfast there is already the next mountain to climb - Mount Williamson. It is getting hot now and the climbing is not easy. But finally we make it and decide to have a small lunch at the top.

The downhill part is fairly easy but now we reach a closed section of the PCT. Apparently an endangered yellow frog lives there- that means a detour road walk for 2.5 miles until the road crosses the PCT again. I put my earplugs on and start walking faster than the others as I don’t really like road walking. Unfortunately I miss the junction where I should have turned right when suddenly a car stops next to me. The lady inside asks me if I am not supposed to meet a woman about a half a mile back as she heard her yelling for someone loudly. “Is your name Randalf? Because that’s the name she was screaming?” Haha no, but I imagine that there wouldn’t be just any confused woman screaming around in the middle of nowhere and I quickly figure who this woman must be. So I turn around and find angry Maya still looking for me and screaming my name (not Randalf).

So after reuniting we keep walking on the road when we pass a nice campground and suddenly hear a voice saying: “You guys want some beers and sodas?” HELL YES WE DO!
Turns out that a couple of very cool LA friends do some trail magic here! Awesome!! The initiator of this trail magic is Katie who has been celebrating her birthday every year on this campground with her friends and always does trail magic for the hikers the weekend they are coming here! We are overwhelmed when we hear that. But it gets better. They even prepare tacos and nachos for us! Wow, best trail magic ever! Thank you so much Katie and friends for doing this for us. At some point Katie asks us what food we crave the most on trial. Someone says watermelon. And like a wizard Katie does her magic and tataaa - suddenly there is a whole watermelon on the table. Unbelievable! We all eat eat as much as we can and are so thankful.
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But we still have to do another 2 miles until reaching our campsite. So we say thank you so much again and goodbye and start to hike again. It is only two miles but we all can feel the beers and feel like the hiking goes on forever. But eventually we are there at our campsite, set up our tents, hurry down to the creek to wash ourselves as well as we can and then cuddle up inside our sleeping bags, tired but happy, and asleep in a few seconds.