Day three would be our friend Matt’s last day on the trail with us and we were sad to see him go. Good thing it was a pretty epic day. We woke up at Cibbets Flat at around 6am and started breaking camp and making our breakfasts. By 7am or so we would be making the climb back up to the PCT and heading North toward Mt Laguna, which holds a special place in our hearts because its our favorite local place to hike, and the place we had our realization that we would actually make hiking the PCT happen this year.

Yikes!

Almost to the lodge

I see the desert!

This was a big caterpillar!

The hike for the day climbed steadily toward Mount Laguna until we reached the Mount Laguna Recreation Area and we started to see and smell the pine trees. By Mile 43 we exited at Desert View Picnic area and made a short road walk to the Lodge to pick up our resupply package. Everybody indulged in frozen pizza and burritos on the porch of the lodge, and Matt bought us popsicle’s. Chelsea’s friend Katie came up to see us while we were at the lodge and brought us cookies! It was so great to see a familiar face, even just after 3 days. THANKS KATIE!!!! Matt got picked up and it was sad to see him go, but having a friend for the first few days was a great part of this experience and we have missed him since!

Our first resupply!

Matt waiting for his ride

Twice, Micaela, Chance, Rob, Chelsea, and Chas

Katie and Chelsea

We hung out and reloaded our packs until about 3:30pm when Super at the Laguna Mountain Sport and Supply would be doing a “Shakedown” of everybody’s packs to try to loose some overall weight. He was able to shake about 2lbs from each of our packs. It doesn’t sound like much, but for 2663 miles it adds up.
We didn’t get done with the shake down until about 7pm and we were really antsy to get some more miles in since we had only done 10 and had rested for the afternoon. So we decided with Rob and Michaela that we would hike through the night to the Laguna Campground at around Mile 48. We left Super’s and went and made some dinner at the Desert View Picnic area in the dark and were back on the trail around 9pm.

So many of these guys!

Hiking in the dark is a totally different experience, with a headlamp you can only see so far, and yet you see things you wouldn’t in the day. We saw many toad out on the trail and even the silhouette of an owl on top of a tree in an area recently burned. The burn area was especially eerie at night. A few months ago at the junction of the PCT and the Big Laguna Trail Chelsea left a large pinecone hidden so she could find it when we through hiked the PCT. We stopped for a break at this junction and she found her pinecone. This event led to her getting her trail name; “Sugarpine”

Sugar Pine with the pinecone from new years day!

We rolled into the Laguna Campground at about 11:45 and the temperature really dropped by the time we got there. At this point it felt like a death march and we couldn’t wait to get into our sleeping bags. We made it through the freezing night and were thankful that we did make it another 5 miles ahead that night..