Headed for Hiker Heaven

Tina's off and walking towards Hiker Heaven aka "The Saufleys" at Agua Dulce some 84 miles down the trail.    A couple hours ago, Carol, a local trail angel and retired UCSB Political Science professor, dropped Tina back off at Inspiration Point where I picked her up on the bike last night. 

Tonight she's headed towards a spring just prior to the ascent of Mount Baden-Powell which she'll save for the morning's crunchier snow.   We heard from a friend who tackled it about a week ago that the least treacherous route is to go off trail straight for the peak and then walk the ridge down to meet up with the trail later in order to avoid the steep snow-covered northern slope.   That's her plan.   I've attached a Google Earth perspective on that with the PCT trace which makes it easy to see what I'm talking about.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to meet up with her again until we reach the Saufleys come Saturday-ish.   My route was supposed to be SR 2 through the mountains on a path that intersected with the PCT several times but yesterday I discovered that just past Inspiration Point it's been closed for bridge washout repairs.   This morning I chased all around for authoritative information and discovered that the road is out in no less than three places along the route I was supposed to follow.   Yee haw.

Consequently, tomorrow I'm headed off the mountain and down to a Thursday AM appointment in Lancaster, CA to get some bike repair work done.   I can't sort out just what is going on but either my front fork is slightly bent, the wheel is bent, or the brake rotor is bent (pretty sure not that but..).  

The symptom that developed coming out Crestline, CA a few days ago was that the front brake rotor started making contact with the fork strut (pic attached).   As luck would have it I rolled to a stop right in front of house of Jim Harlow, former pro mountain bike racer and modern day bike collector and connoisseur.   He came right out and gave me hand in trying to figure out what the heck was going on.   Ultimately we were able to work around the issue by tightening down the axle in the just wrong way, but the root cause remains a mystery.   It was quite the bonus, tho, to be given a tour of Jim's collection of classic and often amazing bikes.   He also warned me about a steep climb just ahead advising me to not freak out since it was only a couple hundred yards long.   I was glad to have it because I *would* have freaked out if I hadn't known that ahead of time!!  

That's all for now.   Tomorrow I'll write about the interesting satellite technology (no, not SPOT) we use to keep track of each other and coordinate things when there's no cell phone coverage -- which is often.

All the best, David