Total Trail Miles: 56.1

Ascent/Descent: 1715/2370 ft

Start Time: 7:50

End Time: 16:30

Temperature: ? (?) hot!

After everything being sore yesterday I knew I needed to listen to my body and slow it down today. I had a chilled start packing up slowly and stretching out and was still ready to leave at 7:50. I made loose plans with Cristina to hike some of the day together as we both wanted to take it at a relaxed pace but I left first as I was planning on calling Marcus from trail first, luckily he picked up and it was really lovely to catch up, the signal got a little sketchy after a while and the call cut off so when I got signal again I took a spit down break and called back. That put me a bit behind Christina, Sasquatch and Conor so I hiked the morning solo and called mum down the trail too.

The views today were incredible, such clear and wide mountain view's it was pretty unreal. Also got the first glimpse of San Jacinto looming in the distance covered in snow, it stayed in sight for most of the day - a bit of what's to come. I took lots of breaks and enjoyed the more chilled pace, my back was still sore but my skin felt much better after taping it up in the morning with Christina's KT tape. I had a late morning break down at a river with a group from the campsite and then shortly after hiking on from the bumped into C, S & C. It was good fun hiking with them and the time was quickly filled with pine cone puns and funny stories. We planned to take a lunch break a little further up where the map said there were picnic benches and to our surprise when we got there we experienced our first trail magic! We were greeted by Santa with a boot full of cold drinks, beer, fruit sad snacks. A cold drink felt soo good as did some fresh fruit. We took a long break with some other hikers, soaked up the sun and enjoyed our treats as we knew we only had to walk a few more miles to camp. We passed the 50 mile marker today to which felt like a win. The camp spots marked on farout where busy but some of the guys informed us there was space of we went just a little down the river. we found the perfect spot for the four of us right by the little stream. We lazed about for a bit sharing stories, and then walked downstream a little more so we could bathe our feet and S & Co taught us how to play cribbage. Ch has lots of blisters on her feet and o found one on the end of my toe too so we had a blister popping session kindly aided by S moleskin tape. It was then dinner time and bed time soon crept up on us around 8