day 3, 26th of April We wake up and it snows lightly, not much but. OK, the campsite lies at 2000m so even in Southern California it does get cold. We have learned that.

Today's stretch leads us through a forrest of oaks and pine trees, then along over hilly landscape, later on through a burnt area (during one of the driest years presumably a hunter who got lost wanted to let his friends know where he is and he made a fire...which burnt down a huge area).

At Pioneer Mail Picnic Area we are having lunch. That's where Phil meets up with us. He's got a trail name now: Spunky Peanut Butter-he carries a gigantic container of peanut butter.

On the trail that continues along rims we meet Switchback, a trail celebrity, then Mad Monty, another one. We kept hiking and refilled our water bottles at Lucky 5 Water cache even. As we already had covered 20 miles we put up camp in a slightly wind-covered canyon as no other flat areas for camping were to be found.Other hikers like Spanky,Switch,Rolling Thunder,3-Gallons and the Israelis joined us for a windy and rainy night.Welcome to the desert.We joked about the desert being in an identy-crisis as it was just about trying to be an alpine forest.  ¶ 15:30