Day 9: South towards Todos Santos
In quite the turn of events, an old rugby teammate, John, was flying down for another teammate’s wedding and reached out to see if I wanted to hike El Picacho, the tallest peak in the state of Baja California Sur. I wasn’t too far away on the peninsula so I said “LET’S DO IT!” Daniel decided to join so we went down to Todos Santos to pick up John and take the long dirt road to the trailhead. The trail began with a 5,000 ft elevation gain over six miles and the weather was sweltering hot. Very hot. We hiked into the clouds which provided some much needed cooling but also was shaping up to block us from seeing the sunset.
We kept hiking up and soon enough we emerged and were ABOVE the clouds to catch a stunning sunset. It was like the view you get when flying in a plane. Truly magical. We camped in a high meadow where John came prepared with cold weather gear while Daniel and I left all winter things in the US as we never dreamed about being in low 40°F weather in Baja. But elevation does funny things.
Photo taken from the trail, not from a plane.
Day 10: Off the mountain and rushing to the wedding
We woke up before the sun and hoped to watch it rise from the summit but we were a little too late. It was still awesome being up top and seeing the Pacific just right down there. I flew my drone, we shared some summit beers, and then we had to hustle all the way down the mountain as John and I had a wedding to get to.
The groom to be, Tony, extended me an invite to his wedding as I just happened to be in town, thousands of miles from Baltimore, and it was the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to. The ceremony was on the beach and whales on the horizon were blowing spurts of water as the sun was setting. The reception was in a stunning venue on the water and it was amazing to catch up with some old rugby teammates. Many jokingly asked if I hiked down here from Colorado.
