Day Thirty Nine

Miles today: 9
Total miles: 575

We considered hiking out early this morning, but it was 99 degrees when we woke up and no one wanted to tackle the big climb out of town in that kind of heat.  So, we slept in, enjoyed the hotel continental breakfast in our pajamas and pocketed a lot of the single-serves for our food bags ("Oooo mini cream cheese packets!") and then went back to bed.

We were awake again in time for lunch at a local BBQ place, and then made the obligatory bakery stop before leaving town. At 5:30 we were back to the trail and hiking straight uphill for the first five miles.

Left to right: Rotisserie, Sansei, Focus, Bryan, Honey Bunny, Bramble

After so many lazy days in town, my backpack felt like it had rocks in it and I slowly struggled through the miles. As the sun set, the wind picked up and created a new challenge. We fought through it slowly until we escaped from the exposed ridge and dropped down into a more protected area. We had planned on doing ten to fifteen miles today, but after nine we found a flat tentsite and no one objected to stopping early.

It was the first time I hadn't hiked with Katie since we started, and it was strange without her there. All of us opted to leave our tents with Bryan to save weight, so we were cowboy camping for the next few nights. Fortunately the weather was calm and clear tonight. Rotisserie and Sansei, who over their time in Tehachapi had grown closer, laid out their sleeping bags close together in a little grove of trees in the distance, and so Focus and I kept each other company. He made dinner while I wrote in my journal and I asked him about the guiding job he used to have in Australia, and quizzed him on the Northern constellations. Someone had taught him the Big Dipper already, though he wasn't sure what a "dipper" was. I found it fascinating that this was his first trip to the United States and couldn't help but wonder what sort of culture shock he was having, especially since all he knew of the US was what the PCT had shown him. In some ways, this was lucky, for life on trail showed the best of America.

"Don't you find it weird having Christmas in the middle of summer?" I asked.
"No way, it's awesome!" he laughed.
"But you don't get to have snowball fights or sit by the fireplace or drink hot cocoa and go ice skating!" I said, completely transfixed on America's "traditional" idea of Christmastime.
"No, I get to go surfing!" Focus said.
I shook my head. "That's just weird. And that means Fourth of July is in the middle of winter!"
"...What's Fourth of July?" Focus laughed.
"Oh. Right..."

I fell asleep wondering if the stars in the Southern Hemisphere were nearly as wonderful as the Northern stars were tonight.

Day Thirty Eight

Miles today: 8
Total miles: 566

Yesterday we debated whether or not we wanted to take a zero in Tehachapi, or hike out this morning. We still hadn't decided when suddenly Katie got a phone call from her boyfriend Bryan, who said he missed her and was going to spontaneously drive 14 hours from Portland, OR to Tehachapi, CA in order to see her for a few days. As such, we decided today would be a zero day.

We slept in today, got a continental breakfast, and spent the morning watching movies in bed. Bryan made good time (having left yesterday) and arrived this afternoon just in time to drive us all to lunch at a local Vietnamese place. There was much excitement when he got here, and though I was happy to see him, too, I was sad that Tanner wasn't able to join him.

With a car suddenly at our disposal, we were able to get rides all over town to get our errands done. Bryan had also brought a lot of things with him for our use: laundry detergent, sunglass cleaner, extra gear, repair supplies, new shoes for Focus, foods and drinks, and other helpful supplies. As we discussed our plans for the next few days, we debated hiking out tomorrow knowing that Katie was going to stay in Tehachapi to be with Bryan. We came up with a clever plan:
There were two main highways that ran into Tehachapi, and they were eight miles apart by PCT. Bryan offered to slack pack Sansei, Rotisserie, Focus and I the eight miles today so that we could get them out of the way and then spend another night in Tehachapi. ("Slack packing" is when you carry minimal gear, like extra clothes, snacks and water, over a distance of trail while someone else shuttles your stuff ahead for you.)

Tomorrow, the four of us (minus Katie) could start hiking forward from the second highway and cover 42 miles over the next three days to a campsite that had road access. There Bryan and Katie would drive to meet back up with us and Bryan would go home and Katie would keep hiking North.

An added bonus of meeting back up with Bryan and Katie was that they could bring our food to us then, and we would only have to carry three days worth of food out of town instead of seven. It seemed like a pretty good plan, overall.

Honey Bunny and Bryan

We relaxed all afternoon and then Sansei, Rotisserie, Focus and I changed into our hiking gear to go slack packing. We emptied our packs of everything except two liters of water, some snacks, a headlamp and a warm layer of clothing. Katie was staying behind to be with Bryan, but she came along to drop us off at the trailhead. On the way, Bryan joked aloud,
"So what's the going rate for trail angel rides these days? How much should I be charging?"
Focus said, "how about this for payment: someone in this car will give you sexual favors." He paused a moment and then quipped just as quickly, "Sansei? You mind?"
We laughed as Sansei wailed, "aw, man, why does it always have to be me?"
Right on cue, the car suddenly made a binging noise and a notice flashed up on the screen: "Provide Service."
We couldn't stop laughing.

When we got to the highway, we encountered a mini hiker reunion. Bryan got to meet a bunch of our favorite people we've been hiking with this month: Hitch, Coincidence, Games, Reason (whom he called "Games" and "Thrones"), and others. It was fun to see everyone in one place and so excited to see each other.

The four of us took off slack packing, marveling in the feeling of carrying a lightweight pack. We were fairly buoyant as we bounded along the trail. We covered the eight miles in a shocking 2.5 hours and then got picked up again by Bryan and Katie. It was 10:00 pm by then and we were very tired, so we crashed shortly afterward.

Day Thirty Seven

Miles today: 7
Total miles: 558

My alarm went off at 5:00 am, but I shut it off and tried to go back to sleep. At 5:30 I woke up again because Sansei began throwing rocks at our tent door. When one of them flew in the top of our open door and hit me in the head, I yelled, "Ow! What was that?"
In a high squeaky Monty Python voice, Sansei said, "very small rocks!"

Pretty soon he graduated from throwing rocks to throwing Skittles, and our tent was soon full of colorful candy pieces. I began trying to throw them back, but my aim wasn't as good and I beaned Katie on the head a couple times when they ricocheted off the tent door. After that everyone was awake and excited about getting into town. It was a rule that we were allowed to talk about town food on the day we were going into town, but not before that. So all the way down the mountain we yelled breakfast foods we were excited about, and Sansei and Katie liked my yell the best, since I kept screaming "PANCAKESANDEGGS!" at the top of my lungs but no one could quite figure out what I was saying. Pretty soon we were all yelling BACONANDEGGS! or PANCAKESANDEGGS! or a combination of all three.

The seven mile hike was entirely down a mountain, so we flew down it, despite the wind still trying to knock us sideways. We were moving through the Tehachapi wind farm, apparently the largest one in the entire world, and the sheer number of wind mills was an impressive sight to see. When we got to the road, we caught up with Lunchbox and Focus and split into smaller groups to catch a hitch into town. To our surprise, we were picked up by Ruby, the very same woman who gave us a hitch into Wrightwood several weeks ago! Apparently she has been following the hikers north and giving us rides as we reach town. She very graciously took us to the post office to pick up our mail drops and then back into Tehachapi to find a hotel.

Papa Bear had beat us into Tehachapi and already had a room, so Katie and I joined him and Focus and Sansei rented another. Then we went in search of the perfect breakfast spot and ordered large platters of pancakes, bacon and eggs. I ordered my customary glass of chocolate milk, which I have found is a big craving of mine every time I come into town.

When we got back to the hotel, we were met with an extraordinary surprise: Rotisserie was in town! After taking a zero at Hikertown and feeling better the next day, she hiked an incredibly impressive 27 miles yesterday through one of the hottest, roughest stretches of trail and finished out another 13 miles today to make it to Tehachapi to meet up with us. It was the most badass thing I had ever seen.

Rotisserie crashed with Sansei and Focus and all of us plus Papa Bear spent the rest of the evening doing our resupply, ordering giant pizzas for dinner, watching movies in the hotel room, and sitting in the hot tub drinking rum and sprite.
 

Day Thirty Six

Miles today: 16
Total miles: 551

I barely slept at all last night, so when the sun woke me up again at 5 am, I was exhausted. Katie, Sansei, Focus and I stirred from sleep and slowly got ready for another day on trail.

We had six miles to our next water source, Tylerhorse Canyon Creek, which supposedly was flowing, according to our water report. I didn't think that six miles would take us very long, but I forgot to account for the wind farm. We had camped in the middle of it last night, and today we had four miles to travel before we were out of it. Every step we took was against the wind, and every step was uphill and exhausting. I was operating on barely any sleep, and so everything was a battle. I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the ground and cry and give up entirely on today. But I made myself eat a granola bar and I plodded onward, fighting with every step the wind that strained to push me down again.

After four miles, when I thought I couldn't stand the wind for one more second, we suddenly left the desert. My guidebook read, "congrats! You made it out of the Mojave! That wasn't so bad, was it?" Unfortunately, it didn't tell me how much worse the trail was going to get from there. The wind abruptly died, and the trail began sharply climbing back into the dusty, barren hills. Suddenly I went from wishing for less wind to begging for more. The air was completely still, the sun was brutal, and I was pouring sticky sweat as I struggled up the mountain. There was absolutely no vegetation on this hill that was higher than my kneecaps, so shade was non existant. I was beyond ecstatic to finally reach Tylerhorse Canyon Creek, for even after six miles, I felt as though I had walked a whole day's worth.

Sansei, Focus, Happy Hour and his new girl Squeaks were already there resting by the water. The "creek" was barely an inch deep and no more than a foot wide, but it was enough water to refill our containers and splash our warm faces. Though there wasn't any shade, we took the opportunity to rest in the dust for an hour and recuperate. We carefully poured over the maps, trying to figure out what today had in store for us. It looked like a lot more elevation gain. Focus discovered a road that appeared to parallel the trail and half considered trying to road walk instead of take the PCT. He thought it might cut off some of the climbing we had to do this afternoon.
"Anyone game to go with me?" he asked.
"What is it you're thinking of doing, Focus?" Happy Hour asked.
"I'm thinking of hiking my own hike!" Focus laughed.
Hike Your Own Hike was a mantra that any thru-hiker knew by heart. It meant it didn't matter the decisions you made along the way, it was all about the journey.

In the end, we opted to take the trail, because the road seemed to have more back-tracking than we expected, and didn't save much climbing, overall.

We climbed onward, trying to stay steady in the heat of the day. I felt more awake now, but was still grumpy about the heat. Focus hiked ahead, scaling a big climb ahead of us until we could barely see him in the distance. But with nothing to block our view or sound waves, he yelled back to us with perfect clarity, "come on, it's not so bad!"
"Liar!" I yelled back.

Sansei, Katie and I climbed more slowly behind him, dragging our way through the switchbacks. By 1:00 we knew we had to take an afternoon siesta or risk baking in the sun. There still wasn't any shade, but we found a skeletal tree on the trail and Sansei rigged up his tarp so that it created an awning of shade over us. We rolled out our sleeping mats and took a nap, looking out over the desert, now far below us.

In the distance we could see curls of smoke rising up over the mountainside and I wondered if it was a wildfire. They are quite common in Southern California but we had yet to experience any. As it turned out, we were seeing the very start of the Powerhouse Fire, a wildfire that eventually destroyed over 30,000 acres, including the beautiful wooded campsite we had stayed at two nights ago and the Manzanita grove with the water cache. The fire raged for two weeks and closed over 52 miles of the PCT so that it had to be rerouted. We were very fortunate to have just finished those miles before the outbreak.

We made lunch under our tarp and had fun feeding the leftovers of our tuna to the ants. It was fascinating to watch them hauling away the food in a very organized line, but soon they were out of control and overrunning our siesta spot, so we had to move on. It was 3:30 then and the heat was slowly, slowly becoming more bearable. We finished our climb and found a trail register at the top. We loved flipping through trail registers because it gave us an idea of which hikers were ahead of us, and by how many days. The Chain Gang had stopped by this morning, and Lunchbox, too, who had left a hilarious note in the log that read:

"Dear Wind,
Thank you for constantly blowing at 60 mph each night while I'm trying to sleep and keeping me from going "soft" in the desert.
Hugs, Lunchbox."

Around 5:00pm we stumbled upon a surprise water cache that also had a basket of fresh apples and chairs to sit in! Delighted, we claimed our dinner spot and cooked in the setting sun. We were soon joined by our old friends Games and Nate (now named "Reason"), who we hadn't seen in quite some time and we were glad for the reunion. They had just completed the same hot slog we had finished and Games joked that her journey entry for today was going to be entitled "The Death March." It had certainly been a long day.

While we ate we read through another trail register that was kept with the water cache. My favorite entry was one from Happy Hour, who had written earlier today, "I'm excited for less desert and more dessert!" Except that he had spelled "dessert" wrong, so the note simply read: "I'm excited for less desert and more desert!"

We had a big plan of going another six miles so that we would only have three miles left to Tehachapi in the morning. But the wind picked up as the sun went down and since we were walking an exposed ridgeline again, we had to take campsites when we found them. We came across a somewhat protected flat area, and Katie and I set up our tent. Sansei cowboy camped just outside our door and Games and Reason just across the trail. The wind howled outside all night, but it was comforting knowing we were so close to town.