We did not sleep much last night. We picked our campsite without realizing it was just over the ridge from a bunch of windmills. Usually a sign of there being a lot of wind. First of all, we got to bed late then it was so windy I think I slept maybe two hours.
We had to still get going early in the morning so we could have time to do our miles and siesta because of the heat. We skipped getting water from the Golden Oak Spring since some people thought maybe it would have algal bloom in it. I thought it looked just like the troughs in the San Gabriel’s but I’m not a biologist to know for sure. This was the big discussion in town and a lot of people skipped this section of 85 miles because of the heat advisory, rumors of the water, and wind advisory.
So by 10am we had finished up the 26 mile water carry that had begun last night when we left from town. The spring was off trail down hill a mile. Super annoying but nice to have a solid water source. The water at Miller spring was clear and cold.
Then we siestaed under the trees at the trail junction and slept for a couple of hours. I awoke from my nap with more physical energy to finish our last 11 miles, but lacked motivation. I did not want to start out in the heat. After we had gone about a half mile or exposed to the sun climbing we entered a forest of live oaks and turkey oaks. This forest continued for the rest of the day. What a huge relief to be in the shade while hiking and now in our campsite too. It was a balm for my sunburned soul.
Forgot to mention that we passed the 600 mile marker! Woohoo! Just 100 miles of the desert left!
The morning was a bit hectic. The most recent news on trail causing chaos is there is a spring 16.8 miles out of town that may have algal bloom. There are conflicting resources saying what treatments can kill the bacteria to make it drinkable or not and whether there is actually algal bloom at the spring. Some hikers have gone out, not had enough water, and have returned to town. Others have decided to push through.
When in town there is always a vortex that happens of lots of info but everything is second, third, or fourth hand information. There is a lot of fear mongering about illness, water, and heat. Sometimes that makes it hard to make clear decisions and figure out which sources to trust. Kevin and I have had to work really hard to sort through the info available for this next section. We have decided to night hike and carry enough water to skip the potentially contaminated spring. Also all of the symptoms people have been saying are like
Norovirus which is super common for hikers to get. I have been surprised by how many hikers don’t know what Noro is. Maybe it was just talked about a lot more in the Smokey’s on the AT because that is where is usually broke out there.
All in all, we are trying to make wise decisions without sacrificing our hike either to illness or sacrificing our perception of the journey by skipping miles we could walk. It has also been helpful to talk with some solid other hikers at the hotel we were staying at. Some of those hikers are a family, two parents and three kids. We have crossed paths a few times with this family and love interacting with them. I didn’t catch their names yet but the dad and mom were discussing the water situation with us and it seemed to be affirming with the info we had.
We are comforted that we have a friend who will help us at Walker Pass and that we know we can hike during the night and not need as much water.
The actual hiking and getting out of town went better than I expected! Our friends had caught up with us so we could hang out in the AM and get coffee before sharing a ride out to the trailhead. It was super fun to see them and meet some other neat hikers too.
But let me paint a picture of what hanging out with hikers actually looks like. The hotel front desk woman did not like the group of 15 or so hikers standing by the front of the hotel so she angrily waved us away. We went around the side of the hotel and sat on the side walk outside of our friends’ rooms. About 15 backpacks lined the outside of rooms along the side walk. Hikers sat on the side walk squeezed into the shade until we moved into our friends’ room and sat on the floor or the bed and one stood shaving at the sink. It was very gracious of our friends to allow us to hang out in the cool air conditioning with water before we had to leave town!
As I put my pack on to leave, I discovered my pack was the heaviest it has been yet this trip. I had four days of food and seven liters of water. Come to find out later, Kevin had told me an extra day for food so I technically didn’t need that much. Oh well.
Kevin’s dinner
The miles went by faster than we expected except for the last 1.5 miles that dragged on in the windy darkness. We were really proud of ourselves at keeping up a good pace uphill with heavy packs. It is okay very windy in our campsite so we will see how the sleep is tonight.
Staying at a hotel that serves breakfast saves us having to go out and spend more money on food. After downing some food, we find a trail angel that is willing to drive us out to the trail so we can slack pack. Slackpacking is just a thruhiker’s version of day hiking but just leaving most of your gear in town. It was really nice to crush those eight miles in 2.5 hours with a light pack when it wasn’t so hot. We got to the parking lot before our friends and met a sweet couple who were crewing for their son and grandson’s long trail run. They were so kind to talk to and gave us fresh fruit and snacks. Then after their people had come through and gotten food and drinks to finish their run, the couple drove us into town with a couple of other hikers. They even gave us their phone number so we could call them when we need to go back out on trail tomorrow.
I love meeting all the people on the trail and the people supporting their loved ones on the trail too. They always have stories and tips and are familiar with an adventure lifestyle! Back at the hotel I spent some time talking with a woman who is crewing for her husband who is thruhiking. She meets him at trailheads and gives rides and brings food places. We have seen her at a few trailheads and love to catch up each time we see her and their puppy again. They live part of the year Colorado. She has told Kevin and I that she is really impressed with us hiking together as a couple and how we have to work things out together. I don’t really see it as any different than every day annoyances in life while in the front country. We always have to remember how we are on the same team and it is both of us together against whatever challenge we face.
I woke up thinking about getting a shower, laundry and cleaning my gear. I don’t usually crave showers when out on trail but the dust and grime of the desert is unprecedented. Knowing I had only nine miles to get to town set my mind to get moving this morning.
There are two roads that people often take into the town of Tehachapi, Willow road and Highway 58. The eight miles between the roads are dry and through a wind farm and totally exposed. Our plan is to go into town at Willow rd and then slack pack the eight miles to highway 58 tomorrow.
We arrived at the road and were excited to go to the Chinese food buffet. We were expecting to have to hitch or call an Uber into town. At the trailhead, a man was waiting to give rides to hikers! He said he had to drive to the dump this morning and the trailhead wasn’t too far away so he waited around for someone to show up! How kind of him! This is the second time this kind of ride has happened for us on the trail. He drove us into town and we found out this was the trail angel who keeps the water cache with the twinkle lights full at the top of the hill. After thanking him and giving him some gas money, we headed into the buffet and filled up!
Then we began our town chores. We got groceries and realized we are eating so much food already this early in the hike. We decided to stay in town for two nights. So after grocery shopping and walking the hottest mile to the hotel, we did laundry and showered. The group we have been hiking with had one goal for town: watch Top Gun. So tonight we sat in a cool dark room away from the sun while eating snacks and watching a movie. It was nice! So was sleeping in a cozy soft clean bed.
Water cache/bridge along the aqueduct to Tylerhorse spring for siesta then to campsite 8 miles up the hill
15 ish miles after 17 miles overnight = 32 miles
I cursed at my alarm this morning. How dare it wake me up after only two hours rest. But the sun was already in my face and heating up my sleeping bag. It would just keep baking me throughout the day.
I crawled out of my sleeping bag because my legs were yelling at me they were so sore. We ate breakfast in the shade and then began the climb up to Tylerhorse canyon and stream. It was about seven miles and we got there around 11:30am. It was already so hot by that time. So we got our water and found a tree to sleep under. I am so grateful that this stream was still running. Someone has built up a little dam so the water collected in about a foot wide puddle and a few inches deep.
Kevin and I set up our ground tarp and sleeping pads and had another nap from about 12:30pm to 4pm. The we ate dinner and walked the next eight miles to a water cache. The trail was mostly sidelining for about four miles and then went a steep down into a valley so you are standing at the bottom looking up at a huge hill to climb. Actually I was sitting down looking up because it seemed so tiring. One of our friends decided she had walked enough and she camped there. The other four of us made our way up the hill.
The sunset was phenomenal! I love hiking between 4pm and 9pm and seeing the sun setting. These desert sunsets have been sensational and the cool air that comes just after sunset is life giving. Because we had been going hard for about 24 hours at this point with two naps, I was so ready to be done and at camp. I crested the final hill and saw a row of twinkling white Christmas lights strung up. At first I thought I was going crazy, then I realized that the trail angel who stocks this cache string them up on the water barrels! We had made it! We filtered our water and then went to sleep for a full nights’ sleep. It was blissful.
We gave ourselves a bit of time in the AM to sleep in and then head out. At this point, sleeping in is until 6:30.
It got hot very quickly into the day, around 8:30, as we dropped onto the flat plains of the Mojave desert. We could see the next couple of days trail stretched out before us. The descent into Hikertown, the flat stretch of the aqueduct, and the ascent into the mountains towards Tehachapi.
We arrived at Hikertown around 12:30pm. Hikertown looks like an old western movie set with two rows of small buildings facing each other with clapboard fronts painted to represent various enterprises of the olden days. A couple live there and offer camping, showers, and let hikers ship resupply boxes there. A hiker can rent out one of the shed/shelter buildings which has no electricity or running water. There is an outdoor shower which felt very refreshing as well! We picked up our boxes and got some showers then tried to stay cool beneath the one tree on the property.
For the past couple of days, we had been strategizing how to best attack this section of the trail. Hikertown is famously the final place to get water before a 17 miles stretch of trail that follows a dirt road next to the Los Angeles aqueduct and then enters a wind farm that will do its best to blow you off the trail. The water in 17 miles is a faucet that sometimes gets shut off by the LA water authorities. Ironic that we follow the aqueduct for this whole section but have no access to the actual water. Because the water gets shut off sometimes, there are some trail angels who keep a cache stocked with water jugs. I was so grateful for this!
Because the aqueduct goes straight across the desert in the full sun, many hikers try to hike this section during any hour other then when the sun is out. There are many strategies, but ours was to leave Hikertown at 8:45pm after an afternoon of trying to rest and sleep after resupplying and hiking in that morning. We hiked by the surprisingly bright half moon for 17 miles. It was flat until the very end when we began creeping our way towards the hills and wove our way through a wind farm. As we were far off we could see the red blinking lights on top of the windmills. Then we could see the blades by the red lights and finally we could hear the giant whooshing sound like a freight train or jet engine just above our heads.
We hiked this section with the group of friends we have been with the past couple of days. It felt more jovial and lighthearted to walk through the dark with a group of five rather than just Kevin and I. We had some great conversations and worked to keep our spirits high and at times just fought to keep each other awake enough to walk. Occasionally, we would all stop for a break on the concrete barriers along the road. We would try and identify various constellations and gasp over the shooting stars! I saw so many shooting stars! At one point, we saw a huge shooting star fly across the majority of the horizon while sending out a tail of green, red, and orange streaks! It was phenomenal.
We arrived at the water cache at 4am and crashed into our sleeping bags. It was the first time Kevin and I cowboyed. Meaning we didn’t set up our tent but just laid down our ground tarp, sleeping pads, and sleeping bags. We slept for a quick nap until 7:15am and then got up to push to the next water which was 7 miles up the hill. We had to get up into the hills and away from the heat of the plains before the late morning heat set in.
These miles and days are blending into one giant hike with some naps but technically this is continued in the next days’ journal.
There was so much puddle dog bush today. But I am so grateful for the trail crew that came out recently to pull up a bunch of it near the trail so there wasn’t as much as there could have been.
Our water today came from a spring and then two cisterns. Cisterns are a wonderful installation that help hikers so much to have water. On the AZT we saw a few of them too.
I am very tired today so I don’t have many words to write.
Trail register to Green Valley Fire Station to campsite on top of hill
The first four miles of our day included a roughly 2,000 foot climb. We began on the east side of the slope but it wound around to the western slope overlooking LA and the marine layer of clouds coming in from the ocean. It was nice to be in the shadow of the mountain to finish off the climb before it got too hot and sunny.
On the way down the mountain, Kevin and I had a long discussion regarding the various superior and inferior forms of potatoes. Rating each type as a vehicle for something else ie: gravy or ketchup versus stand alone flavors and shapes. Topping our charts were chick fil a waffle fries and hash browns. Sweet Potatoes received an honorable mention, specifically the sweet potato fries at Pawleys Front Porch in Columbia, SC.
At the end of this discussion, we came upon our friends at a water cache. Unfortunately, the cache was empty and they needed some water. I gave them some of my water but still had 12 miles to go before the water at the fire station. One hiker began trying to get water from passing cars. Just holding a water bottle and pointing to it as the cars rushed by. Honestly, I was surprised when one car slowed and rolled down their window. Our friend asked for some water and the woman immediately handed three water bottles and two cans of Coke out the window. Then they drove off. Their whole interaction was probably 45 seconds. I was shocked! First, that someone slowed to see what a person needed on the side of the road and second, at how prepared this woman was! Why should I be shocked at that, women are usually prepared for anything!
The afternoon proved to be scorching. There was no shade for miles so we didn’t take breaks and just plugged on. We arrived at the water at 2pm and were pretty proud of ourselves for making it there that early. The fire station had a little gazebo as a memorial to a firefighter that died in the line of duty in the 80s. There was a group of six of us who hung out here for a few hours while waiting out the heat. I am super grateful to the fire fighters at that station for their work on a fire that was within a mile and a half of the trail but it was gotten under control so quickly that the trail never shut down. I was watching the development very closely on my Fire Finder app.
Bouquet Canyon Lake
Our plan for the day was to hike 19.9 miles but we were talked into doing 4 more miles after our siesta by the group of people we were hiking with. It ended up being a simple climb then two miles of chill sidelining! It has been great hanging out with other people in camp too, definitely a moral booster after a long day!
“Chill” was the word of the day. After going almost 50 miles in two days we decided to have a chill day today. I like pushing miles and then spacing those days out with a less mile day here and there. So this morning at the campground I finished my laundry, had a leisurely breakfast, and sat around and talked with some other hikers. I am trying some new blister bandages today. I traded fruit snacks for a pack of the bandages from another hiker we have been leapfrogging (hiking similar speed so we see him regularly) around on the trail. Fair trade in my opinion!
Today we meandered around the outskirts of town called Agua Dulce. According to a hiker we met in town, LA is only 30 miles away. It seems like a different dimension. Although, we did see the LA skyline from a ridge two days ago.
One neat part of our day included going through Vasquez Rocks Natural Area. It is an LA county park that has a bunch of rock formations which were formed by the San Andreas fault. The looks of the rock reminded me of Garden of the gods so it was a bit reminiscent of home. This park has also been used as a filming location for lots of movies like westerns, Star Trek, and The Lone Ranger. Nothing I have actually watched to recognize the location but it is beautiful none the less!
Vasquez Rocks
The trail oddly enough walks along the side of the road through Agua Dulce. It is more of an unincorporated location than a town but still has some houses selling for $950,000. Kevin checked to see if he could start a hostel here.
Our first stop in town was the pizza shop. Yesterday Kevin had gotten enough service on the ridge to see that this shop had gluten free crust and vegan cheese. My gluten and dairy free life has made finding pizza impossible so I might have cried when he found that out. Frankly it was delicious and I ordered two pizzas and carried some out for dinner!
GF pizza with vegan cheese and sausage
It was worth carrying the pizza out of town even though I also had to carry six liters of water too. From town to our camp tomorrow night is a roughly 24 mile dry section. It will be an early morning tomorrow to make sure we get to the water before it gets too hot.
Clouds and humidity! My skin didn’t even know how to feel. Okay well yes it did because it was so sweaty in the humid morning. The cloud cover was fantiastic as we made it through our longest climb of the day. Then the sun came out, my blisters started hurting, and it got really hot. We have been hiking through a lot of burn areas and are super grateful to the firefighters who work so hard and all the trail crews who maintain the trails up in these rugged places.
The afternoon highlight was a water cache at a ranger station. The guide book had said to not rely on this water source but the frequently updated comments said there was enough water. So we carried enough to get there from last night and then had to carry enough water from the ranger station to the campground.
The last mile was a tease since we could see the campground from the ridge but had to go one mile around the next hill and down the slope to reach the road.
The shade and cold drinks at the campground store never felt to good! We had decided to stay at the campground to have a relaxing morning after resupplying from our box. I took a shower here and watched the seeming pounds of desert dust flow off my skin and down the drain.
ashleyisoutside 