Tag: night hiking

Waffles

Day 38-June 15

Walker pass to Joshua Tree Spring

12 miles

Sleeping in a bed with a soft pillow felt blissful last night! Physically resting our sore feet and aching muscles. Emotionally getting recharged from seeing old friends! We had a restful morning with sleeping in, breakfast with friends, and grocery shopping. Our friends let us take their car to Grocery Outlet. I love Grocery Outlet, not quite as much as I love Aldi but close. We were able to get just the couple of things we needed and then I bought some ice cream and waffles for lunch. So delicious.

We also learned a few interesting things about this area. The aviation naval base where part of Top Gun Maverick was filmed is near Ridgecrest. And from town we could see the ridge of some hills that are in Death Valley. No wonder it is so hot here! When we were leaving town it was 100 degrees and at the trailhead it was 91.

We headed back out to the trail at 4pm. The heat was still intense but parts of the trail became more shaded as the trail wound around the mountain to the Eastern slopes. Our friend runs this section of the trail often so he had given us a play by play of our afternoon. A mile and a half of sand, six switch backs, up to the ridge, rocky trail between rock outcroppings! Along the way we stopped for dinner and then tried to hustle to camp so we didn’t get in too late. There were so many people camping at the spring. It was hard to find a campsite on level ground but we made do. A lot of people have been skipping the section we just did from Highway 58 to Walker pass so the trail seems more crowded now. I am hoping Kennedy Meadows isn’t too crazy with dirty hikers. We are all dirty but when we gather-that is when I get cautious of germ spreading.

Either way, we are excited to get to Kennedy Meadows and finish up the desert section of the PCT! Kevin has been saying goodbye to the cacti that we see along the way! (even though we know other places will be deserty and high desert later in)

Hikertown and the LA aqueduct

Day 30

Bear Camp to Hikertown through the aqueduct

13.3 miles in the AM

17 miles in the PM

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.