Day 48: 621-643

Today was the longest day for me so far. It's also the last day of the desert. After this, it's straight up to Kennedy Meadows.

terrible views  

the trail wraps around hillsides and mountain tops. All painful climbing but the visuals provide rewards.  

Earwig and I got up at 3:30am. I took some long exposures of the Milky Way and packed up my bag. We headed back out, shooting to carve out enough miles before the sun came up and began to melt all life. The trail in this particular section zig zags and switchbacks through high desert mountains and hills. The trail itself is a super deep sand that makes every step uphill twice as inefficient. After a few hours of that your calves are on fire and my knee started aching. We eventually got to the base of the day's biggest climb. 2,200 feet up the side of a giant wall. At the base of the climb was more trail magic.

A guy named BrewHike was chilling at the trailhead with his camper. He gave us ice cold beers (it's 8:30am) and made us some hotdogs. Cool dude. Eventually everyone who camped together last night trickled into this spot.

brewhike makes his own beer on the trail, one pint at a time  

After eating and drinking we started the super hot climb up to the top. When I got closer up I got a full panorama of the two valleys below. One facing south from where we just came. The other facing north, with snow capped mountains revealing the Eastern Sierra.

tired and filthy

​We took a 5 hour siesta on top of the mountain and then I kept going later in the afternoon. Found my water source for the night after hiking 24 miles. I'm not going to miss this section. Tomorrow I have an 8 mile hike down to the highway where I'll hitch a ride to Lake Isabella and meet up Ten Gallon and Mowgly.

sunset

Day 47: 602-621

It was foggy and cold this morning. Everything was wet, but waking up in the beautiful alpine forest is heaven. Granite rock and pine needles litter the landscape. The Sierra is close, and now it shows.

I linked up with Righteous, Big Daddy, and Earwig and decided to hike with them and take it east then next 20 miles. The walk through the forest for most of the morning was spectacular. Fog slowly burned off as it warmed up. We're at about 6,700 feet. But like everything on the trail, the landscape will dramatically shift again as we descended 2,000 feet down to the desert floor. Before that happened we got some trail magic: two former thru hikers posted on the trail handing out m&m cookies and a reddi-whip garnish. Delicious.

Mid day lunch #2

Cookies and reddi-whip 

​When we got to the desert floor the heat jumped ten degrees. Luckily there was a water cache on the side of the road with about 200 gallons. Joshua trees are everywhere..more so than in the actual Joshua Tree National Park.

Nowhere to hide. Thanks to these water caches that are maintained by trail angels, we can make the long waterless stretches in blistering heat. 

Earwig telling me we have to drop down below the rocks. Not as we planned.  

Discovering water for the first time. Finding this cistern cost us dearly - 700 vertical feet and 2.5 miles lost.  

After a long day, you cowboy camp in filth looking at this beauty

​We had to take 2 mile detour off the main PCT to the next water source- willow creek. It's a big cistern in the middle of the desert. In the middle of nowhere. We all made dinner and bullshitted for a while before deciding to cowboy camp. It's beautiful out and the sunset over the hills is calming. There's also no wind. As I write this, I lay tucked in my sleeping bag next to the others, staring at the sky. Earwig got up to poop and made a bunch of noise, so I decided to finally take a few shots of the Milky Way as he milled around, looking for a spot to dig. Tomorrow we're getting up at 3am and hiking the next 15 miles, which is uphill and waterless before the sun and blistering heat kick in. It's forecasted to be a toasty day tomorrow.

Artisinal bowel movements under the galaxy 

Day 46: 583-602

After busting a 17 mile night hike last night I had planned to chill during the hottest time of the day and avoid having to suffer under the sun. But the weather was gloomy and cool in the morning so the group decided to head for the next water source 19 miles north and tack on another 4 after that to shorten the following day's hike in a waterless stretch. The access to and availability of water completely decides my schedule. It makes doing low mile days difficult.

burn area

I told the others that I wouldn't do 23 miles today, and instead attempt to get to 19 but plan on sleeping somewhere much closer. I kept my expectations low.

I traversed through huge burn areas and rolling hills littered with more wind turbines. These ones looked way older than the big tall white ones that you typically see. Old school.

The weather took a turn for the worst and started dumping rain. Despite having a rain shell, you're guaranteed to be completely soaked to the bone. Hiking up big hills makes you sweat, a ton. That plus the rain falling on you makes a party.

hiking in the rain isn't amazing 

After several hours of dealing with the rain I ended up in the alpine forest sandwiched between a blanket of clouds and fog. My legs were hurting, though thankfully not my IT band. So I press up several hills. After 8 hours I made is successfully to mile 19. Plus when I arrived I saw all the folks👊🏽. It's also extremely cold tonight. The Sierra is close.

clouds above, fog below.