5/28

0 miles

We zeroed today in tehachapi. We woke up early thinking we'd be hiking out, ate breakfast, and walked a mile through town to the post office. Unfortunately, our package wasn't there so we were forced I take a rest day in town, we were secretly thrilled. Having done all our town chores the day before, laundry and grocery store hopping, we had all day to relax. We ate candy and junk food laying I the hotel bed, only getting up to get more food or for a trip to the hot tub. 

5/29

7 miles

(566 tehachapi to 573, a campsite in the trees we couldn't pass up)

We got our resupply box at the post office today, hooray!  We were planning on hustling to Kennedy meadows to meet clays dad on June 3rd but since we took yesterday off to wait for our box, we have to change our plan. We no longer have enough time to hike the 140 miles to Kennedy meadows before the third so we will meet him at the next road crossing only 80 miles away. So now instead of rushing, we have extra time. 

We are staying in town until 3:30, catching a bus to the trailhead. It's hot out and since we don't have to make that many miles each day we decided to wait until the heat of the day passes to start hiking. 

As we waited for the bus, we were offered a ride to the trailhead, people here are so nice to hikers. We started hiking at 4, it was still hot but cooled off quickly. We planned on hiking about 10 miles tonight but we are always lazy leaving town and called it quits for the night early. 

5/27
8 miles (558 to 566)
Yay town! We caught up to our friends and called trail angels to see I anyone was willing to drive us the 10 or so freeway miles into town. We are at a hotel, yay! Bed and shower and toliet! Order of the day: shower, eat, toliet, post office, candy/ grocery store shopping spree, bed.
We are both tired and sore and ready for a break but we are going to head out tomorrow morning bound for Kennedy meadows. Clays dad or brother is going to pick us up there for some r and r at clays dads house and a mini reunion with his family. We have to try to make it there by the 3rd. After that, the sierras!

5/26
27 miles (531 to 558)
Tired and sore, we are cowboy camping under windmills with the ants and mice. We did two big days in a row to get set up for a short day into tehachapi tomorrow. We will try to get up early and catch up with some hiker friends ahead of us to see if we can get a ride into town together. Supposedly there's a bus and If you call the station they will make a special stop to pick up hikers and the trailhead and hwy 58.
We watched the sun come up this morning, we were hiking before 6 to try to bet the heat. We got to the one water source in almost 50 miles, a little creek, around 10 am pouring sweat. The wind picked up though and it wasn't really that hot the rest of the day. We took a couple long breaks to filter water and rest our feet and shoulders and finished hiking after the sun went down. I'm so excited for a bed and shower tomorrow.

5/25
23 miles (508 to 531)
Today was easy walking. We have entered the desert. I have been wondering all this time what the Mojave would look like. It's flat, sunny, currently not terribly hot, with sage brush, Joshua trees, and interesting/ dilapidated desert people houses. We started the day hiking down out of the mountains that are now to our south. We did an easy 10 miles to hiker town, a super odd and fairly creepy gathering of fake western store fronts on the front of small shacks and trailers containing who knows what. We hung out there with fellow hikers, cooked lunch and filled up for a 24 mile water carry before heading out. We have been following a section of a LA aqua duct pretty much since. It's windy and wide open land.

Hiker town 

Aqua duct walking

5/24
21 miles (6 miles of road walking, mile 493 to 508)
This morning started with gas station coffee and 6 miles of quiet Sunday morning roads. We happily rejoined the PCT for a walk through large oak trees and small mountains. The terrain was surprisingly beautiful. We acquired water out of rain collection tanks that the maps and guides refer to as guzzlers.

Guzzler

Add caption

5/22
19 miles (444 to 463)
We hiked through the small town of aqua dulce and bought lots of snacks and lunch and the grocery store. The rest of the day we moved sluggishly. We camped at a spring.

5/23
21 miles (463 to 478 plus 6 miles of reroute)

We are on another reroute due to fire. About 15 miles of trail are closed  due to a fire a few years ago and replaced with 12.5 miles of road walking. Road walking is physically easier than hiking the trail but it sucks!

5/21
17 miles(427 to 444 acton KOA)
We did end up staying at the acton KOA. I have no idea why under normal circumstances, ie. travel by car, anyone would ever chose to come here. It's nice enough but it's the somewhere weird campground atmosphere produced when people live in their trailers. They did, however, have wonderful hot unlimited showers and that made the whole stop worth it. We spent the night, ate pizzeria and burgers, and got our resupply packages that were sent there. They included food to tehachapi, new sneakers for clay, and new lighter weight long underwear to sleep in for myself.

This annoyingly rotated photo is of clays old ripped shoes 

Vasquez rocks

More photos from between wrightwood and acton

Collecting water at little jimmy spring

Clay hunting morels

Somewhere between wrightwood and acton

Add caption

Photos taken from the day we left wrightwood at or near the summit of mount Baden powell

5/16
15 miles (342 Cajon pass at I-15 to mile 357)
We spent the night at a hotel last night and it was so nice. We did laundry, spread out all our gear to dry, and ate all day. We had time to sample all the local eating establishments; mcdonalds for breakfast, del taco for lunch, and subway for dinner. Yes, it was disgusting and yes, I did have a stomach ache.
We read and watched movies, took extraordinarily long showers, and did the dishes in the bathroom sink. Today we slept in, took advantage of the continental breakfast and hiked out half way to the town of wrightwood. We have a resupply box at the post office there, but it's not open until Monday so we are forced to take easy.

5/17
10 miles (mile 357 to 367)
It's 3:30. We have already set up our tent for the night. We slept in, read, and had a 2 hour lunch break. We are camped 2 miles from where the trail intersects with hwy 2. From there we will hitch about 5 miles to the town of wrightwood and eat breakfast! We also have to pick up our food for the next section, throw away the things we are already sick of and visit the store to buy food to replace the food we are getting rid of. Then back to the trail, we gotta make up some miles.

5/18
17 miles (Mile 367 to 384, Blue ridge to little jimmy)
We got up and packed up quickly. We were on the trail by 7 and hiked two miles to hwy 2 to hitch into wrightwood. This road, turns out, has very little traffic. One car passed in half an hour. Luckily a truck came up from town to drop off a few hikers at the trailhead and we got a ride down.
We spent 4 quick hours in wrightwood, a cute little mountain town with a ski resort. First things first, we went out to breakfast.  I ordered the mountain man and cleaned my plate. Then to the post office to pick up our resupply package, hardware store to  drop off unwanted items at the hiker box and buy fuel and new insoles. Then to the grocery store and used book store. Clays is now carrying 4 books!
We were back on the trail by noon. We gained 3000 feet in 4 miles of switchbacks with 5 days of food and it was tough. We went up mount Baden Powell at around 9400 feet and stayed high up on a ridge for most of the day. Hiking through clouds and snow drifts, we stayed cool. It'll be another cold night tonight.

5/19

17 miles (Mile 384, Little jimmy to camp glenwood Boy Scout camp, mile 401)

We bounced back and forth across hwy 2 seven or eight times today. We came across some good finds, someone was leaving treats at the trail/ road intersections. Nacho cheese and Mountain Dew at 10am followed by a pickle out of a trail side jar. We also made a delicious lunch. Corn tortillas with rehydrated hummus and salsa with freshly picked and sautéed morels clay picked! 

Nothing really of note, we went up some hills and then down some hills. We are still up pretty hill in elevation and the temperature has been cool and nights chilly. I had no idea there were such big mountains in Southern California. Looks like we will more or less be descending for the next two days and then will be heading into the desert, I think. I'm sure I'll be longing for the cold mountain wind I have been cursing. 

5/20

26 miles (Boy Scout camp at 401 to a windy ridge at 427)

From where we camped last night to acton, our next resupply, is 44 miles. We want to get there tomorrow so got in some miles today to try to get in mid afternoon tomorrow. Tomorrow it will be a full month that we have been on the trail and clay says it's time to start putting in more miles. Then we did. 

We hiked down out of the forest of firs and pines into a burn area full of thick scrub and dog poodle brush, a stupidly named quickly growing plant than irritates the skin similar to poison oak or ivy. It's dry with long water carries and gusty. 

We have packages waiting for us at the KOA and we hope the campground isn't full of Memorial Day vacationers as there are showers and laundry that I would very much like to utilize.  

5/14
21 miles (320 to 341, about 1 mile from I-15 at Cajon pass)
It rained all day today. We are so soggy. The weather forecast for tomorrow on the way to wrightwood has a winter weather advisory for up to 9 inches of snow! Instead of trying our luck in the storm (the third in as many weeks) clay booked a hotel room for tomorrow night around noon today after realizing that we'd be walking in the rain and setting up our wet tent in the rain, we tried to get a room for tonight but the one hotel here is booked. We hiked till 5 and hunkered down. Tomorrow we sleep in a dry room and in the first bed since we left San Diego over 3 weeks ago, it kept is going in the rain and wind all day.

5/13
19 miles (301 to mile 320)
Clays social experiments on me ended in a late morning start.  Turns out if he doesn't tell me that we have to get up, we don't end up leaving camp till 9, about 2 hours later than we otherwise would.  We hiked down stream of Deep Creek which true to its name has a lot of water despite the fact that the surrounding area is very dry.  We hiked by hot springs built into the side of the creek bed but they were jammed with rowdy locals so we hiked on. We exited the stream canyon and continued toward silver wood lake I believe. We were still feeling like we could walk a bit more but our priority for the night was to find a sheltered spot to pitch the tent. A storm fronts coming through and it's super windy out.

5/12
21 miles (280 to 301)
We felt back in the groove when we woke up this morning. We are heading west for  the next 100 miles from big bear city past I-15 to Wrightwood where our next resupply is. We had our first angry rattle snake encounter today. They are surprisingly loud, I heard the rattle as I approached the snake under a bush about a foot and a half off the side of the trail, but I had no idea what that noise could be.  It sounded like a sprinkler popping up out  of the grass, why that would be miles from any road under a bush in a dry dry desert I hadn't figured out before the hiker in front of me yelled "snake!".  Duh, I think I would have figured it out eventually.  We walked way around and carried on.
We made our way to Deep creek. A Steep rocky canyon with more water than we've seen so far and we saw two skunks, a Mama and baby trail side surprise.

5/11
14 miles (hwy 18 at mile 266 to mile 280)
The last two days clay and I spent in big bear with clays dad and stepmom, kent and Lin. They drove their camper down from their home in Sanger to come spoil us and spend a few days in the mountains, it was wonderful. We did little but eat and play cards. By the time we had to head out this morning I was stuffed to the top and feeling lazy as ever.
Luckily Clay and I felt equally unmotivated when his dad dropped us off at the trailhead his morning. We started hiking at 9:30, took several small breaks before we laid down for a while after lunch, then we ended the day early and setup our tent in late afternoon. We were both asleep before the sun went down.

Big bear lake

Hiking above big bear

Clay dad trying on clays pack

Father son fishing 

5/5
19 miles (190 to 209)
16 miles of downhill!  This was actually a lot more difficult than we anticipated.  We were near the peak of San Jacinto and dropped down into a windy valley full of wind turbines, home to the small towns of Whitewater and Cabazon, described to us as "the pitts".  There were a few things that made this day difficult. It was physically difficult because we had a large waterless stretch, so we started the downhill with 5 liters each, adding a lot of weight.  Mentally, we could see the valley and town we were heading towards for the whole day, and it took forever to get there, knees aching.
When we reached I-10, we hitched about 5 miles from the PCT on a service road to In-n-out in cabazon.  I was starving and I did some good work, glorious.

the view from somewhere near idyllwild

5/6
17 miles (209 to 226)
We slept at ziggy and the bears last night, an elderly couple who hiked the pct and now host hikers. About 20 or so hikers slept on carpet in the backyard "lined up like sausages". It was incredibly windy. I don't think anyone slept well between the noise of the shade tent rattling above us and the gusts of wind inflating our sleeping bags. It was still a nice place to stay, it would have been just as windy camping elsewhere.
We woke up hungry even after each eating two burgers and fries at in n out last night. After hiking through fields of wind turbines we crossed a creek! We haven't crossed many creeks yet, and this was a very welcome site.  We stayed at the creek for hours, soaking our feet, washing off, and eating lunch.

clay hating the wind

5/7
20 miles (226 to 246)
Up up up, we climbed from about 3000 feet to over 8000. The temperature dropping as we went. The climb was fairly gradual with water along the way, our packs fairly light with a resupply in our near future.  By the time we reached our campsite for the night, it was freezing.  We set up our tent quickly near the coon creek cabin, a historic doorless windowless building of sorts.

5/8
20 miles (246 to 266)
We woke up to a dusting of snow and frozen water bottles this morning.  It was hard to get up and out of our cozy sleeping bag.  We packed up quickly and retreated to the cabin for shelter from the snow and hantavirus as we made some mashed potatoes with cheese and bacon bits for breakfast.  We booked it into town today, excited for real food and a visit from clays dad and stepmom.  Also, it was freezing out, literally freezing as the wind blew and snow swirled through the air.  Breaks were short and we hiked fast, making into big bear before 5. We got picked up by the first person who passed us on hwy 18 and we got dropped off in big bear lake to eat.  We met up with Clay's family who will visit and camp with this weekend as we eat and rest.

a dusting

"trail magic". magic dumpster = food in the woods

Hikers taking over bakery backyard

Route talk at the bakery

Hiking the re-route into idyllwild