Week 5: S'more Desert

This week began in a random area past wrightwood. I began to see some trees in patches but still many sections of intense desert. I walked through vasquez rocks (a famous filming site). During that stretch i opted to drop behind my tramily so i could acquire a hangtag (piece of plastic that says pct and you must be a thru-hiker to get one). After getting this i spent the next few days trying to catch up, this meant longer days and farther miles. This section of pushing also happened to a known mountain lion area, spooky but i did not see any. Perhaps that is more worrysome. Alas still made it through. The day i wouldve caught up to my tramily (day 4 or 5 of this week) i came across my first wildfire.

The Post fire!! which has since been fully contained. I was near enough to see the original plume and the smoke spread over the valley which also happened to be directly over where i was standing. Per the moment the fire started if i were to continue along the trail i wouldve had to walk directly towards the fire. Without cell service and a fire appearing to grow rapidly and being alone, i felt quite unsafe to say the least. Thankfully my parents are fantastic and my mom was able to help me get more info via messaging through my inreach. Unfortunately the fire was so recent it hadnt fully been put into the incident database california uses at first. I ended up getting to a road and hitchhiking around the fire which was somehow only 20 miles of trail missed. From talking to people it sounds like that section of trail is very similar to the past couple days. I guess i didnt miss much :)

I skipped into hikertown, which is perhaps one of the most bizarre places i have ever found myself. Its sort of an artificial ghost town.... i met my tramily here and we prepped for the infamous night hike of the LA aqueduct. Its a classic challenge that many PCT hikers take on where you hike through the night from hikertown to tehachapi. Its 40-50 miles depending on the exit point you choose. I will say, the actual aqueduct portion of this was fantastic!! Its flat, we had a basically full moon, we were cruising!! The night was going so well i thought it mightve been my favorite section on trail, that changed rather quickly unfortunately. It was around 1am when noah and i made a wrong turn (this section has a series of gravel road walks). To be fair, it was late and we were quite a few miles in, and the wind had begun to pick up as we were entering the first of two wind farms. This area had a high wind advisory which i thought was just because it was a wind farm and failed to realize that these advisories are subjective based on the area. I think 60-70mph gusts and winds of maybe 40-50mph. We were being blown around and i often found that i failed to step forward because i would get blown backward halfway through the process of taking a step. It felt like trying to swim up a river and climb up a steep hill at the same time. By far the worst headwind i have ever experienced. After fighting this wind and making very slow progress noah and i navigated back to the trail and eventually caught back up with some our group. We found them huddled in a ditch actively climbing into sleeping bags. I cannot express how relieved i was to be able to crawl into a ditch and get out of the worst of the wind. This happened around 3 or 4am. We slept for 2-3 hours and then kept on moving once there was daylight. This was perhaps the best sleep we all have gotten on trail. One persons garmin watch told him he got a near perfect sleep score equivalent to 8.5 hours of sleep. We continued in the light and kept pushing onward. We finished 40 something miles within 24 hours. This is not a normal experience for this area as everyone before and after us had less wind, much less wind. I am jealous of this. But we made it, feeling exhausted but accomplished.

After taking a little bit of time in tehachapi, my group and i got back on trail. I completed the 8 miles between the two roads while many skipped past and we met at the i58 road. i ran this section which was quite fun and only doable because a friend brought my food and some extra liters of water to the road we were meeting at. The section was fairly boring and im glad i did it quickly and saw it, i dont think i would care to repeat that section however, nothing incredibly redeeming. At the i58 road crossing is FarOuts map change, the "end" of the desert and beginning of the sierras. I wish this was true. We hiked only another 8 or so past the road and this is where the week ends.