High mountain forests
I kept waiting to see a bear trailing across these meadows, but no dice.
The desert isn’t as far away as you’d think
Day 48: photos
Day 45: getting higher
Day 45
Miles: 19
From Joshua tree spring to Fox mill spring
June 15, 2014
On the trail by 8:30 this morning – I woke up at first light but preferred my dreams to waking for a little longer. “Good morning J,” I sing. “Time to get up. Another night that we didn’t get eaten by mountain lions!” I add, satisfied.
“Mm.”
I hate getting up, but I sure love mornings on the trail. I think I’m happy every day, around 10 am (ok a few small exceptions).
We climb up 2000 feet, to 7000 ft, then back down to 5000 ft for the next water source. Hallelujah, it’s a little tiny creek, and it’s flowing well. After being left high and dry last night I was worried it would happen again. Even walking quickly, six miles is plenty of time to imagine all kinds of scenarios around dying of thirst. I don’t think we even made it to parched today. Read More
Day 44: dry endings
Day 44
Miles: 12
From walker pass to Joshua tree spring
June 14, 2014
I was ostensibly planning on getting up early today, but even last night I knew that wasn’t going to happen. “We have to check out by eleven,” I think. “No rush.”
And we don’t. We make it to the bus stop by 9:45, but we read the bus schedule wrong – the bus goes to Onyx at eleven, not ten… Time for smoothies then.
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Day 43: prep day
Day 43
Miles: zero
Lake Isabella
Just food shopping and world cup games today. We send a box of food ahead to Independence and resupply for the two and a half days to Kennedy Meadows. This town is kind of beat… not near enough teeth to go around…
A fire starts in the evening, on the ridge behind the motel where we’re staying. The smoke plume gets bigger all evening – hope it doesn’t turn into something big.
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Day 42: a reprieve
Day 42
Miles: 16
From ridgeline campsite to walker pass (then to lake isabella)
J mocks me for saying I’m being swarmed by mosquitoes when there are only eight. I say, if all eight of them are within six inches of my face, then it’s a swarm. Semantics aside, eight is enough to drive you crazy when you’re trying to sleep and you don’t have a net tent. I put my bug head net on, put in my ear plugs, and go to sleep.
I sleep badly for a long time, until I finally sleep off the hard edge of the exhaustion.
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Day 41: return of the trees
Day 41
Miles: 16
From willow spring to ridgeline around mile 636
I turn off the first alarm, then hit snooze for the second. It’s light out, and cool, and if I get up now everything will be so much easier, but I just can’t. J finally makes the move and gets up. We have water to filter before we can hit the road.
The water bottle we’ve been using with our sawyer squeeze appears to be holding up, and the patch job on the platypus bladder looks ok. Good. We need the capacity. We water up to full – 8 liters for J and 6.5 for me. Oof. A lot of people think we’re crazy to carry so much water, so much weight. But as I see it, being thirsty and down to one liter for twelve miles before another unreliable water source is a heavy thing to carry too. I’ll take the water. With all the filtering, we don’t hit the trail until 8. It’s sunny and hot, what a surprise.
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Day 40: where are the trees??
Day 40
Miles: 21
From robin bird spring to willow spring
It’s so nice to wake up in a lovely spot, surrounded by trees, with a flowing spring. Luxurious, even. Spike came in late last night, and we chat over breakfast and filtering water for the day. Purple and Carnivore come in while we’re chatting, looking tired and thirsty.
We get off to a leisurely 10 am start, but everyone else stays at the spring to nap a while longer. This stretch of trail will wring you out. Today isn’t looking to bad though, with water in three miles, then in another four. After that it’s thirteen miles to willow spring, our goal for the night. Willow spring is the last reliable water source for 43 miles. We’ll be getting off the trail at walker pass, so that cuts the stretch down to 35 miles. They are some water caches in there, but with so many thirsty hikers, and the roads to the caches so difficult, I’m nervous about trusting them.
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Day 39: another long push
Miles: 23
Day 39
From a few miles before golden oaks spring to robin bird spring
I’ve got ants crawling in my hair, I can tell, but it’s the middle of the night and I just don’t care. I brush them off my face, doze, do it again. Finally it’s J’s restlessness that wakes me up. “We’re crawling with ants!”
“I know. Why don’t you just turn your bag around?” I mumble, mostly asleep.
“The little buggers are biting me! And now I smell like distressed ant and they won’t leave me alone!”
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Day 38: getting roasted
Day 38
Miles: 21
From Tehachapi Willow Springs Road to 3.5 miles before golden oaks spring
Six am comes way too early. I should have gone to bed earlier last night – some rest day – chores and staying up late. J and I have to hustle to get out the door by 6:30, when we meet the trail angel who has offered us a ride.
We’re not really ready, in fact. J is up front talking to Dave, and I’m in the backseat with a huge bag of food we were supposed to eat for breakfast. There’s a bit of a mix up about where to get dropped off, which is a relief. I need a few extra minutes. I’ve got a quart of orange juice to slam, three Hawaiian rolls, three bananas, and a pound of grapes. Read More