A Romp Through the West
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
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
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
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
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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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
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
Day 37
Miles: 8
From the mile 549 water cache to Tehachapi willow springs road
The whole crew rolled into the cache last night, then rolled out before we woke up. Bob and the Canadians are gone too. Bringing up the rear again. Wouldn’t want to break form.
We have our rocket boosters on this morning – we speed our way downhill, through more windmills and grass and trees and stuff. Eight miles, bam! We’re at Tehachapi Willow Springs road.
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Day 36
Miles 20
From the aqueduct to mile 549 cache
June 6, 2014
The sun is shining on me and it’s already hot, where I’m cowboy camped next to J on the flat spot next to the aqueduct. Bob is already up and packing, Red is stirring, but J and the other two Canadians are still asleep. It’s only going to get hotter, lying here. I’m tired but I guess I’ll get up.
I added some weird green powder from the Canadians to my power breakfast mix, and now it tastes… green, as well as being a distressing green – brown color. It could use some more brownie mix, too bad. Altogether though, I’m hopeful about the morning. A little ibuprofen, a little caffeine, and I’m ready to take on the day, as if I hadn’t walked 26 miles, or until midnight. Maybe J and I have got this hiking business down after all. Maybe we’ll be able to make the miles to get ourselves to Canada. Maybe maybe maybe.
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Day 35
Miles: 26
From the Rock Inn to the LA aqueduct
The Canadians are up and at ’em at six a.m. If we keep hanging with this crowd we might turn into morning people. Ha! It’s cool and delightful this time of day… maybe that’s why so many get up to hike at the crack of dawn…
It’s nothing but road from here to hikertown, so we start walking. Only notable thing seems to be the difficulty of finding a good place to poop and the number of no trespassing signs. They have a little to do with each other. I wonder what hikers from other countries think when they walk down this nice little country road – no trespassing – attack dogs – armed guard – premises under surveillance – do not enter.
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