Day 47- June 5th

Man did we sleep good! We woke up at Tylerhouse.Canyon under the shade of a large tree. Instead of the sun being our 5:30am alarm as usual, we got to sleep in thanks to the shade!

Ok guys, I know the blog is getting boring, but bear with us! In under 150 miles we'll enter the Sierra! Beautiful exciting things to write about everyday and more than 2 hours of sleep a night! This is definitely the toughest section of the PCT by far due to the heat. Now, I can safely say I'd rather be too cold than too hot!

Night hiking with no moon in the high wind sucks, trying to sleep in the daytime with highs of over 100 degrees sucks; you get the picture! Nonetheless, we are trying to stay as positive as we can, we know this can't last forever! Thanks for sticking with us.

Alright, where was I? Oh yeah. So we enjoyed our lazy morning, and each filtered 4 liters of water from the river. I noticed that today wasn't forecasted as hot as the other days, which was a relief. We didn't want to wait around all day trying to sleep and have a repeat of last night's horrible hike.

By the time we wrapped everything up, it was almost noon. It seemed silly to leave just before the heat of the day, but we really wanted to get some miles behind us, or we'd be stuck in the desert forever!

We left the sleepyheads, Exo, Andrew, and Becca, who had all arrived in the early morning while we were snoozing, and we took off. Yup, you guessed it: uphill...

The day was hot, not 100 degrees hot, but it definitely touched 90. The first couple miles were a big traverse to the other side of the hill. Then we went down into a canyon, where we found a low tree on a very steep slope and scrambled down under it branches for some shade. Just to give you an idea of how barren their place was, this was the first "tree" that we'd seen since we left camp this morning. And it was the last shade we saw for miles.

We climbed up so steep it would make your head hurt! Fine sand and black dust mixed with high winds made dry throats and nosebleeds. As I've said before, if you weren't hiking the PCT, there's no reason anyone would ever choose to do this section of the trail. 4 water sources in 100 miles, ups and downs all day with no rewarding views, and a very deep, sliding, steep, sandy trail.

Sounds horrible you say? Yeah, but walking from Mexico to Canada I. A continuous footpath sounds awesome!

You see those tiny white windmills way down there? Those are over 300 feet tall.. Yeah, we CLIMBED!

At the very top of our endless climb we experienced yet again some more magic! I swear, trail magic is the only thing keeping us going out here sometimes. This time it was an un-manned, but very well stocked oasis. There were apples and grapes and water and chairs to sit on with umbrellas for shade. Heaven!

We relaxed here for a bit, ate some fresh fruit (yum!), left some $ in a little metal donation box, and kept on our way.

It was after 4:30pm now and the sun was not as hot. We had climbed up almost 2000 feet in 4 miles, and now it's time for the down. The wind was still blowing strong but it felt good without the intensity of the sun.

Eventually we came down through more windmills. The sun started setting and there were some pretty silhouettes. The windmills sure are cool!

We busted out the headlamps as it was getting dark, and about 1/2 a mile before the Tehachapi-Willow Springs road we found a nice little sandy spot in a wash to set up camp.

Since we filled up on water up at the cache at mile 549, we got to actually use our stove to cook some food! 

(Horrible picture but yummy pasta and veggies!)

This was the first time we've cooked on trail since leaving Agua Dulce, almost 100 miles behind us, due to lack of water. We are thinking about sending the stove up to Kennedy meadows along with some of our clothing items as we won't need them in the next dry and hot 150 mile stretch to come. 

We hiked 16.44 miles today, just like we had planned! Best of all, we did it in the daytime after having some good sleep, instead of deliriously at night. Tomorrow we have just over 8 miles to get to freeway 58, where we'll be hitching into Mojave to get some well deserved R&R in a proper motel with a shower and breakfast! 

-Thanks for reading!