Day 34! 24.85 miles!!

Whoo!! What a day! We woke up from our nice campsite in Tylerhouse Canyon and left at around 6:20am. The trail climbed up pretty steep but we knew that was our only big climb of the day. 

One thing I really like doing in the mornings is something I call “chasing the shadows”. As the sun rises and we’re going over ridges, they go from being mostly covered in shade to eventually becoming all exposed, which is when I start thinking of shade breaks. Today was filled with awesome little purple flowers, and the shadow chasing had me feeling very energized for some odd reason despite the big uphill climb!

Julian shadow chasing 

Mountain-covering flowers

A shade-providing tree Claire and I utilized in the midday heat back in 2016. This time we passed it around 8am!

Wildflowers all over

We hit a cool little private water cache set up next to someone property that butts up to the trail in the middle of nowhere. There was a little bit of water in case anyone was running low. We rested here for a bit and then started our hilly, roller-coasters descent back down to the desert floor! 

Aaaand back down 

Normally, my knees start to hurt during downhills, but the long descent was so gradual that I felt pretty good! Even with a super long day at a very quick pace! 

On the way down I texted my cousin Ryan who lives in Tehachapi. I had texted him about a week ago but I had accidentally texted his old phone instead of his current one. When I texted his new phone, he quickly got back to me and said that Julian and I could stay at his house and rest tomorrow! That worked out nicely!

Excitedly, we sped down the last 8 miles of trail/road and made it to hwy 58 to try and hitch into Tehachapi. Cousin Ryan offered to pick us up at the hwy on ramp around 4:50pm, but since we had already hiked 24+ miles and it was only 4pm, we figured we’d try and hitch in to hit the post office to get our resupply packages before the post office closed.

Luckily, after a couple minutes, a single truck was driving by the exit. I approached him and he said he’d take us into Tehachapi! We didn’t even have to go down to the actual highway, which Claire and I did last time to hitch into Mojave and is pretty sketchy...

First stop Post Office, second Stop Denny’s :)

There was a Denny’s right near the post office, so right after we got our packages we went and had some milkshakes and a little food. Cousin Ryan picked us up from Denny’s shortly after around 5pm on his way home! Everything worked out great!

I’ll post pictures of Ryan and Rachel and the house tomorrow since we’re taking a zero day here in Tehachapi. As for today, we showered at the house and then headed out to a business called Local Craft Beer. This is a place that they go to every Wednesday night for trivia night. It reminded me a lot of a few different places in Portland. There was great craft beer and we ate Thai food and enjoyed listening to the trivia questions. We saw Keg-legs there! She was the only their hiker there!

Ryan and his team of engineers (coworkers), always make a name that has to do with Mongoose, and today their name was Phenomamongoose! They won the trivia night!! After trivia I got to check out two baby tortoises, Spike and Littlefoot.

Spike

The trivia team! Cousin Ryan and Rachel on far left

It was definitely a fun day! Everything timing-wise worked out great today! Julian and I are super grateful that Ryan and Rachel let us crash at their place and use their amenities with such short notice!! The love of family is always felt genuinely. You two rock!!

I realized today that I’ve done 106.89 miles in the last 5 days! That’s over 20 miles every day on average! We’re feeling good Physically and can only imagine we’ll feel better after our second zero on trail here tomorow in Tehachapi! That’s it for now, it’s way past my bedtime!

Thanks for reading!!

Day 33, 20.06 miles

We woke up nice and early at 4am as planned. The wind was still whipping and it was actually a little cold! We knew that wouldn’t last for long so we got a move on!

I broke a new record today! We broke camp at 4:45am, which isn’t the earliest I’ve left, but while trying to do the 10milesx10am, we ended up doing 13.4 miles by 9:15am!! That’s 3 miles per hour all morning! 

By 9am it was already pretty dang hot, so we were glad to see the bridge! We went straight for the upper left side portion of the under bridge. This is a nice flat area where the shade stays in one place for the most part since you are closer to the bridge ceiling instead of being down below and having to move every 20 minutes with the shade. I remembered this place from last time, so Julian and I made sure to claim it! There were a few other hikers down below.

Hikertrash 

We both napped for about 2 hours. And then around 11am, we both woke up at the same time. Just then, we heard this strange noise that sounded like a cat purring but also kind of like a bird. We looked at each other and then up where the noise was coming from. About 15 feet away there were “rafters” going under the bridge. We saw what we initially thought were kittens. There were 4 little cute feline kittens, and we were surprised they were living in there.

Then, Julian (who has slightly better eyesight than me), exclaimed that there was a larger cat behind them! It was either a bobcat or a mountain lion!! And we were sleeping 15 feet from her nest for 2 hours!!!

You can see a kitten/cub on the right side

Momma


Momma

!!

These pictures are very zoomed in, and I didn’t want to use the flash to disturb them, so I edited them on my phone to brighten/wash out.

For awhile we didn’t know the true size of the momma and there was some speculation that it might be a bobcat and not a mountain lion. As we were leaving, Julian spotted a bobcat cub. The more I look at the pictures we caught of the mother cat, the more I think it was a mountain lion, although it’s hard to tell.. what do you think?

Picture is from the internet

We had rested under the bridge for about 6 hours total (it was piping hot out in the sun). By the time 3pm rolled around, Julian and I were getting antsy to leave. Some other hikers had night hiked and were trying to catch up on sleep by nightfall to continue nighthiking, we as we just had a long, early day and just needed a nap. We headed back out into the blazing sun!

Looked deceptive cloudy far away, but we were walking in some hot hot heat and 100% exposure!!

Climbing up and up!

And up!!

After 6.5 more super tough miles, we had made it all the way across the desert floor and up into the hills on the other side! That wasn’t so bad eh? We descended into the beautiful Tylerhouse Canyon for the night, which has a tiny little trickle stream flowing through. Claire and I recuperated here after giving windy night hiking a try two years ago!

There’s about 25 miles left to get to Tehachapi where I will be taking either a couple neros if not a zero. It’s a really long waterless stretch tomorrow, so we’re not going to push the big miles if we don’t feel like it. We’ll most likely arrive in Tehachapi early Thursday morning. Wow I am TIRED!! Good night!

Thanks for reading!!

Day 32! 23.61 miles!!

So, last night, a hungry bear strolled into camp looking for some food. There was a family group consisting of a father, uncle, and a son who had left their food bags on a picnic table. Devoured. All of it. There was a girl about 100 yards from us that was cowboy camping, and the bear came over to her and was sniffing her. She woke up and screamed. It went away but came back either once or twice to looo for more food. Craziest part?! I slept through ALL of this.. haha. At one point around 2:15am I had woken up to see a bunch of headlamps and hear voices talking, but I just assumed some people were up late or night hiking, and went back to bed. It wasn’t until the morning that I heard what had happened! Crazy!!

Well, the morning was, for lack of other descriptive words.. BEAUTIFUL. It was another morning of most that soon got burst through from the sunshine!

For the most part today the trail was a nice, gradual, downhill. Pretty soon I hit the 500 mile mark!

Crushin’!

I leapfrogged with Julian today, seeing each other at the water sources and sometimes hiking together for a few miles. It feels good to be hiking solo but also having a pretty constant hiking buddy. We’re good friends now! We’re hoping that we’ll be entering the Sierra together, as it’s always best to hike with a buddy in the snow.

The miles flew by with the fast, gradual downgrade. Soon the trail hit a dirt road and we walked straight into Hiker Town! Hiker Town is a small collection of buildings and shade/water, where hikers can hang out and charge their phones to wait out the heat, or spend a night for some $ if needed. They have a shuttle to the local convenience store every hour on the hour and we had arrived at 2:55pm! Perfect timing to load up into the free shuttle and go grab some food at the store!

Hikertown

I bought a little more food at the store to last me until Tehachapi, and while I was there I ordered a burger, fries, mozzarella sticks, and a chocolate milkshake from the kitchen. We soon caught the shuttle back to Hiker Town, and there I saw a familiar face. Twerk!

Twerk

I had met Twerk in Portland while I was working at the Tin Shed. I was serving tables, and I heard him talking about the trail with the person he was eating with. I went over and told him I started on the 20th. He was starting in the 15th! I follow him on Instagram so I knew he’s been ahead of me this whole time, but I’m surprised I already caught up!

Julian and I started to head out for a couple more miles although we had already done 20 to get to Hikertown! As we were about to leave, another hiker set down a styrofoam cooler with beer in it and said they’re up for grabs! We each snagged a cold one and headed out into the heat again! 

The LA aqueduct 

Last mile beer :)

The wind was picking up quite a bit, and we didn’t want to hike too much longer. We saw a nice grove of Joshua trees about a hundred yards off trail. We were able to find just enough flat space for both Julian and I to get our tents set up behind the protection of the string stubby trees. The sunset views were magnificent.

Tomorrow we’re planning on hiking 13 miles to the Cottonwood Creek Bridge before the day gets too hot. The bridge is the only shade for 24 miles between Hikertown and Tylerhouse Canyon. Last time Claire and I night hiked this super hot section, but this time the weather is much more mild, in the 80’s vs the 100’s. We’d like wake up at 4am and start hiking before 5am. We’ll see!!

Thanks for reading!!

Day 31, 19.73 miles

I woke up around 7, packed everything up and headed down to la Casa for breakfast! They were having pancakes and they were so good! They had some apple butter and a few different syrups. So good! They had a volunteer shuttling people back to the trail, and Julian and I jumped into the next car available (maybe the 3rd trip of the morning).

The morning actually started off a lottle foggy, but as we were climbed out first big hill, we soon broke out of the clouds. There was one moment where you could see half the sky and they other half was a grey mist moving east.

So cool!!

The morning was beautiful (as always), and it wasn’t very hot. There was a nice breeze rolling through and the trail followed the ridge for awhile. At one point, I caught something in my peripheral, at about shoulder height. It was a 5ft gopher snake!! I thought it was a rattler for a few seconds and dang it scared me...

Blegh....

We soon started walking through a new burn area, (the reason why this portion of the trail was closed in 2016. It was really really beautiful and I’m glad I got to experience it this time!

There was a small trail side spring that many people had stopped at to fill up and rest. It would be kind of a lame little trickle, but someone had sacrificed a bottle top to make a sweet funnel!

:)

Julian

Lots o’ Poodle Dog Bush

From the burn area we suddenly entered a beautiful grassy hillside. Lots of shade and trees all around! Beside the trail side spring, the other water sources of the day were pretty sketchy... There were 3 in total and two of them had dead rodents floating inside. Julian and I decided to push for a source 10 miles after the trail some spring. It was apparently much cleaner and more reliable. The only problem with this source was it was pretty far off trail. But, using the app I downloaded on my phone, (Guthook), I was able to make a little alternate to it so we didn’t have to backtrack! 

The PCT is red, moving from east to west. At the yellow marker, we split onto a mountain road. I added in the black line on my phone to represent our dirt road walk. There was a nice rain-catching cistern where that blue water drop is. 

Road walk

A great water source! (No dead rodents)

We’re camped at the little tent site icon on the screenshot above. Many other hikers went on the PCT all the way to the campground junction to come to the water source. Since we did a little road alternate, tomorow we just get to hike the campground trail back to the PCT!

There’s quite a bit of other hikers here. It was a nice distance to go right out of Casa de Luna. There’s about 20 miles to Hiker Town tomorrow where we will start the hot, flat section of the hike along the LA aqueduct and across the Mojave desert! We’re super lucky with this upcoming weather, with highs in the high 70’s instead of 100’s.

Thanks for reading!