Tehachapi to Kennedy Meadows, May 31st - June 8th

May 31st 

I spent Friday morning taking care of business online, and then walked downtown to Studio J, an oasis of pampering where an esthetician named Jamie cleaned up my face quickly and efficiently and a hairstylist named Hannah colored my hair a bright orange color that I was thrilled with.  

Jamie (left) and Hannah (right)

People in the salon had heard of the trail but didn't get hiker traffic, and they thought it sounded downright wild.  When Jamie asked me what I did if I didn't make it into town for a night, I replied that I usually didn't, and just slept in my tent or cowboy camped without one.  She shook her head as if that was crazy, and we both laughed.  Hannah had an idea of moving to Alaska with her boyfriend, who was in the military, and I heartily encouraged this, waxing poetic about how many different things there were to do there, although I must admit I've never spent a winter north of Washington State. 

After the salon I walked to a grocery store for supplies and then called John, a trail angel from the list of trail angels available to give rides to hikers in Tehachapi, which was small but just a little too big to navigate on foot.  John was a hiker himself and had even taken his wife and sons to Peru, where they had done a really cool sounding hike accompanied by a shaman.  He seemed very interested in bringing more hikers to Tehachapi, and I enjoyed his enthusiasm. 

John

John said that he and his family were participating in a run for charity the next morning, but that I should call him in the afternoon and he would take me back out to the trail.   

June 1st

In the morning I organized my food for the next week - I had decided to do two things differently, one of which was to carry a full week's supply of food before having to carry it into the Sierras.  The second thing was to organize my food by day rather than by type, so that I had one bag of food that I could eat each day.  I'd gotten the idea from Sour Cream, who I'd hiked the previous leg with.  Most people seemed to organize their food by type (a dinner bag, a snack bag, etc.), but Sour Cream's dad had taught him this system and he liked it because he knew exactly how much food he could eat each day and didn't have to worry about rationing. 

I packed a small bag with something for that night and then seven bags each with a full day's rations.  It was 150 miles to Kennedy Meadows and I figured that I could do it in roughly six 25-mile days, with an extra day's food just in case.  It turned out that between the added weight and the intense heat of the next section I had to make an effort to make sure that I did at least 20 miles a day for the first few days, so the extra day's rations were wise.  I also packed a lot of protein for this stretch, as I was craving it so intensely.  A day's food bag contained

• Two Starbucks instant coffee packets (I prefer Medadalia D'Oro instant espresso but Starbucks had sent promotional boxes to the Sauffleys') for a strong cup of coffee and a pill bag full of powdered creamer
• A protein bar to eat with coffee in the morning
• A bag of instant oatmeal for second breakfast, to which I added raisins, nuts, and salad bacon.  (I'm still working on my "maple bacon oatmeal" recipe, but will post it once I've got it figured out.)
• A packet of tuna fish, two mayonnaise packets, a snack bag of corn chips, and a tortilla to make a crunchy tuna wrap for lunch. (The tortillas were the only thing that didn't go in the food bag, I put one for each day's lunch rolled up together in a Pringles can to keep them from getting shredded.)
• A snack bag of salami and a snack bag of dried pineapples for the afternoon
• A dinner, most of which included a packet of chicken meat and either (i) a packet of gravy and a half-packet of instant mashed potatoes, or (ii) a packet of spicy instant ramen.
• Two Reese's peanut butter cups, which I would become practiced at sucking out of their wrappers after they all melted in the desert. 

I called Leapfrog, another Tehachapi ride angel, who took me to the post office to mail a load of food up to Kennedy Meadows. 

Leapfrog

Leapfrog and his wife were also hikers, and had completed the entire California PCT in sections.  Their practice was to each drive a car and to leave one at each end of the section they were hiking, which was how he come to be named Leapfrog.

Back at the hotel I stuffed the gargantuan quantity of food into my pack, said goodbye to Debrah, the evening clerk at the Best Western and kindest woman I have ever met, and called John who came and picked me up to go back to the trail.   

Deborah, the kindest woman I have ever met

Tehachapi had been incredibly hiker-friendly.  John came to pick me up and run me out to the trail even though he and his wife were hosting a barbecue that evening.  Leapfrog had taken me to the post office even though he was busy that day.  Deborah had offered both Friday and Saturday night to drive me to the bar where the Tehachapi wind workers hung out on her way home from work (I'd been curious but too exhausted), and the hotel had two working computers, free printing, and a hot tub, and allowed groups of hikers to pile into one room to save money.  On the way out of town I'd talked to a few hikers who had gone to Mojave instead of Tehachapi (a smaller town in the opposite direction from the trail), and none of them seemed overly enthusiastic, having been charged $5 a head for rides into town and shared rooms in dingy Motel 6.  For the record, I don't think it's unfair to charge someone $5 for a ride into town, it was just that the little impromptu business was in stark contrast to the Tehachapi trail angels - neither of the two who had given me rides would even accept a donation, although it would have been completely kosher for them to do so.  

Information on wind farming - I've heard that there are a lot of issues with it, one of which is that much of the energy generated is wasted because there isn't sufficient infrastructure to transport it, but I don't know if this is true or not.

Information on the PCT

The last of the Tehachapi Wind Farm

Waiting in the dark for a train to pass

In the evening I walked out about eight miles, to where the trail crossed Interstate 58.  There was a water cache there, and someone had left an open but mostly full box of cheesits there.  I sat on a cooler, got out my stove, and cooked my ramen for the evening, munching on the cheesits and watching the lights of the semi trucks flying by.  Here I was, 36 years old, sitting next to a freeway in the dark, cooking ramen and eating mystery cheesits - mom would be so proud...

I hiked maybe another two miles until the trail wound away from the freeway, and then cowboy camped.  This must have been the night that I got bit - the bites seemed to have developed awfully quickly, but the most likely alternative was that I got them before the two nights in Tehachapi and no one noticed them there, which seems less likely although definitely possible. 

June 2nd

The next day I hiked to Golden Oaks Springs, where a collection of hikers was gathered.  A hiker from Israel who went by The Messenger cooked flat bread on a piece of metal over a small fire.  He asked me about the marks on my back, and I assumed he meant the wings.

"Oh, my tattoos?  I used to be a pilot."  I have a PPSEL (private pilot single engine land) and an A-License for skydiving from the USPA, and celebrated in 2000 by having wings tattooed on my shoulder blades.

"No," he said, joking, "I mean the bullet marks.  Did you get shot while you were a pilot?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You haven't seen them?"  He took my phone from me, took pictures of my back, and gave it back to me: 

There were only two, but the bullseye pattern was a red flag for a possible tick bite.  Another hiker named King Street directed my hand until I could feel the one just behind my arm (pictured above).  I poked it and it didn't hurt, but the pattern was worrying.  I knew I should probably see a doctor, but I really didn't want to backtrack, so I moved on.   

King Street at the Golden Oaks Spring

Hikers relaxing at the Golden Oaks Spring

I hiked into the evening, past more wind turbines, and through a landscape charred by fire.  I eventually cowboy camped right on the trail, worrying about sharp things poking through my inflatable sleeping pad.  I'd somehow neglected to acquire a sheet of Tyvek, which most people put underneath their sleeping mats when they cowboy camped and many even put under their tents when they slept in those.  Tyvek is made for wrapping houses under construction and is very durable and lightweight, but I'd called all three hardware stores in Tehachapi and it was only sold there in large rolls. 

"How small is your house?"  One sales clerk had asked, puzzled.

"It's pretty small." 

One store had said that they had a dropcloth used for painting that was sold in $5 packages and John had taken me to pick it up before driving me out of town, but it was already tearing and I didn't think it would discourage a sharp rock or stick from impaling my NeoAir. 

June 3rd

The next day I hiked on and off with three hikers who I'd seen on the trail my first night out, King Street, Kitten, and Braveheart.  I'd met King Street at the Sauffleys and Kitten at the Andersons, and the three of them had been hiking the last stretch together. 

My shadow photographing the 600-mile mark

In the afternoon we reached Robin Bird Springs, where we laid out our sleeping gear and napped through the heat of the day.  Cows also visited the spring, which provided a constant source of entertainment.  I don't think they would have been so funny if we hadn't all been delirious from the heat of the desert, but we cracked ourselves up making voices for them and delivering one-liners on their behalves.   

The cows of Robin Bird Springs

King Street, Kitten, and I hiked out in the early evening.  I'd felt a little dizzy earlier when I'd stood up quickly after crouching down to treat my water from the springs, but had attributed it to dehydration and simply having stood up too fast.  But now, walking up the hill, I was suddenly overcome by a wave of dizziness that seemed to come out of nowhere.  I was afraid that it was due to the bites, and started to worry.     

June 4th

In the morning we hiked to the first of two large caches maintained by Mary Barcik of Welden.  The water report told us this much, but I would later meet other hikers who had met her.  Mary is an elderly woman who fills the jugs of water from her well, and carries them from her car to the cache herself.  The hikers told me that her well's pump broke during a hiker season and she was incredibly worried about the hikers, but that Warner Springs Monty had helped raise $3,000 to have it fixed.  

Kitten at Mary Barcik's first cache

After the cache I was hiking with King Street, when I started to get dizzy again.  I realized that this was the second time in a row that I'd gotten dizzy trying to keep up with him, and that that might be the problem.  Both times he'd been telling a story, and I'd been hiking a little faster than I would have otherwise trying not to miss it.  I sat down under the nearest approximation to shade that I could find, saying I needed a break.  King Street looked concerned and moved to take his pack off, but I told him it was OK, I wasn't going to pass out and he could keep going.  It sat and rested and snacked, and decided that it wasn't the bites.  It also wasn't water - I really was drinking enough, as King Street had pointed out when I tried to attribute dizziness to dehydration in an earlier conversation.  It could, however, be salt.  You sweat water and salt, and replacing only the water and not the salt for days of desert hiking on end must have consequences.  I'd meant to buy some Gatorade packets in Tehachapi but had missed them in the store, and now felt stupid for it. 

This passes for shade in the Mojave desert.

There's really not much shelter

Another hiker (left) and King Street (right) take advantage of some minimal shade

Will the desert ever end?

This was enough shade to keep me for an entire lunch break.

Any ideas what this might be?  The remains of a mining operation?

I spent the rest of the day hiking alone, not wanting to try to hike faster than my body could handle, but also not wanting to take the kind of long siesta I'd become accustomed to.  The reason was that I needed to hike 20 miles a day to make my food last, and a long siesta generally meant hiking into the night to accomplish that, which left me waking later the next day and not accomplishing enough miles by the time it got really hot, which was sort of a vicious circle.  It would be especially important for the next day, because there might be a 31-mile stretch without water and I was hiking with a capacity of only five liters.  My plan was to reach Mary Barcik's second cache by early evening, to get to sleep early, and to get up and get the 19 miles in to Walker Pass before the heat of the day got intense.  If there was water there I could do whatever I wanted with the rest of the day, and if there wasn't I would rest until evening and then night hike the 12 or so miles to water.  I plodded along through the heat of the day, stopping only for short breaks.  I was in decent spirits because my daily food bag program had made everything so much simpler and I wasn't stressed about how much I could eat or how many miles I had to hike each day, but physically it was my hardest day so far on the trail.  I thought back to a concept Starfox had taught me from his background in outdoor education.  "Type 2 Fun" is the kind of fun that isn't actually fun while you're doing it, but rather gives you a sense of accomplishment and is fun when you look back on it, and this was definitely that kind.  I felt proud of myself when I made it to Mary Barcik's second cache in the early evening, and that day of hiking through the heat of the Mojave desert with unidentified, possibly infectious insect bites on my back was actually fun, albeit definitely in the Type 2 category.  

King Street made it to the cache shortly after I did, and we agreed to hike out together in the early morning. 

June 5th

We both got up around 2:30 AM, and were on the trail by 3:45.  In the dark on the ascent we saw what was my first rattlesnake, and I took a picture of it before making a wide circle around it.  Other hikers had seen many, those who also night hiked had seen many scorpions, and a few had even seen a mountain lion, but this was my first potentially dangerous animal in two months on the trail.  

My first rattler!

We reached the peak of the mountain at sunrise, and set off on a flatter stretch in the morning light. 

By eight or nine it was already hot, but we stubbornly pushed on.  We weren't sure if there was water at Walker Pass or not, there was a spring somewhere below it that might or might not be running and we might or might not be able to find, but we'd heard rumors of there being trail magic there, and hoped we would be lucky. 

King Street

Our determination paid off, and we reached Walker Pass by noon, I still carrying 1.5 liters in case the pass was dry.  We looked down and saw tents and vehicles and hikers sitting in the shade, and we hugged each other with joy.  We hiked down and a young boy who went by Bearbait greeted us with cold beer and sodas, and we joined the other hikers under the tent and sat, drinking and smiling. 

The trail magic was run by Okie Girl and Yogi, and another hiker called Coppertone had also moved his RV up from Tehachapi, where he'd been when I left there.  Lake Isabella wasn't close, but Okie Girl said that she would be making a trip in that afternoon, and she would take me to the hospital to have the bites looked at.  I spent a few hours in the ER, and was then given triage by a wonderful nurse whose name was also Lucy. 

Lucy

The nurses looked at the bullseyes on my back, which had grown in size by now.  One thought they might be ringworm and I was hoping for that because although it sounded disgusting it wasn't dangerous, but the doctor said that they were definitely bites and put me on doxycycline.  He had my blood drawn and said that I'd have to have the results interpreted by an internal medicine specialist the next time I was in a town, but since I'm already on the doxycycline and I haven't been near a city since then, I've just been taking it and hoping it's enough.  As soon as I started taking it the bullseyes all but disappeared (so I'm told) so I'm guessing I needed it, but hopefully I don't need anything else urgently.   

Hikers hanging out at Walker Pass

June 6th

The next day I got a ride into town with Yogi, where I bought Gatorade powder for the trail and ice cream and Southern Comfort to make a SoCo float, my new favorite off-trail treat invented for myself in Tehachapi.  I learned that Yogi spent winters working as a waitress in Kansas City to finance her summers of hiking, and I probably could have learned a lot more about her I hadn't spent most of the trip rambling about myself, a little nervous to be in her presence.  I also learned that she purposely didn't advertise the Walker Pass trail magic, because she wanted it to actually be like magic - it definitely was. 

King Street and his enormous block of cheese

Kitten

Yogi also showed me where the spring was when I couldn't find it, and I washed all of my laundry and even bathed by dumping small buckets of water on myself, roping another hiker into standing guard for me. 

June 7th

In the morning I had coffee and pancakes, said my thanks and goodbyes to Okie Girl and Yogi, and set off hiking with a large group of people who were leaving

Okie Girl

Yogi

Walker Pass's namesake

If you read this, you'll know more about Walker Pass than me.

In the late morning I stopped with a number of other hikers at the Joshua Tree Springs, which was said to be contaminated by uranium.  Many hikers didn't drink it and simply rested in the shade for awhile before continuing on, but I took a few liters and haven't started to glow yet. 

I hiked a stretch with a hiker who went by Pimp Limp, which is funny because the "hiker hobble," which hikers do after they sit for awhile and their muscles get cold, does resemble an exaggerated pimp limp.  He told me some interesting stories, one of which was the history of a cult called Synanon, which had grown out of a drug rehabilitation program in the 1960s and 70s. 

Someone thought to mark mile 666.

In the evening I hiked up on a beautiful ridge, and then hiked a little further and camped with Coincidence, one of the hikers I'd left Walker Pass with. 

June 8th

In the morning Coincidence he said that he wanted to try to make it into Kennedy Meadows that day,and I decided to try to make it with him.  We took off about 7:00 and after an hour or two we came to an beer cache in a small creek, maintained by anonymous trail angels.  I had a Tecate and then a microbrew and then another Tecate - it seems ridiculous when the name of the game is dehydration, but how to you pass something that cool up?

Coincidence at the beer cache

I am really not going to miss this scenery...

In the early afternoon Coincidence realized that we could probably make it into Kennedy Meadows by 5:00 PM, when the store closed.  He hiked a lot faster than me and it was exhausting trying to keep up with him, but the prospect of relaxing with cold beer and sorting through my packages was enough of a carrot, and I huffed along behind him through the heat of the day. 

Following Coincidence

A few miles before Kennedy Meadows we made it to the Kern River, which many hikers stopped to swim in and even camp at.  The water did look nice, but I was a little underwhelmed with what any Washingtonian would refer to only as a "creek," and I was already too excited about making it to the store by 5:00. 

Yeah, not really a river

Between the Kern River and Kennedy Meadows we passed the 700 mile mark, which we had both forgotten about. 

700 miles!

We ran up the 0.7 mile road from to the store from the trail and made it to the store at 4:50 PM.  It turned out that the store was staying open until at least 9:00 PM for hiker season, but they were still closing the postal service at 5:00 so our efforts did earn us our packages.  I collected my packages, bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's, a six-pack of Mike's Hard Limeade, and a bag of ranch-flavored chips.  Before long a dinner of barbecued ribs and sides was served on the store's porch by a local organization, and I ate until I had no more room. 

Maybe because of the Gatorade packets on this leg, or maybe just because of the intense heat, I had sweated out so much salt that there were even rings of salt around my butt.  Someone mentioned it hesitantly, but I demanded pictures as a point of pride. 

Salty butt!

I also photographed my middle finger, the nail of which I'd finally ripped off that morning.  It was attached only at the top at that point and some hard surface had already grown in beneath it, so it was just a relief to have it gone. 

Me, minus one fingernail.

I used the solar shower in the yard of the Kennedy Meadows General Store, and then sat with people sipping limeade until my left hand literally began to clench into a fist and I had to repeatedly use my right hand to straighten my fingers.  I had, after all, just walked across the Mojave Desert, so I switched to water and drank that until it was time for bed.