Day 40: Thursday, June 13

Cowboying at Dutch Meadow (PCT mi 743.0), walked 22.8 miles today

It was really nice when I opened my eyes at 6 but did not have to immediately pack up and leave in a race against the sun. In general, it's nice to have a normal day schedule again instead of the 6-to-8-hour midday breaks and crazy night runs that everyone was forced into at the end of the desert section. Got out by 7:45ish and had a good morning, actually kind of cold, climbing up to 10,800 feet then dropping to 9,000 or so. Water was sparse still, but when we did get it it was pure heaven, the really really cold and clear stuff. Dat good shit.

Matan talks to Gangster in Hebrew all the time and he says Gangster's a genius, he graduated with a 99 average on a double degree in math and computer science from the second-best university in Israel, and was the equivalent of valedictorian all four years. I probably wouldn't have guessed this because he likes to say things in his Borat voice like, "Are you typing your blog right now? Www.mystory.fag.kissmyass.com.org! No, dot orgy!" I like having the Israelis around, though ... they've done a surprisingly good job of leading us out of the desert. It's been nowhere close to 40 years yet. They make fun of Americans for saying "awesome" and "I appreciate it" and we make fun of them for taking extended afternoon breaks to brew tiny cups of sludgy coffee, and for plotting in Hebrew to secretly kill us all. It's a fair tradeoff.

All the hiking today was beautiful, we saw the really high Sierra peaks a few times, including what Gavin and I both thought was Whitney (he's climbed it before, I've seen a billion pictures of it on the internet). Aside from two climbs, it was surprisingly gentle wooded terrain with a ton of open space in the understory ... One of the small things I'm liking about the Sierra is that anytime you want to take a break, there is always a perfectly-sized sitting rock somewhere within easy walking. The landscape seriously encourages dallying.

My feet now smell worse than they ever have in their life, like something crawled up and died inside my shoes. I haven't actually cleaned myself with soap since the extremely weak shower at the Mojave Motel 6, 9 days ago, almost everything since then has been a dusty sweaty slog, and swimming in the Kern before Kennedy Meadows only kind of cleaned me up. My socks haven't been washed since the Saufleys and they're starting to fall apart ... hello Darn Tough lifetime warranty. All this has resulted in a level of filth I have rarely if ever achieved. Still got 3 full days before getting to town in Independence.

Tonight when we got to camp we built the first campfire I've seen so far on the PCT. I make fun of Bow a lot for selling the fuck out and getting not only trekking poles but a stove sent to him in Kennedy Meadows, but his hot meals actually did look kind of good compared to my cold beans this evening, because it's actually kind of cold here ... we're at 10,000 feet again. There's a lone hiker playing a didjeridoo at his campfire somewhere a few hundred yards from our campsite. Tomorrow we do a longish day to Crabtree Meadows to set ourselves up to climb Whitney the day after.

Day 39: Wednesday, June 12

Cowboying next to an enormous log (PCT mi 720.7), walked 19.2 miles today

Waited around for the store to open at 9 this morning, closed out my tab, bought 2 delicious muffins and a frappuccino for breakfast, then walked out around 10 with Gavin, Bow and Matan. Shortly afterward we ran into Gehaz the Gangster and the 5 of us ran together the rest of the day. Great conversation and a lot of terrible, terrible jokes all day long ... First time I've really done social hiking for longer than a few hours on the whole PCT.

One dirty secret of the PCT is that the desert doesn't end at Kennedy Meadows, though everyone looks forward to it as such. It's just the last place to resupply before the High Sierra section begins. Some people had said that the Sierra doesn't really start until like 40 miles after KM, but that's total BS, like so many things people say out here ... Anyone who walked it today can tell you that the Sierra started precisely at mile 713 when we crested a saddle and looked at Beck Meadow, pictured below, with huge brown granite peaks in the background. The transition was immediate ... Gavin said, "Whoa, we just stepped into high country." It's kind of also still the desert, because water is still in short supply, but that will end soon; in the meantime the scenery has completely changed and the trail gained serious elevation in the afternoon to the point where we're camping at 9,500 feet tonight and go to 10,500 tomorrow morning before descending a little. The woods are that high, snow-influenced, piney, not-too-dense Sierra canopy and the undergrowth is pretty sparse with a lot of white boulders. It's cold, my GoLite candy-apple red puffy is doing wonders and I don't think I could be warm enough right now (or sleeping later) without it. It feels _fantastic_ to finally be here ... I liked the desert more than most, I feel, and I basically went through it without a single setback, which is rare, but to be in the cool high country is just better than being in the desert, if I can be so declarative. And there's finally some solid company that goes my pace ... couldn't be happier.

Day 38: Tuesday, June 11

Cowboying behind Kennedy Meadows General Store (PCT mi 702.2), walked 11.2 miles today

Woke up at 6:15 without an alarm (people who know me IRL won't believe that this happens regularly to me now), got going by 7. Made it to the Kern River, the first actual river on the whole PCT, by 9, and washed myself and all my clothes in it to look fresh for Kennedy Meadows. Before that river, I had felt dirtier than I ever had in my life, having come 6 days uninterrupted from Mojave with basically no sources of natural water to clean myself off in, and my shirt especially I could barely stand to wear anymore. Got into KM at about 11:30 to find, among many many others, Bow, Gavin (from day 2), and Matan (from Idyllwild and also day 1) hanging out on the porch. They had been around KM for varying amounts of time. Suggested to them that we hike out together tomorrow, as a bunch of dudes who all started May 5. We could call ourselves Cinco de Hiko or some lame shit. They were amenable, but the deal was only really sealed with a few six-packs of something called Lobotomy Bock, which appeared to be the official drink of the KM porch.

Big deal for the day was when I overheard a girl introducing herself to Guino (who has been here for 5 days, apparently) as Myla. Her voice sounded familiar, then I saw what she looked like and realized she was Myla Fay from Carleton, whom I actually knew vaguely when I was there. People who didn't go to a tiny school in the middle of Minnesota don't realize how exciting this is to run into someone you know from there, out on the PCT of all places. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting rather drunk together, catching up on mutual acquaintances, and taking pictures to send to the Carleton alumni mag, which will probably not get printed due to the high prevalence of beer cans. Ate a tri-tip steak dinner offered by the Kennedy Meadows Grill for dinner, then played king's cup with a whole passel of hikers afterward. Am going to bed a bit pissed, as the Brits would say. Hiking out tomorrow. Tally ho.

Day 37: Monday, June 10

Cowboying on a windy ridge (PCT mi 691.7), walked 35.5 miles today

Weather today was _perfect_ almost the whole time, in stark contrast to every other day for the past week, so walking all day was finally an option. 35, I found out, is probably about the max I can do without night-hiking, which I'm sick of and will avoid as much as possible ... Today I was walking by 6, didn't take many breaks, and set up camp right at sunset, and it's June 10, so there's a ton of daylight. Personally can't squeeze much more into a day than that.

Broke camp at 6 and got some really beautiful mountain scenery in the morning with just a whiff of the Sierra, with white granite and craggy peaks. Only about 10,000-foot summits though compared to 13 and 14. Highlight of the day came when a bear visited the place I'd planned on taking lunch ... Babyface had already told us this same bear stole his trail mix an hour earlier, and there was a note on the trail about how it liked to hang around the water source and harass people. It was tiny, like 100lb max, but it wasn't afraid to walk right up to the 5 people all standing there yelling at it. It did some bluff charges, which really scared certain members of our party. It didn't seem to like having rocks thrown at it. It was slow and mangy and undersized and I wondered if it's going to survive the summer without thru-hiker food bags as a food source. If it does make it to adulthood, it's going to be a mean bastard because it clearly already doesn't give a shit about approaching humans.

Not much to say about the hiking other than that it was nice and I was alone most of the time, although I kept briefly seeing other people. Met a Flemish Belgian lady who passionately hates the king, which is funny because all Natalia (Walloon) ever talked about was how much everyone respects him. Met a South African girl and of course the first thing I blurted out was whether she liked Die Antwoord. I told her this was the only South African music I know, which seemed to upset her. Caught up to Rubadub and Gehaz the Gangster just at the end of the hike, we found this rather underwhelming camp spot for all three of us, plus Sneaks and Babyface, who showed up later. It's on an exposed, windy ridge in the middle of a massive hideous burnt area, which is an appropriate way to close out the desert. Kennedy Meadows ten short miles away tomorrow morning.

Day 36: Sunday, June 9

Tenting at some random campsite (656.9), walked 6.6 miles today

Forced awake at 6:30 by the sun even though I'd wanted to sleep longer. Staggered the one mile down to the Walker Pass campground and walked right into trail magic ... pancakes, fruit, water, shade, sodas, the whole damn thing. The person serving pancakes said, "Hi, I'm Yogi." I said, "Hi, I'm Scrub. I've been e-mailing you this whole time." She said that what I had been sending was actually useful and some of it was already in the copy for the next book. Good to actually meet her in person, and good I got there when I did because within a few hours she had packed up her car and was headed back to Kansas. She and a few other people had been running the trail magic for the last 10 days.

As has been the pattern, I went from totally alone into a massive crowd of hikers. Chilled all morning with Sneaks, Rubadub, Tunes, and Gehaz the Gangster. Others were around but all in and out with rides down to Lake Isabella. Took the siesta to end all siestas from 12-4, then stuck around for dinner, then finally left at 6:30. Only made it about 5 miles out, then had to stop because there was a fine campsite and an even finer sunset. Pitched my tent for the first time since the 11th day, just for practice and because I was worried it was molding in its stuff sack (it wasn't). A lady named Lionheart and I were all ready to get to sleep, then a shitload of people showed up and started making a lot of noise, they want to watch Mystery Men on Netflix with the reception they're getting from Ridgecrest. Makes me pine for the days when I don't see another human.

Day 35: Saturday, June 8

Cowboying a mile or so shy of Walker Pass Campground (PCT mi 650.3), walked 30.0 miles today

Woke up at the indulgent hour of 6:30 and, more indulgently, didn't leave til 7:30. Immediately recognized this as a mistake, as the road to get back to the trail went uphill, was mostly loose sand, there was zero breeze, it was already about 85 degrees, and the sun was straight in my face. Was laughing because the conditions were so shitty right off the bat. Had to take a break at the trail junction after 1.8 miles because I was so whupped.

Continued to be whupped by the next 7 miles of trail, which at least had a nice breeze and wasn't insanely hot, just hot. For 4 straight miles, mile 625-29, it was a sandbox and some of that was straight uphill, the flat parts weren't much easier. Would love to be a fly on the Joshua trees, so to speak, and watch thru-hikers go through that section all spring. I guarantee multiple people this year alone have sat down on the trail and started bawling. It's just so stupid and mean, that PCT.

Got to the massive cache at mp 631 at noon to find it well-stocked, also saw from the notes that the entire herd from yesterday had been through already. They had all planned to go to the spring I was at last night but changed their minds when they read notes that both big caches (615 and 631) were fully restocked yesterday. I still couldn't make myself rely so heavily on caches, not because of the risk of them being empty (minimal, given the info we all had), but because someone else afterward might need it more than me and I'd hate to be the guy who took out 2 gallons and helped empty the cache faster when I could have filled up at a natural source instead. There's also the perhaps foolish ideal/principle that I'm supposed to be having something close to a nature experience out here, ergo Plan A is always natural sources, and Plan B, or at least a supplement to Plan A, is caches. I'm probably one of the only people thinking this way by this point, as evidenced by the fact that I was totally alone all last night and today because of my decision to go off-trail for natural water. Oh well ... That's what I get for having silly hiking ideals.

Took over a gallon from the 631 cache anyway ... Much like at Golden Oak spring two days back, I drank a gallon of water over a 6-hour break in the shade and couldn't pee. This time I was also parched the instant I left, around 5:30, like I hadn't even made any progress in rehydrating myself. It was crazy hot in the afternoon, even with my shirt off in full shade and a breeze blowing I wasn't really comfortable. I want to know what it peaked at ... I would guess over a hundred. It was the hottest day so far of the hike, I'm just lucky I had a shady bower to rest in during the worst part.

Had about 20 miles to go when I took off ... the first 5 were hard, the rest were easy as could be. Last 11 happened after dark. All of this completely alone, I did not see a single other human today. No one camped by the trail as I night-hiked, no cars off in the distance during the day, no interaction whatsoever with any of the dozen people I met yesterday. I saw what I hope was a campfire wayyy off in the distance across the valley on my last descent, but otherwise I could be the last man on Earth. Didn't talk once today, not even to myself. When was the last time that happened? When's the next time it will? It seems extremely rare, for me or anyone.

Stopped at about 1am just before the Walker Pass campground, where there is probably a water source for tomorrow morning. The crazy dry stretches calm down a little from here the rest of the way to Kennedy Meadows, so I will hopefully not have to do any more insane night runs.

Day 34: Friday, June 7

Cowboying at Willow Spring (PCT mi 620.0), walked 23.7 miles today

Woke up at 6, got going by 6:30, by 8 I was at the spring and to my surprise there were about 10 people there still breaking camp, all of them thru-hikers, all friendly and social, none of whom I'd ever seen before. Talked with them a bit, picked up a few liters of cold clear delicious water coming out at 1 gallon/minute, left for the next water 7 miles away. Drank almost 3 liters in those 7 miles, which were super mild and easy. We really were in pine forest, as we'd sensed last night. The temps were cooler, maybe around 70, because of the highish elevation, 6000 feet ... a pretty glorious morning of walking, all things considered.

Chilled with the new crowd at the next water, a lot of funny people, all of them seemingly pretty confident hikers ... the scene I'd kind of been missing out on so far. Most of them had been at Kickoff. Rainmaker, Ryan, Explagrance, Simba, Double Sprainbow, Cookie Monster, Steamer and Rubadub some of the names I remember. Siesta also walked up separately, I had figured she was light years ahead but she had stopped for a day with her mom around Tehachapi, plus I've gained on everyone who didn't skip 60 miles from the fire closure. Happy, funny good times all around for those two or so hours.

Made a plan to go kind of far off trail for water here, which was 12 miles ahead at that point, rather than load up all my water capacity and try to get 40 miles out of it with help from the dubiuosly reliable caches. When you're on a road trip, there's no way in hell you're exiting for fuel if you can't see the gas station from the interstate ... Likewise, no hiker ever wants to go more than about a third of a mile off-trail for water. This was at least 1.2 off, though I'm going to make a loop back to the PCT itomorrow morning to save time. The side trail to get here was a gully ... in the narrowest part of it a rattlesnake decided to get really pissed and have a standoff with me. Dashed by after about 3 minutes of back-and-forth and a lot of rattling.

Extremely tired because my body was just getting used to a siesta schedule and then I said eff it and hiked through the afternoon today. Looking at maybe 30 to good water tomorrow, depending on the status of the cache after 10 miles.

Day 33: Thursday, June 6

Cowboying under some big pines (PCT mi 597.6), walked 26.8 miles today

Woke up at 5:30, couldn't roust myself til 5:50, on the road at 6:15, immediate urge to poop set me back until about 6:30, finally moving forward then. Hadn't slept enough and I was almost too tired to talk for most of the first 12.5 miles to water. Spurred on, however, by the fact that by hiking north from Mojave I am now walking in the footsteps of my great hero, Cheryl Strayed. The Harlem Shake song was stuck in my head apropos of nothing. It was a weird morning. The desert was beautiful and fully vegetated at times, making me wonder what the other parts must have been like before they were all incinerated in the past 15 years.

Got to the spring at 11 or so, initially it looked as if it were totally dry, in which case I would've been fucked six ways from Sunday because I was out of water and already the thirstiest I've been so far. Upon closer approach we saw the thinnest trickle of water flowing from the PVC pipe. Timed it at .3L per minute, excruciatingly slow. Filled up all 7 of my liters, taking >20 minutes to do so, in case it ran dry by the afternoon, then found a shady spot for a nap. Listened to Iron & Wine to help get to sleep because pretty much every song of his is about falling asleep under a shady tree on a hot day or something. Woke up from sleeping in the shade totally drenched with sweat. Drank a gallon of water over the course of 6+ hours there and never peed.

Met Gehaz the Gangster, an Israeli dude, just before leaving around 5:30 or so. He says his name transliterates to Gehaz in the Roman alphabet because we don't have the (hocking loogie noise) represented by any letter, so Z has to suffice for him. Next ten miles flew by ... felt completely refreshed by that break and the massive amount of water and food consumed over its course. After dark we appeared to be hiking through some pretty serious forests, as well as grassy meadows (???), both of which I wish I could've seen in daylight. Saw what was probably a bobcat (house cat sized, moved swifter than a raccoon) skitter away from my headlamp beam twice within a minute, and Bow saw two scorpions on the trail. Found some bivy sites right next to the trail at our intended mileage for the day. Tomorrow there's a spring after 4.5 miles, another after 11.5, and then THAT'S IT for god damned ever. We rely on caches, some of which have questionable remarks in the latest water report, for the 42 miles after that. Lot of night hiking in my near future.

Day 32: Wednesday, June 5

Cowboying at a rare sheltered campsite (PCT mi 570.9), walked 12.4 miles today

Slept about 10 hours in the motel, drank a Coke as soon as I woke up (Bow bought 6 yesterday, he drank 3 before he fell asleep), went to the Stater Bros across the street and bought by far my most expensive resupply of all time at $90. On the AT they were usually in the $30 range, on the PCT so far it's been $40-50, but today was for six full days and 145 miles so it got hyphy. Stater Bros' prices were pretty lousy for a chain market, which exacerbated affairs. Dithered in the motel til checkout at noon, determined there was no place in Mojave to sit around indoors and kill an afternoon (library closed, coffeeshops nonexistent), so decided to catch the bus to Tehachapi and sit in their Starbucks til it was cool enough to hike. Got some local color on the bus ride over, located the Starbucks and parked ourselves in it for a few hours. Tehachapi wasn't pretty but it looked like San Francisco compared to Mojave.

Hitching out of Tehachapi from where we were was going to be impossible, so we used facebook to find the number of a place that had numbers of people who sometimes give hikers rides to and from the trail. After about five unsuccessful phone calls, local hero Sue picked up the phone and said she could take us back to the trail from the Starbucks at 5:15. As with pretty much everyone so far, she wouldn't accept gas money. People, man.

Back on trail, we hiked through a wind farm midst a stiff westerly for 8 miles or so, then walked parallel to a freeway for 2 more. Bow was having trouble because he had finally gotten some of his iTunes music from home onto his phone via the cloud, but it turns out iTunes had censored all his Too Short. Not many lyrics left at that point. After the freeway it was dark and we started going uphill and the wind really got serious. Kept thinking about the people we keep meeting who are skipping this entire section, either to Kennedy Meadows or to Onyx just before that so they can at least have the appearance of having walked into Kennedy Meadows. They're losers. Granted I don't know everyone's story; some of them may have limited time to hike and want to skip to the fun stuff, which is understandable, but if you want to go from Mexico to Canada, you might as well experience the whole picture. This desert is no less legitimate a part of the hike than the Sierra ... you don't get to rate the relative importance of one part of the hike based on what you've heard or read about it, you go out there and see every mile you can for yourself and then make the judgment. I find it hard to look at the last 13 miles, which admittedly were not especially scenic and didn't have the friendliest conditions, and say, "I wish I could have skipped all that and be at Kennedy Meadows right now." Shit no. It all flavors the final product, and it's really not that freakin hard to do in the first place. There's also the issue of being a baldfaced liar when you get to the end and tell everyone you hiked the whole thing when you were actually in the Motel 6 lobby one morning poring over the road map with the desk clerk, mispronouncing Tehachapi as you scribbled down the numbers of highways that take you 150 miles up the trail. Hitching of course can be fun and a huge adventure in and of itself but there was so much desperation and weakness in that whole scene that it's hard to see it as the product of someone acting out of their own adventurous ideals. It was more like, "Wahh, I can't take the heat, let me out of the kitchen right now."

Anyway, Halfmile's maps had noted the one sheltered camping area on this entire slope so we decided to call it a day here at about 10:30. I'm sandwiched in between two bushes and a Joshua tree for the night. We're trying to get on a "6 hrs on, 6 off" schedule with the 5-to-11 part of the day always being on and the 11-to-5 part being off. This whole part to Kennedy Meadows has a serious shortage of good water sources, including a potential 40-mile dry stretch, so we have to pitch around the strike zone, the strike zone being the middle of the day. Hang one over the plate and try to hike at 2 pm and it might not end well, paint the corners and it should go fine.

Day 31: Tuesday, June 4

At the Motel 6 in scenic Mojave, CA (PCT mi 558.5), walked 23.6 miles today

"There you are, you fuckers! Y'all were fuckin', weren't you?" The voice of Kelso yelling at us from the bridge roused me from slumber at 5:30 a.m. He had made his 18 miles in the dark starting at 10 p.m., but he clearly wasn't going to get 40 done because he could barely walk by this point. Bow and I left him propped half-comatose against his bong-pillow contraption and started walking about 6:15. Got to Tylerhorse Canyon with real flowing water at 9ish, put the pedal to the floor up the ensuing climb, chilled at a cache at the top for awhile, Bow falling asleep in one of the chairs, then hustled the last 9 downhill to the road. Met Coconut, whose introduction to backpacking was starting the trail a month ago. She's an unabashed lover of hiking and the PCT, it's good to hear someone talk so positively about it, even as we hiked in pretty direct heat through some uninspiring terrain. There's just so much kvetching going on everywhere else, so much yellow-blazing too (which is a way of saying you don't like the trail you're on), even from people who appear to be having a mostly good time on the trail. I wonder if I complain too and just don't notice myself, because I really do like long-distance hiking a lot, every day, and I'd hate to give away the impression that I'm not enjoying myself.

Eventually Bow and I got a hitch at the road from Brent, a guy in town for work who knew nothing about the PCT. He took us into Mojave ... I've driven all over the U.S., especially the West, and I'd heard Mojave was bad, but I was genuinely taken aback by how ugly this place is. It's an absolute shitstorm of a town, if you can even call it that. Yogi said the trains were loud in Tehachapi but she neglected to mention the RR tracks pretty much going through our room here at the motel. All this aside, being a hiker I could still appreciate the Motel 6 across from the supermarket next to the cheap ass diner next to the massive c-store. Everything I need in one spot. The diner, Primo, was an experience, like Rivas in Eugene except they don't limit themselves to Mexican, they have burgers, fish, wings, gyros, steak, breakfast ... anything that can be made short-order. I ordered $10 of food and almost made myself sick there was so much of it. Afterward we went back to the motel and were too tired to do a grocery trip. Not much sleep the last few days. Gonna rest up and get shit done tomorrow.