Where the Mountains Meet the Desert
The stretch between Kennedy Meadows South and Tehachapi is 135 miles and looks a lot like you would expect the offspring of mountains and desert to look. The total elevation gain in this section is over 26,000 feet, more than almost any section of the high Sierras, but looking around me, I see pinyon pine and juniper and even the strange looking Joshua trees. It is proving to be much harder than I expected. My feet hurt as they did way up in Washington, and I am tired. I have not had a good energy, strong hiking day since Mount Whitney.
I think on paper the temperatures are really reasonable, probably around 75 and sunny, but with no shade and reflected off the light gray and white sand and rock, it feels much hotter during the day. There is almost no water flowing through this desert, no ponds and no lakes. For long stretches of the trail we are 100% dependent on water caches left by Trail Angels, which is a very vulnerable feeling. However, time and again we come up on those water caches and they are robust and full. Dozens of 5 gallon jugs sit under a Joshua tree in the desert warming in the sun, thanks to the Trail Angels.
Day three and four seemed almost identical, a morning climb, a late morning decent and a late afternoon climb with an early evening descent to a road, a water cache and camping. Coming into Walker pass the sun was beating down on us as we descended the long switchbacks. The hope of having any real shade at the campground seemed slim but soon enough the sun set and everything was shaded. We came into the tiny campground, which is really no more than a pull out off the highway, to find two vehicles parked there. One of them was our Trail Angel friend ‘Right Time’ who has a tendency to show up just when you need him. He handed each of us an ice cold beverage from his cooler before we even put our packs down. The other vehicle was a set of two best friends, one of whom was section-hiking the PCT and the other was his support crew. They announced that they had bought way too much salmon and it needed to be eaten and could we possibly help them. Once our tents were set up, we were treated to salmon poached in butter and milk cooked to silky perfection along with a cold beer. In addition to this amazing generosity we enjoyed at Walker Pass, there happen to be a nearly full moon and an excellent view of the Tsuchinshan Comet in the western sky, so we did some stargazing and comet gazing before tucking into cozy tents, sleeping with doors open. A coyote serenade lulled me to sleep in an otherwise silent night.
I’ve been traveling this section with Liz, a woman of my age from the central coast of California who has been hiking this trail alone. She seems happy enough for my company, but not as hungry for a trail companion as I have been. She is hard-core, independent and could just as easily have continued on alone, but she has gracefully accepted my companionship. For me, it has been a welcome relief to have someone to confer with about the plan for the day, the distance between water caches, and the amount of water to carry.
This section of the PCT is characterized by water scarcity, and after Walker pass we have to carry water for 21 miles to Bird Spring Road and water cache. We decided on 4 L each and I’d have to say the water carry went pretty well. I drank most, but not all of my water, and as we descended the almost identical, hot sunny slope, full of long, graceful switchbacks with the sun beating down on us between four and 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I was grateful to see another huge water cache near the road. I set up camp under a Joshua tree, careful not to poke myself or my fragile tent, performed a sponge bath, which can be done with a bandanna and a very small amount of water, but is so soothing and refreshing it’s remarkable.
The desert is hard, dusty and sharp. It is itchy, stinging, and poisonous. It is also beautiful with contorted trees, amazingly varied cacti, a selection of special birds that have chosen to live here. During my bandanna bath, I heard a rock wren for the first time. Once the sun set behind in the valley below, everything was shady and cool and painted in pastel colors. The moon was peeking out from behind the mountainside. The comet became visible in the western sky, and the other stars came out to the degree that they can on a full moon night. Not a breath of wind touched us as we ate dinner and tucked in for the night. I can hardly believe how quiet true silence is. At this campsite, there were no crickets, no coyotes, nothing but the silence of a desert wilderness in the middle of nowhere.
Dynema is a special rather new waterproof fabric that lightweight expensive tents are made of these days. Mine is thin enough to see the occasional shooting star through the fabric of my tent. It does nothing to screen out the moonlight, so I slept in the bright and relaxing light of the full moon with moon shadows, dancing across the tent in different shapes as the night progressed. My sleep efficiency is still quite low out here, but since I’m usually usually in bed between 7 and 8 PM and not up until between 5 and 6 AM, I think quantity makes up for quality, and I can enjoy my periodic wakefulness during the night as I watch the stars, change outside my tent door and the moonlight shift from east to west. When I woke in the morning, the moon was a bright orange ball on the western horizon.
On the second to last day of the section, after beginning, strong and fairly energetic for the first hour and a half of the morning, I started noticing bright spots in my vision. Blinking several times I wondered if I had accidentally looked into the sun, but soon came to recognize the symptoms of a migraine scotoma. This is the prodrome to a migraine during which I go completely blind for about 20 minutes. I was so caught off guard, disappointed, no, actually shattered that after three months of not having migraines, one could reach up out of nowhere and take me down. I sat down in the trail and cried until my vision came back, and I could take one of the special migraine medicines I’ve been carrying for 1800 miles. The return of the migraine triggers a whole set of thoughts and emotions, and I am trying not to go down the rabbit hole. (Is it because I ate this? Is it because I did that? What if I get one when I’m in the middle of the desert and there’s no shade? Etc. etc..)
On the eighth day since leaving Kennedy Meadows, we arrive at the freeway that will take us to Tehachapi. I was thrilled to see the little white van parked at the overpass signifying that Right Time had shown up at just the right time once again. He drove us to town and to our hotel where we can begin the awkward and busy chores of resupply. Liz has decided to skip all the way down to Idylwild and finish her hike before the end of October. This is more than I want to skip, and anyway, she wants to end her trip as she began it, solo. I will be sticking with my plan to continue to hike south from Tehachapi on the PCT.
I notice my thoughts are turning toward home, and I have made plans to go to Maine for Thanksgiving to be with my extended family. This feels like an important book-end after my mother‘s passing. I am tired of grieving in isolation. So my hike has a time limit now also, and although another 300 miles alone in the desert sounds intimidating, being off-trail in only three weeks sounds like the blink of an eye. This trip has been hard for me, quite possibly harder than is really good for me, and yet I know I will be sentimental about it when it’s over. Not including town nights, I have about 15 more nights to camp in my tiny little tent under the stars, to cook on my little camp stove, to drink coffee in the doorway of my tent in the morning and pray that my sleeping pad doesn’t pop. The moon will wane, disappear for a while, and be reappearing again as I reach the Mexico border. I still have not had my fill of the moon and the stars and of sleeping outside, but I will find simpler ways to stay connected to these things when the PCT is behind me.
