Brad's Adventure

We’ve now spent more miles in the desert than we will in the entire state of Oregon

Days 34-39

Miles 454.7 – 566.5

These next two updates will be short because from here to mile 700 is pretty boring.

The first day out of Agua Dulce was pretty chill, but sobering. Seth and I had been hyping each other up about being close to the end of the desert and dreaming of Kennedy meadows. Back in the heat, no shade, 14 hours of constant sun. It was only in the low 80s but it was a reminder we still had plenty of hot days to go before the promised land. We got some trail magic and had a few beers and a burger which cheered us up. That night we camped outside a fire station with Smokey, Hot mess, and a few others. There was a food locker there maintained by the local eagle scouts that had some cookies, soda, and a live rat in it. I chose the cookies.

The next morning there was a crazy marine layer and we were basically hiking in thick fog the whole day. The wind picked up and it started raining and all of a sudden we were on a ridge, 30mph wind blowing wet air, and it was in the 50s. It was okay, and by okay I mean everything was wet. My pack, most of the stuff inside my pack, and all my clothes. Even the stuff inside my rain jacket+pants got damp. Seth didn’t have rain pants or a puffy like me so he was miserable all day. Being wet is tolerable, being wet and too cold is just brutal. He ended up declaring that we were only going 14 miles today and he was going to make a fire at the campground, which he did. There was only one stump to sit on by the fire so we repurposed a nearby 10ft chuck of tree that was being used as a road barrier. After 10 min of synchronized pushing and rotating the tree I finally had a seat by the fire. Seth put his socks way too close to the fire and melted the toes off. This just wasn’t his day… As much as I’d have liked to have just done a big day and gotten close to town the fire was nice and we at least kind of maybe dried off some clothes.

The following day we charged into hikertown and got the 20 miles done by 2. It’s one of the more peculiar stops along the pct. It’s an old movie set that someone bought and converted into an area for hikers to set up tents, pick up packages, and sleep in what are essentially run down storage sheds with an old bed in them.

We saw hot mess and smokey there and we all got dinner at some local grocer/diner down the road. We all agreed to hike the next section, the aqueduct together. The Los Angeles Aqueduct is a notorious section of the PCT right after hikertown. It’s 20+ miles of dirt road through the desert floor. Usually when I say there’s no shade there is something at least every 5ish miles you can crawl under if you’re desperate. The aqueduct is legitimately zero shade. It’s also very boring and usually around 100 degrees the entire time and often people night hike all 20 miles to avoid the sun. There are also windmills everywhere. We were extremely lucky and still had a day left of a cold front, so it was in the 60s and cloudy starting around 1pm. It was still boring  but it was so flat I was able to get one of these posts written while walking.

The last day before Tehachapi was more windmills, more desert, and more knee pain. It’s been bugging me since mile 100 so I decided to finally do something about it once we got into town. We did the 15 miles and got an easy hitch into town. Seth has an insane amount of Best Western points so him, smokey and I split a discounted $40 hotel room. We got dropped at Walmart and decided to knock out the food part of our resupply before check-in. The following day and a half was all goofing off and 0 chores. We ate insane amounts of town food, drank a few -196 seltzers (super good btw!), and sat in the hot tub for hours. We caught up with Redtail for dinner and watched formula drifting for a while and had a few local beers. It was a great time, just not very productive. Overall Tehachapi is an awesome little town. And we’re closer to the end of the desert than ever before!