Category: Trail Journal

These past few days have, unquestionably, been the most miserable hiking of our entire trip. It’s as if the California desert, deciding that it hadn’t been sufficiently desert-like for us so far, decided to pack all the heat it could muster into these last few days before we climb into the mountains. It was in…

Ninety-five degrees is not what you want to see on the thermometer when you’re out here, pretty much any time at all. It’s especially not what you want to see when you have to hike, and doubly so if you have to climb. Today was the first day we made a pretty major modification to…

Today, we finally managed to escape force ourselves to leave Lake Isabella…not an easy thing to do, given how unbelievably nice it’s been to relax for a few days — but this is actually called “hiking the Pacific Crest Trail”, not “a tour of Southern California hottubs”, after all. So after waking at 5 AM,…

Today was our last day of relaxation before we head out for the trail and are off to the High Sierra. Not only was today relaxing, but it felt a little like Christmas: all the stuff we’d ordered two days ago showed up today. Getting new gear on the trail is about a million times…

So, on Saturday, while everyone was getting ready for Memorial Day barbecues, I was hiking through crazy heat and sand and intense wind. I’m hoping that this makes it feel slightly more balanced when I tell you that today, when everybody was at work, I was basking in a pool on top of an inflatable…

We started our PCT hike really, really early this year — April 8 is nearly three weeks before the traditional start date for through-hikers. We could do this because of the snow, or rather the lack thereof: usually, if you start too early, you’ll hit the High Sierra before the snowpack has melted, and find…

We woke up early this morning, safely ensconced behind our natural windblock, ready for a long day of hiking. When we got in last night, we eyed the steep, huge mountain directly across from our campground: our maps told us we were basically going to go straight up the damn thing this morning, and we…

Sometimes I think of my coworkers, perhaps reading my blog on a Monday as they get to work, hearing about how I hung out in the hot tub all day yesterday. But then sometimes I think of my coworkers, perhaps headed out to a Memorial Day party of barbecue and beer, looking outside at beautiful…

I have never seen such extremes of weather in a single day of hiking. All morning long, it was in the upper 30s (i.e., really cold), so foggy every tree we passed under would drench us with the slightest provocation, and so cloudy that we had no idea where the sun was. This afternoon, we…

We’re on the single driest stretch of the entire PCT right now, which means it’s actually wonderful when it’s cold, grey, and foggy all day long — it keeps you from sweating too much, which means you don’t have to carry as much water. We’ve had two nineteen-mile stretches in a row between water sources,…

We thought we were going to get an early start this morning…but that was before we looked at the bus schedule to take us back to the trail and found the only bus before 9 AM was at 5 AM. (Shockingly, East Kern Regional Transit does not have an incredibly thorough or frequent bus network.)…

Today was a real zero. The most effort we expended all day long was to walk about five blocks across this town — and that was to get to a restaurant for dinner. (And, oh man, was it ever worth it!) The rest of the day we basically spent either eating huge amounts of food,…

The one thing that made last night’s windstorm tolerable was the knowledge that, tonight, we’d be staying in a hotel somewhere in Tehachapi, CA, snug and sound and completely impervious from however damn fast the wind wanted to blow. And, as we’re finding ourselves wont to do, we woke up early, at 5:00 AM, eager…

At the start of the day, I watched millions of gallons of water flow right by me in a concrete canal; at the end of the day, I nearly got blown off my feet by the wind, and I’m not sure which one is stranger. When the trail heads out from Hikertown, it pretty rapidly…

When we woke up this morning, it was 36° outside. That’s not uncommon in the desert, but what is uncommon is that it stayed 36° — and foggy, and windy, and wet — for the entire morning. Even with the (impressive) body heat generated by hiking, that is seriously cold. We were basically walking through…

We ended yesterday, and started today, at Casa de Luna — better known as the home of the Andersons, some of the best-known, and longest-running (16 years and counting!) trail angels yet. Casa de Luna is legendary among PCT hikers, although, until last night, I didn’t really understand why. Now, I do. It’s

When you think of the elements you need to withstand hiking, several come to mind immediately: heat, cold, rain, snow, and the like. Yet we’ve discovered that, out here, there’s another one that’s every bit as important: wind. We’re also learning and re-learning this lesson constantly. When we camped at Fuller Ridge, it was so…