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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…

If it sometimes seems like our journey alternates between desire for the open trail and desire for creature comforts, well, that’s about how it feels to us, too. So far, it’s been a good rhythm: just about the time we start to get really smelly and gross after hiking for several days, we end up…

This trail changes so fast, it’s unbelievable. Yesterday afternoon, we were freezing our butts off, wading through slush and snow as it was 33° outside. This afternoon, we were sweating in the hot sun, trying desperately not to touch any of the poodle-dog bush that was absolutely everywhere on the trail. Last time I mentioned…

We’d only been asleep for twenty minutes when the storm started. The sound of snow landing on our tarp was new to us, yet we both knew that’s exactly what it was. The wind howled, the tarp bucked, and the snow kept coming…for hours. We were warm in our sleeping bags, yet couldn’t fall asleep,…

Yesterday, we got to look down on oceans of clouds from high above. Today, we were inside oceans of clouds. And you know what those oceans of clouds are? Cold. We’re in Southern California in May — in Los Angeles County, even! — and we, and all of our fellow hikers, were freezing all day…

Most people only get to see what we saw today from inside an airplane — and airplanes are a whole lot less pleasant than where we were. Once our road walk back to the PCT was done this morning, we spent the entire rest of the day hiking on high ridgetops above the clouds, looking…

Sometimes, all it takes is a single moment to make you remember a day for a very, very long time. Today’s was what you see above — except that, trust me, the pictures don’t even come close to doing it justice. You’re standing on top of a mountain nearly as high as the ones in…

It’s not all bad, you know, hiking this trail. For example, we get to see beautiful things, take glorious showers…and, today, sit in natural hot springs in the middle of the desert. It was awesome. What? So, it turns out that the Pacific Crest Trail runs directly through the middle of

We hiked twenty-two miles today, through desert mountains that were different than anything we’d hiked through before, and beautiful in their differentness. I know I wrote before about how the terrain always changes out here, but today really demonstrated it: we walked through

Most of our learning happens along the trail, but, today, we learned quite a bit about what it’s like to be in town. Big Bear is the first (of four or so) stops along the trail where we decided to buy food to resupply, instead of picking up a box that had been mailed to…