PCT Day 46
June 15 2021
Mile: 555.5 to 566.4
Start: Mountain lion skeleton campsite
Finish: Fairfield Inn in the town of Tehachapi
Our alarms went off after 4.5 hours of sleep and we bolted up. We knew it was going to be super hot again today and needed to get moving ASAP. We were also motivated to get to town to shower, do laundry and eat yummy food that wasn’t dehydrated. We celebrated our upcoming small day of mileage with some pre-sunrise dancing and then headed out. We had survived the night and didn’t get eaten by the coyote or mountain lion that had been peeking out at us around midnight when we arrived.
The mountainsides started to turn misty blue shades as the sun peeked over the ridges. The windmills spun steadily on the horizon as clouds of thick fog filled in the valleys below undisturbed by the turbines. We trekked on next to long barbed wire fences surrounding the wind farms. Barren desolate peaks, sandy trails, dry springs and “No Trespassing” signs left little room for us to even remotely desire lingering out here on the dry, hot mountainsides.
The windmills towering above us were awesome and jaw dropping in the early sunrise. You felt so small under the giant metal and composite sentinels turning fan blades in the breezes, watching the world slowly move towards renewable energy. The wind turbines were so close to the trail that we got to experience them in all of their splendor. We luckily didn’t get hit with debris whipped up in the air currents as signs warned us to be wary of. Some of the turbines whirred, some whistled and squealed. Some stood resolutely and hushed, like silent sentinels of the mountains. It was like walking through a forest but the trees were mechanically alive and generating megawatts of renewable energy. It was really a unique experience walking through one of the largest wind farms in the world.
Spiky Joshua Trees with their tufts of green palm fronds grew slowly next to the trail, unchanged for eons from the time of the dinosaurs. We had read that they grow 3 feet in 10 years and then only 1 inch a year after that. Some of these Joshua Trees that were 10–15 feet tall were 100-200 years old and they probably had seen so much in their lifetimes from Native Americans to gold miners to industrialization and now renewable energy fields.
Shannon and I arrived at the bottom of a valley and sat at a picnic table to rest briefly in the shade. There was a water cache left by local trail angels since the stream had dried up and we checked that we had enough water for the next 7 miles to town. Onwards we hiked up and across the bare rolling hills, through the center of the world’s 3rd largest onshore wind farm. The Tehachapi Pass wind farm was the first large-scale wind farm installed in the USA during the 1970s and 80s. Between Tehachapi Pass and the nearby Alta Wind Energy Center, over 4,000 wind turbines had been installed and were generating something like 2,200 megawatts of renewable energy, which is the equivalent of taking almost 700,000 cars off the road each year or the equivalent of taking almost 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere. Informational signs posted next to the trail taught hikers about renewable energy and we saw all sizes and shapes of wind turbines and how the technology had developed since the 1970s. There are all different types of brands of wind turbines out here in the field and because all of a sudden breakfast hit me pretty hard, I ironically ended up having to dig a cat hole underneath a wind turbine belonging to a company I used to have associations with. Oopsies!
The trail wound down the hillsides, passing lizards of all colors and sizes, horned toads and big black cows that didn’t look particularly excited or thrilled to see us hikers walking through their pastureland. We ran into hiker Topless again and another couple Sam and Margo who were hiking together. We were all trying to hitchhike into Tehachapi so we called the bus to see when they’d be coming next. We just missed the bus by 15 minutes and the next bus wouldn’t be for another 3 hours in the hottest part of the day with no shade to speak of unless you sat under the highway bridge like a troll. Woof. Time to get creative!
7 or 8 miles back at the water cache there had been a list of local Trail Angel phone numbers who gave rides to PCT hikers. The 4th Trail Angel who Shannon called was able to pick us up so as we waited, we stood on the highway overpass and like little kids, we did the “honk” motion with our arms so passing trucks would honk at us. Chanting loudly, “Honk! Honk! Honk!” and pretending to pull down on a horn, all five of us danced and yelled with delight as huge 18-wheelers flew down the highway honking loudly at us. We couldn’t stop laughing at how ridiculous the whole scenario of us grown-ass adults yelling at trucks from the overpass was. When trucks passed by and didn’t honk, we yelled at them how lame they were. It was a great way to blow off some steam and we kept the highway honking until Trail Angel Ray showed up to bring us to town.
Ray was a retired data scientist from the nearby wind farm and she was super sweet and drove the five of us into town. Ray gave us the grand tour of Tehachapi and dropped us off at the Albertsons grocery store. We gave her some donations for gas money and bought her an ice cream, and thanked her for the ride.
While the other hikers went to the grocery store, Ray drove Shannon to the post office two miles away where somehow our resupply box had gotten returned to our home address in Massachusetts. The post office lady was super patient and nice, helping us trying to figure out what had happened to our package. Since we kind of took up Ray’s morning, as she was supposed to be going cherry picking in her yard with one of her friends (her cherry tree was super ripe), we asked if we could fill up her gas tank as a way of saying thank you and paying it forward. She thanked us for the refuel and then dropped us back off at the Albertsons grocery store with the other hikers.
Since our resupply box had been returned home, we had to adapt to plan B and resupplied our food at the grocery store. In addition to groceries for hiking, we also bought an absolutely enormous Cobb salad meant for a family of 4 (according to the packaging), for only $8. Shannon and I destroyed the salad as we were craving veggies and it was hiker hunger lunch time. Outside Albertsons, we hung out with some of the other PCT hikers like Sam, Margo and Topless. We were joined by two cyclist Janna and Forrest who were from Dayton, Ohio just about an hour from where we used to live. Now they lived as teachers educating student living next to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. They were so cool and they were biking essentially parallel to the Pacific Crest Trail. It was fun comparing adventures with them and laughing about how ridiculous life is.
While Shannon and I hung out and ate our salad, a notoriously sexist and somewhat creepy self-proclaimed “Trail Angel” showed up. He takes a very keen interest in the young women hikers and their appearances and overshared weird things about his girlfriend who was on meth and all these weird creepy things that you might hear in a high school boys locker room describing women like they were a piece of meat. We had heard about this gentleman and were not about to entertain his pervertedness so all of us PCT hikers made excuses and left when he asked if we needed rides anywhere. One group of hikers ended up walking 1.5 miles to downtown instead of getting a ride with this guy, who shall remain unnamed, and Shannon I walked to our hotel, making excuses to not get a ride with him.
We checked into the hotel, showered, did laundry and chilled until about 6pm when we went to grab to-go dinner at the Thai restaurant in town called Thai-hatchapi (Get it? The town is called Tehachapi!). Back at the hotel, we laid on her butts in the air conditioning and watched TV while eating delicious Thai food and drinking cold beverages. Life was good. It felt amazing to be out of the heat of the desert momentarily. Tomorrow we would figure out how we were going to deal with surviving the desert heatwave coming up. Tonight was time for celebrating being back in civilization.
