PCT Day 52
June 21 2021
Mile: 608.7 to 630.9
Start: Landers Meadow campground
Finish: Bird Springs Pass in the whipping wind
Shannon and I slept in under the tall whispering pines in the shaded Landers Meadow campground, the cool air lulling us back to sleep for once instead of the normally hot morning sun rudely baking us to a crisp in our tents like two little hot dogs left on the grill. (Yummmm hot dogs! Haha)
As I was coming back from collecting water at the Niagara Falls of springs across from the campground, I saw Shelby leaving the campsite and waved goodbye to her. Shelby was really cool and we connected yesterday while hiking. We bonded over both having sassy grandmas and having grown out of being influenced by people who were not the best for us. I hope I see her again on the trail! It’s always so comforting to find someone who has gone through something similar to you. It makes it less lonely and makes you get out of your head when you realize others have gone through the same shit you have.
When you thru-hike as a couple you seem to not meet as many people as solo hiking because you’re with your hiking partner already but I feel 100% okay with that. On the Appalachian Trail when I was solo hiking I met so many more people than the Pacific Crest Trail as a couple. Where I was in life on the AT in my early 20’s, I wasn’t as discerning about who I hung out with and gave my time and energy to. That meant I spent my time with some people on the Appalachian Trail who today I would avoid, especially the people who were just on the trail just to party and do drugs. Now that I’m in my early 30’s, I’m more confident at saying, “No” and protecting my time and energy from people who are just there to waste it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be a complete curmudgeon – I’ll definitely enjoy a glass or two of wine with hikers that are fun and respectful. I’ll probably just be avoiding the hikers who can’t get the miles done without chainsmoking weed or doing other drugs.
Back at the spring at camp, it had only taken 5 seconds to fill up a liter of water and this super fast water flow rate was absolutely unheard of in the desert. It was so exciting to be getting close to water sources that weren’t going to dry up on us and I couldn’t wait to leave the 700 miles of “delightfully dry” desert. It was going to be a super hot day with us starting a 43-mile-long section of trail with no reliable water source the whole way until we hitchhiked another 38 miles into town at Walker Pass. All of the hikers, including us, were nervous about this section since we were counting on a couple of local trail angels to keep up with maintaining a couple of critical water caches in the middle of nowhere in the desert. It is a risky business relying on water caches that can easily be depleted by PCT hikers ahead of you and it’s not something we usually do.
With us going through about a liter of water every 3 or 4 trail miles in the desert, we would need to carry between 10 and 15 liters of water to make it the 43 miles all the way to the road where we’d hitchhike into town. That would mean that we’d have to carry an additional 22 to 32 pounds of water with us. No one had that kind of water carrying capacity as a hiker, and some people’s backpacks only had a maximum weight limit of 25 to 30 pounds. You would need a freakin donkey or horse to carry that amount of water for you. We all were going to have to risk it for the biscuit at this point and if we ran out of water, well, I guess we’d just have to drink our pee or something. 🤷♀️
At the campsite, Shannon and I hung out for a while talking with hikers Chainsaw from Oregon and Bartender who was a former UK resident who had just moved to Croatia after Brexit. We had an enjoyable morning talking to them and laughing while packing up. It was only after lots of jokes and bullshitting that we hiked on, leaving the guys behind in the woods. It was about 5 miles to the first water cache where we had hoped to have an early lunch but when we got there we couldn’t find a single shaded spot to sit under to get out of the blazing sun. For miles and miles there seemed to be nothing but low lying brush, tiny cacti and singular scraggly Joshua trees sticking up into the sun.
Not going to lie, I was about to lose my damn mind when we showed up at the water supply and there was nowhere to hide from the heat. The mid-morning sun had baked us already and my brain felt like it was actually melting. I was so sick of the desert and constantly having to worry about having enough water to make it through this section of trail without legitimately dying. It had been so stressful and I’d already been dehydrated once on the trail to the point of almost throwing up. With the girl who had died from heat exhaustion a few days ago all of us hikers were on edge about water and the stress was palpable.
At the water cache of about 70 giant 5 gallon jugs of water, we washed our hands befor touching anything because a norovirus epidemic had hit the PCT thru-hiker community about 3 or 4 weeks ago from poor hygiene. Norovirus is a super contagious stomach illness mainly caused by ingesting fecal matter in food or water. On the Appalachian Trail, norovirus was super prevalent just after the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee because there were no outhouses and the shelters would usually fill up with 20-30 people a night. People would poop above the water sources or not wash their hands with soap after the bathroom (since hand sanitizer doesn’t kill norovirus). And since you’re all crowded in the shelter to stay warm from freezing rain and snow, sickness can spread pretty easily. Someone got sick and spread norovirus in the town of Tehachapi where hikers crowded 13 people together in hotel hot tubs meant for 2 and fitting 8-10 people in a room meant for 4. Yikes!
The Trail Angel who had left the water also left soap for us nasty hikers to wash our hands so we took advantage of that. They also provided hand drawn maps for hikers to take pictures of to access alternate water sources like cow troughs if they wanted to avoid this waterless stretch of trail. The alternate version of the PCT took farm roads for the next 13.5 miles instead of the waterless 15 miles of PCT. Shannon and I were hoping to stay on the official PCT in this section so at the water cache we tanked up, each of us carrying about 6 liters of water or about another 13 lbs of weight.
We wanted to be extra safe with the water jugs being left out for weeks at a time and filtered the water through our gravity filter. While we waited for that to finish, I hid under my hiking umbrella to find a little relief in some shade while quickly chowing down on the food of the hiking gods, aka Spam singles. I don’t know why but after eating a packet of Spam (aka Specialized Processed American Meat), I feel like a million bucks and that I can do anything. Spam is a real game changer and this morning I felt like an entirely new person after chowing down on a Spam Single packet. Who’d have thought that chowing down of what essentially looks like a brick of Fancy Feast cat food would help weary hikers get their motivation back to GTFO of the desert? Not me(ow)!
After our water finished filtering excruciatingly slow, Shannon and I trekked on in the late morning and continued our futile search for a place to hide from the sun. It’s the freakin desert so shade was extremely scarce in this part of the trail, and we would be lucky in this waterless section to even find a remnant of shade in the barren waste. Motivated purely by Specialized Processed American Meat bricks, we stayed positive and relentlessly looked for somewhere to siesta under but there was absolutely zero shade. The Joshua Trees were too spread out to get a solid piece of shady real estate. The sagebrush was too small to crawl under and share the patchy shadows with the rattlesnakes, spiders and kangaroo rats. The sand dunes were bereft of any glimmer of shadows in the high noon sun. It was brutal. To make it bearable, you would drink some of the nearly boiling hot water that you just had poured into your water bladder and kept chugging along.
There were times when I convinced myself that I could fit in a little shaded spot under some bushes, curled up in a ball and would be just fine to get out of the sun for a while. But I also didn’t want to wake up covered in scorpions, snakes or other creepy crawlies. The desert sand on the trail here was extremely fine and deep, almost like melting slushy snow where every two steps forward you’d fall one step backwards. Progress was slow and frustrating. At this point after 600 miles or so of hiking, my Topo trail running shoes barely had any tread left on them. It felt like I wasn’t making any progress going forward towards Canada and that I was slowly getting sucked back to the Mexican border. Shannon, on the other hand, was zooming up and down the sandy mountainsides, fueled by Spam and caffeine, where I was trudging along slower than a snail and constantly cursing at myself to keep going.
As late morning quickly disappeared and turned into the scorching early afternoon, our futile search for shaded spots in the barren desert became desperate. The air temperatures must’ve been well over 100 degrees but the sun reflecting on the trail must’ve been 50 degrees hotter – like my feet felt hot through my shoes if I stood in one place for too long. Finally, after several hours around 2pm we found a stand of old tangled Joshua trees with a solid patch of shade for the two of us to take cover under. I slid through a tunnel made from a toppled Joshua tree branch and the air felt immediately 20 degrees cooler.
We made a light lunch with the limited water we had, rationing how much we could consume since the next water source wasn’t for another 10 miles or so. I chowed down on gluten free ramen and Shannon ate normal ramen with tuna packets and electrolyte drinks. In the heat your body doesn’t want a heavy meal like mac-n-cheese and the salt from the noodle broth really hits the spot.
My face and body were extra dirty today for some reason but I didn’t give a crap. Shannon kept trying to wipe smudges of dust off of me but it was pretty much useless. Immediately after lunch I stretched out our tarp in the shade of the copse of Joshua Trees, snuggled under the dusty fallen Joshua tree branch and curled up on the sand using my dirty hiking clothes as pillows. A couple of hikers passed us and giggled at how homeless and Hiker Trash we looked. It was funny looking back at it but at least we were in the shade and not dead!
After several hours, around 5:30pm Shannon and I left our little hiker haven under the Joshua Trees as the temperature started dropping from stupidly hot to just really hot. We passed some old mining and sluicing equipment, twisted Joshua Trees and a couple of educational signs about the local desert tortoises. The trail is so random. We trekked on, me sucking it up and Shannon seeming to have gazelle legs running up and down the mountains. I kept having to tell myself that we only had 3 days left in the dang desert in between cursing and yelling at my legs to keep hiking. I needed more Spam to keep me going but I was fresh out. I would have to settle for Italian anger and swearing to be my motivation today.
We passed radio towers high up on the mountain that would occasionally crackle and make weird low frequency booming sounds that scared the crap out of us. The only animal we saw today was a skittish doe that bounded away in the fading light through scrub brush. We finally arrived at the second water cache 15 miles away from the first one today and were relieved to see there was still 150 gallons or so of water left by a Trail Angel. Strategically, we decided to stop at this second water cache for the night since the next water source was at least 20 miles of hiking followed by 38 miles of hitchhiking into town.
Camping out at the water cache we wouldn’t have to worry about packing out extra water for cooking dinner and breakfast as we would have both meals at the water cache. We also wouldn’t have to carry all that extra water up a steep mountain after the cache. I was so done for the day when we only had .8 miles left to go that I started complaining about how far we had to go which I never do. Shannon stopped, told me to shape up and get my shit together. He was right – if I couldn’t handle .8
miles, I would be in big trouble the remaining 2000 miles left of the PCT.
Finally we descended to the breezy canyon that housed the water cache named Bird Springs Pass where we ran into Shelby and Cheerleader who were camped under a beautifully shaded and protected copse of Joshua Trees. Shannon and I found a shady spot across the road from them and had already set up our tent when we realized that Shelby and Cheerleader weren’t staying for the night and were leaving to hike up the mountain. The wind was whipping in the mountain pass and protected camp spots were few and far between. Oh well, our spot was pretty with a makeshift rock wall to cut the wind a bit, but it was still really noisy during the night.
The sun started setting and we were treated to a gorgeous orange, periwinkle and pink show of stunning colors fading over the blue mountains. Bartender showed up to collect water briefly and continued hiking up the mountain top. As the sun dropped below the horizon, we could see Bartender’s headlamp crisscrossing the mountain switchbacks. We made dinner, filtered water from the cache (even though we probably didn’t have to) and enjoyed the colorful sunset over the silhouetted Joshua Trees and rock formations.
We tucked in our tent secured down by heavy rocks so it wouldn’t blow away and buried into our sleeping bags as the nighttime chill of the desert and the wind cooled down the land. Under the stars we kept an ear and eye out for Chainsaw to arrive. He had told us that he likes to sleep next to the water sources but by 9pm we didn’t see him come in and went to bed hoping he was okay and had enough water. The wind rustled in the trees and flapped our tent doors in the evening to the point where we had to tighten down the ropes and put earplugs in to get some sleep. The Joshua Trees’ dark silhouettes were striking under the diamond-studded night sky. Way up on the mountain ridge, we could see Bartender setting up camp by his headlamp’s light as it crossed the ridge tops and settled into a place to sleep for the night.
