PCT Day 44
June 13 2021
Mile: 517.6 to 541.5
Start: Weevill Market near Hiker Town & the Los Angeles Aqueduct
Finish: Tyler Horse Canyon tentsite
Shannon and I spent all day relaxing at Weevill Market (named so because it’s like a little village on this empty highway versus being named after the nasty insects) with our new friend Hooch until the heat of the day wore off and we could hike again. At one point it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and a cool 102 F in the shade which was way too hot to hike the shadeless aqueduct section of trail coming up. We sweated our way through the day waiting for night to come.
Earlier in the morning we had woken up celebrating that the electricity had come back on after a car accident two days ago created a 700 acre fire and burned down powerlines. At the grill inside the market, Shannon and I ate sausage, eggs and hash browns for breakfast. We then hung out while trying to nap and occasionally cool off in the hose while chasing the disappearing shade around the yard. Every hour or so, the heat would become so unbearable that we’d either pretend to use the bathroom inside the store or purchase a drink just to be in the air conditioning for a little bit. It was hard to nap because the sun was relentless and with no breeze it made it almost impossible to relax, even in the shade during this heatwave.
The hours slowly ticked by and we took comfort that the guys staying at Hiker Town down the street didn’t have any options for air conditioning onsite so we were lucky. We ate burgers and fries for lunch and waited for the early evening hours to arrive so the temperatures would be somewhat bearable and safe enough to hike. Hiking time could not come soon enough. Even though Paul, the owner, was super nice and it was great to have shade in a flat spot, the heat was just freakin unbearable. We found out too that it was only going to get hotter during the next few days so we figured that we were gonna be doing a lot of night hiking, which is exhausting. Whether you hike through the night and sleep during the day or repeat 6 hours on and 6 hours off, your sleep schedule gets all messed up and you feel like a zombie. Not looking forward to night hiking but oh well… it’s better than dying of heat stroke.
At 6pm, Paul dropped us off at Hiker Town which is next to the trail and we set off. Back on the PCT, about a dozen or so PCT hikers trekked with us next to the Los Angeles Aqueduct. All of us were tempted greatly to go swimming in the cool, clear water being funneled from the mountains to support the desert city of 4 million. However we were deterred by the dozens of warning signs not to dip into the aqueduct. The water eventually ran into a big pipe that we walked on top of towards the mountains. If we had gotten sucked in, it would’ve been like a real life Augustus Gloop scenario from Willy Wonka when he gets sucked up into the chocolate waterfall plumbing. No thank you!
As the sun set, the mountains lit up and the Joshua Trees took on fantastical shapes on the horizon. We took the drone out at one point in the desert for some sunset shots but didn’t realize that we were actually really close to a sketchy black canvas tent that was the size of a football field with broken down cars surrounding it. As we had the drone flying naively, a white truck tore down the dirt road next to the aqueduct where we were hiking, slowing down as it passed us. We didn’t really notice the truck until turned around and came by the other side where it slowed down again to look at us. We saw the sketchy tent next to us and quickly realized that we may have been filming and hiking next to some sort of drug operation way out here in the desert where there was no one around except us hikers. We landed the drone immediately and hiked super fast out of the area with no headlamps on as the sky darkened, so we could kind of lose the weird guys who were staring at us from their truck. It seemed like it was actually the perfect place to set up a drug operation – no paved roads, no traffic, no one to bother you out here for miles and miles except the coyotes. It was some serious Breaking Bad sh*t and we got the eff out of there. We were glad that there was a group of us hiking together because it would’ve been a lot harder for someone to bury 12 hiker bodies in the desert versus 2.
Shortly after the drone incident, another truck stopped on the dirt road to chat in the middle of the sandy path. The truck driver was talking to two people on ATVs, one of whom looked straight out of the 1980s with her short permed brassy blonde hair, long blue shorts, bold t-shirt patterns, high socks and sneakers. It was pretty cool to see her bringing back the ‘80s. These people didn’t give us any trouble and we waved and hiked on.
We had been hiking atop the LA Aqueduct pipe where you had to dodge these spiky rivets on the outside of the metal. The soles of our shoes were worn thin and the sharp rivets really hurt your feet if you stepped on them. It felt like we were wearing those black and white Adidas slip on sandals with all the spikes that everyone wore in the early 2000s – not fun! We moved over to the road so we wouldn’t trip over the randomly welded access points on the aqueduct in the fading light or pole holes in the bottoms of our thin shoes from the rivets.
A big group of hikers stopped at a huge cement stand in the aqueduct road to eat snacks and drink and smoke. Tonight we had over 20 miles of flat roads to night hike so some of the hikers decided it was okay to party. Hooch, Princess and I kept going, changing who was in the lead as we hiked on. Hooch finally stopped and fell behind to smoke while Shannon and I continued on the paved road thick with blown sand in places. In some parts of the road, coyote and bobcat footprints were encased in the pavement from when it had been freshly paved and the critters had tracked through the wet cement. We decided that the coyotes must have been really confused when their paws got sticky and heavy from the wet cement. Who knows how long ago they came across the road but their footprints were perfectly preserved and it was fun to spot them as we were hiking.
We tracked on fast through the desert, past a locked up campground where campers and RVs were parked far out into the desert away from civilization. We couldn’t imagine how people lived out here all the time, but I guess when it wasn’t 110+ degrees it was probably fine. On and on we hiked into the night, running into Gomo, Carlos and Torch who were sitting on the side of the desolate sandy road, eating snacks in the dark around 10pm. We’d been chasing lights all night trying to figure out if they were headlamps, stars, house lights or reflecting eyes from nocturnal critters. These lights turned out to be hiker friends and we chatted them up for a bit before heading off again.
We started getting closer to the “red demon eye” or “Christmas” lights in the mountains which were the red blinking lights of the wind turbines up in the hills. There were dozens, if not hundreds of blinking red lights ahead of us and we knew that we’d probably be feeling a welcomed breeze soon from the turbines. Occasionally we’d turn around to see if anything was behind us and soon we saw the green light of Hooch’s headlamp practically running towards us. He shouted in the dark, “Can I hike with you guys?” We of course said yes.
Hooch seemed a bit frazzled and kept looking behind himself for something. He had gotten a little bit lost off trail in the dark and apparently a pack of coyotes had been following him for several miles. He didn’t really want to hike by himself anymore and we couldn’t blame him – who wants to be stalked by a pack of wild canines in the dark? We told him absolutely to hike with us and the three of us trekked on into the night.
We stopped briefly at midnight to split an energy drink that I’d packed out three ways and to resupply on some water and eat a quick snack. Shannon scouted out the area, and he said he saw a snake by the bridge where there was a path down to access the water. I threw a rock at the snake to scare it off, but when the rock came at it, instead of the snake moving the rock actually made a thick wet splat sound and stuck in the snake. We quickly realized that the “snake” was actually someone’s coiled up poop on the side of the trail now with a rock freshly embedded in it. Gross!! What the hell people… just bury your dang poop, don’t leave it on display so other hikers think it’s a snake.
As we were defending ourselves from the poop snake, GoMo, Carlos and Torch caught up to us and set up camp near the water fountain nearby. We said good night to them, warning them about the vicious poop snake and kept going to get 24 miles under our belts to the next water source after the water fountain. Hooch, Shannon and I trekked up into the never-ending hills through a huge wind farm, the whipping turbine blades whirring loudly as the red airborne lights blinked under the bands of the Milky Way and cold sparkling stars. We hiked on into the early morning, talking about adventures and silly stuff just to keep us awake and keep any unwanted critters like mountain lions and coyotes at bay. It was so windy up in the mountains that we could barely hear each other talking up in the Tehachapi Pass. You had to yell to even be heard a few feet away not only because of the breezes from the mountain currents but also the from the wind pouring off of the whirring turbines towering above our heads.
As the wind picked up and the energy drink started to wear off, we hiked in a single file so as not to lose anyone. Hooch went first, I was in the middle to relay messages back and forth and Shannon brought up the rear. As the late night turned into early morning, we started getting tired and then delirious but we kept on trekking. We couldn’t stop now to sleep because we were almost out of water and there was nowhere to hide from the sun come morning.
Countless glowing eyes of hopping kangaroo rats shimmered in our headlamp light next to the trail. You had to watch your feet as the large jumping rats darted across the path, scampering between your feet and nearly tripping us up. Nested in small holes on the ground spun over thick with webs, we saw huge black widow spiders with red hourglasses on their backs that were the size of clementines and moved scarily fast for a bug.
We’d been told by the locals to watch out for the deadly Mojave Green Rattlesnake which is apparently very active at night. The Mojave Green’s poison is doubly deadly, because it’s not only hemotoxic (stops your circulatory system) but also neurotoxic (stops your nerves and brain) and is more poisonous than the bite of a freakin King Cobra! A couple guys in the trailer park next to Weevill had killed them when they came into the park and they blanched with fear and respect when they spoke of the snakes. We really didn’t want to surprise a Mojave Green accidentally because that would probably mean a permanent good night for one of us. Around 2am, we actually almost stepped on a snake stretched across the path just after we had been talking about the deadly Mojave Green. I think it was just a gopher snake as it didn’t have the diamond-shaped pit viper head, rattle or slits for eyes. We didn’t investigate too closely but that definitely woke us up!
Around 2:45am we finally arrived at the Tyler Horse campsite that we’d hiked 24 miles to get to. We took off down the canyon 5 or 10 minutes to set up our tents under two huge live oak trees. Previous hikers commenting in the Guthook navigation app said that if you camped under the two trees that we’d get shade all day, which is what we were looking for since we’d seep most of the day tomorrow. We set up in record time and all three of us passed the heck out after congratulating each other on 1) surviving the aqueduct and potential drug dealers, 2) not getting eaten by coyotes, 3) not getting bit by snakes or black widow spiders, and 4) not dying of dehydration. Life was pretty good!
