PCT Day 47-49
June 16 to June 18 2021
Mile: 566.4 to 572.9
Start: Fairfield Inn, Tehachapi, CA
Finish: Protected juniper grove tentsite
Over the next couple of days there was supposed to be an enormous heatwave coming through and it was going to be pretty dangerous to hike in the desert with not much shade for the next 85 miles of trail. Shannon and I (along with several other hikers) decided to stay in town to wait out the heatwave. Yes, we were pansies, but the heat was no joke and hikers were being evacuated off the trail by search and rescue teams with dehydration or having to turn back to town because of heat exhaustion. Unfortunately, during the heatwave a PCT hiker even died from heat stroke, which was absolutely awful and incredibly sad. The girl had been showing symptoms of heat exhaustion for several days. The two girls had been hiking at night when it was cooler temperatures but when one girl passed out on the side of the trail, her partner hiked a mile to get to Mary’s Place way back by the town of Idyllwild to get water. When she got back with water, the girl who had passed out on the side of the trail was now dead. Because of how remote the trail was there, Search and Rescue teams couldn’t find a way to get to them quickly. It sounded absolutely horrible and it definitely scared us. We stayed in town an extra day or two to wait out the worst of the heat.
We also spent a day taking the air conditioned bus into the nearby town of Bakersfield to pick up a confidential marriage license. We knew that we wanted to get married without any drama as we’d been together for 7 years having met thru-hiking on the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail and lived together ever since. We’d secretly gotten engaged a few months prior in the mountains of North Carolina but didn’t tell anyone because it was so chaotic with quitting my job, selling our stuff, moving anything we wanted to kept to our parents’ places, figuring out Covid vaccines and especially prepping for our 6-month-long Pacific Crest Trail hike. It was too stressful already and we didn’t want to be answering stupid questions like “When and where and how are you going to get married?” Sorry friends and family!
At the Bakersfield courthouse, the security guards teased Shannon that when he crossed the threshold into the office of marriage licenses that he no longer had a choice, so he should turn around now while he still could. Shannon was very nervous and flustered, but despite the trickster security guards he went into the marriage license office with me. He was so happy after we got the marriage license taken care of and the county clerk was super sweet and helpful filling out the information for us. We both celebrated and were super excited to get married and do a small ceremony way out in the mountains just the two of us!
Another day in Tehachapi waiting out the heatwave we swam in the hotel pool, drank wine, and went on a date to get Greek food and go see a movie in an actual movie theater. It was the first time we’d been to a movie theater in almost two years because of Covid. We didn’t even care what was playing and watched A Quiet Place: Part 2 sitting in the movie theater with only 3 other people.
Each of the days in town we hit up the local coffee shop spending the hottest part of the afternoon in the air conditioning. A local brew pub had delicious gluten free pizza so we chowed down on that and salad for 3 meals in a row – dinner, breakfast and lunch.
Finally we caught the bus out of town back to the trail in the early evening. We hiked during the cooler temperatures of sunset and early night up the shadeless mountain after a 2 mile highway walk. Up, up, up we went and as the sky darkened the Joshua Trees were silhouetted in all sorts of fantastica shapes in the setting sun. Some of them looked like the mad scientist Beeker from the Muppets which made us laugh.
As we hiked, we saw a common California Scorpion who got a little mad at us and arched his tail and stinger at us. It was cool because it was the first scorpion that I had ever seen in the wild. Shannon chased away an enormous weird bee looking thing that crawled unnaturally quickly towards me. This demon creature turned out to be a type of cricket called a Jerusalem cricket with a striped, black and yellow bottom like a big mutant bumblebee. The Hopi Native Americans apparently worshipped these bugs as gods, and the Navajo call them red skull and the Spanish named them “Nino de la Tierra” or child of the earth. I thought they were creepy as heck. The bugs seemed pretty sinister looking, especially when your hiking partner is chasing these giant bug things straight at you in the dark on the side of a steep mountain.
The wind was crazy this evening so we decided to camp at a sheltered grove of cedar and juniper trees so we wouldn’t blow away during the night.
Shannon saw the golden eyes of a coyote skulking around and checking us out as we set up tent. So we played some loud music again and hung our food up from a tree so as not to attract any animal attention. We went to bed around 11pm and the moon rose, full and so bright outside of our tent that it felt like someone was shining a spotlight at us. The soft pine needles cushioned our sleeping bags and the grove of trees protected us from the worst of the stiff breezes. We brought all of our stuff inside so as to not wake up in the morning with scorpions or giant demon bee bug things crawling in and out of our packs and shoes.
