PCT Day 53
June 22 2021
Mile: 630.9 to 652.2
Start: Bird Springs Pass
Finish: Kernville Rivernook Campground via hitchhiking from Walker Pass
I woke up at 5am with one mission today: get the f*ck out of the desert. Shannon stayed in the tent to sleep a bit longer but I knew personally that I needed to start covering miles while it was early and still cooler temperatures, or I’d have a meltdown like I did yesterday. Quietly I walked over to grab water from the cache of 5 gallon water jugs and who did I find cuddling the water jugs but our hiking buddy Chainsaw! He must have arrived sometime in the middle of night and was currently sleeping and hugging one of the water jugs like it was his teddy bear. True to his word, he did say that he likes to sleep next to the water source, but I didn’t realize it was so literal. Chainsaw was so close to the only open water jug with a pump that I had to pretty much pry it from his hands. I pumped six liters of water into my water bladder and bottles as quietly as I could, filtering it by hanging the gravity filter from a horse tie up fence and quietly headed up the mountain for three miles of climbing.
I said goodbye to Shannon and told him that he should sleep in since he’s so much faster than me hiking right now, but that I needed to get going and I couldn’t wait for him to sleep in. I told Shannon that I’d meet him somewhere along the trail, but would definitely be stopping 20 miles later today at Walker Pass where we would hitch into town if I didn’t see him before then. I was so glad to start while it was still shady on the exposed mountainside and made quick work of the steep climb to the top. After a pause for a quick bathroom break, I kept an eye out for Bartender, Cheerleader and Shelby, whose lights we had seen at the top of the mountain last night. But the whole day I didn’t see a single person. They must have the same idea to either hike through the night or wake up really early.
I popped in an audiobook and some murder podcasts and hiked on, stopping only for 15 minutes in the shade for lunch. I hit a miserable 2 miles of shadeless ATV trail in the Kiavah Wilderness at midday which was brutal. I kept my mind occupied by trying to guess how fresh the coyote and deer prints were in the sandy track. I started trying to look for shade to eat a 2nd lunch or some snacks, but the only option was going a mile
roundtrip off trail to a cabin that offered shade so I decided to skip the detour and opted to keep going to town. Thoughts of floating down the cool, clear Kern River on an innertube in town filled my head with hope and kept me focused on getting the heck out of the miserable heat.
When I passed through a trail intersection, I let Shannon know that I was going to keep hiking to town by leaving him a torn page from my journal under a conspicuous rock at the trail sign. I continued to follow the coyote and deer tracks through more shadeless wilderness. The day wasn’t super exciting, but I was motivated as hell to get another day of desert hiking over what and move on to the mountains and cooler temperatures of the Sierra Nevadas. A tale of an 1800s murder by a priest in Illinois who chopped up one of his parishioners and put him in an oven kept me entertained as I shuffled down winding sand paths.
I stopped for a few minutes in the shade occasionally when I overheated and finally arrived at the Walker Pass campground where a stash of water in a cooler had been provided by local Trail Angels. I left another note for Shannon to come down in the campground and while I waited for him, I hung out with hikers Musty, Professor and Bartender in the shaded picnic table area. We sat at a picnic table drinking water from a cooler left by a Trail Angel and talked and laughed at how crazy this whole trip had been. 20 minutes after I arrived, Shannon showed up after having run down the mountain to reach me. He said he didn’t end up sleeping in this morning and left shortly after I did so he could get to town. We said goodbye to the other hikers and trekked the mile up to Walker Pass to see if we could catch a bus into town or hitchhike.
As we were walking up to the pass, we saw the bus drive by and disappear down the road in the direction that we had wanted to go. Once we got cell service, we found out that the next bus didn’t come for another 3 hours. Dejected but not deterred, we started thumbing it, but no one pulled over to give us a ride. 45 minutes into hitchhiking, we were starting to lose hope but we kept positive by chuckling at how one of the girl hikers Musty kept going on about how hot, and how much of a snack the explorer guy Walker was who had crossed over Walker Pass in the 1800s. There was a picture of him on the Walker Pass monument, and I can tell you for certain this guy was not a snack. We even tried to scrunch up our eyes and tilt our heads but we both could not see how it was even remotely attractive. To each their own I guess!
As we were debating the hotness level of Mr. Walker of Walker Pass fame, a shuttle pulled up with a bunch of hikers like Totum, Gomo, Carlos, Torch and more. We said hi to them and then asked the shuttle people how much they charge to go into Kernville which was a 45 minute drive away. Since they had already made the trip up to Walker Pass from town, the two owners said it’d be $10 each for Shannon and I to go to Kernville. We gladly accepted, eager for showers and real food.
Karen and Curtis were super nice and drove us the 45 minutes to Rivernook Campground in Kernville where PCT hikers are allowed to camp for free next to the river. On the way to town, they showed us ancient miner cabins from the 1800s California gold rush. They told us about why one of the mountains was bright red-pink from fire retardant that was dumped out of a plane after a wildfire grew like crazy and burned down 300 homes a few years ago, including Karen’s old horse ranch. We learned about the history of the area, passing loads of cattle ranches grazing next to the river where the grass was still green and talked about the effect the drought had on nearby Lake Isabella, to the point where the water level was so low that you could drive on the old flooded city roads that had been flooded decades ago. Apparently the hydroelectric dam was being fixed while the water level was low due to the drought since there was a crack in it.
When we arrived in the tiny riverside town of Kernville, California, our shuttle drivers Karen and Curtis gave us a whirlwind tour of the town showing us the grocery store, local museum, and restaurants and then dropped us off to get checked in at Rivernook Campground where PCT hikers can enjoy free camping and showers. At the campground we shared a beautiful shady spot next to the Kern River with our old friend Mighty who we had met a few hundred miles back in Wrightwood and a new friend BamBam. We hung out, showered up and then grabbed some dinner downtown where we had real food and cold drinks for the first time in a few days. I’ll tell you what – my mood improved significantly over a hard apple cider and some air conditioning.
Back at camp we enjoyed a cooler of beer and White Claws (Ain’t no laws when you’re drinkin claws!) that some hikers camped here the previous night had left behind. Trail magic to the extreme! Mighty, who was an English teacher from Brazil and had the same cool Smartwool shorts as I did but in a different color, told us some crazy stories about her trip so far. One night while she was night hiking by herself to stay out of the hot weather of the day, she was stalked by a mountain lion for 2 miles. Aie!!! That is my nightmare.
Hiker BamBam had introduced us to the cooler where previous hikers had left dozens of White Claws, beer and two inner tubes to float down the river tomorrow. We were so happy now that we were showered, full and extremely satisfied.
Shannon was really enjoying the free beer cooler and when he stumbled away to go find the bathrooms in the dark after being somewhat dehydrated from run-hiking 20 hot desert miles today, I followed him just to make sure he was okay. That little brat! I saw him pick up someone’s cigarette stub off the ground and smoke it while carrying a beer in his other hand. Nasty nasty hobbitses.
I waited for Shannon to get out of the bathroom but after 15 minutes passed, I thought maybe I missed him and returned to the campsite. He wasn’t back yet so I hung out with Mighty and BamBam for a while. Another 15 minutes passed, then 20. Yikes…maybe he was just stuck in line in the bathroom? Maybe dinner hit him in a bad way… I was just getting up to go back to the men’s restroom to see if he was still in there when all of a sudden a Rivernook Campground security guard pulled up in an ATV. The bright lights illuminated all of our faces, stunning us like deer in headlights and we were wondering what the heck was going on. Guess who stumbles and almost falls out of the ATV? Drunk Shannon.
Shannon waved a drunk goodbye to the security guard who had picked him up, thanking her by name like they were besties. Apparently he’d snuck out of the bathroom past me at some point and taken a wrong turn, getting lost in the dark 60 acre campground amongst the hundreds of campsites. The security guard had seen him wandering around and when he told her that he was camping at the PCT site, she told him to jump in the ATV because he had wandered to the completely wrong end of the campgrounds. Oh Shannon… At least the bobcats and bears that regularly visit the campground left him alone.
In the end we got him some water, zipped him up into the tent and dumped out the half empty beer in his hand. We also had a discussion about how unhygienic it is to pick up other people’s cigarettes off the dirty campground and smoke them. Mr. Princess North Star was dubbed King of the Hiker Trash that night but thankfully passed out immediately so I didn’t have to recruit the security guards to find his drunk butt again. I guess both of us were celebrating our momentary break from hiking the desert.