A Truly Hot and Dry Desert Surrounding Hikertown – PCT 2017: A Hiking Story [12]

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Part 11 ‘Trail Family United & Casa de Luna’ 

Day 34 (01/05) – Hikertown

The alarms to wake us… were simply forgotten or ignored… (due to the late sleep). We slept through sunrise and didn’t start hiking until about 8am. Echo took off earlier than the rest of us from Sawmill Campground, but we eventually left.

This was a fairly dry stretch of trail, with a real genius feature being the water guzzler. A simple design of a roof that collects water, draining into a covered trough as a water source.

Not far into hiking, we hit the 500-mile marker. High-fives all around! We celebrated briefly with a ridiculous pose and continued on.

As per usual with our hiking routine, Rex and I hiked fast ahead of Corky. The plan was to reach Hikertown – a property with a wild west vibe that has a variety of accommodations. We’d heard mixed stories about this place so far. Anywhere to get out of the heat was good though!

It was getting really hot by the middle of the day, and we didn’t have much water. We decided to just haul ass (I started talking American slang haha) to Hikertown and get water there.

Upon arriving, we saw Echo had made it, and several other familiar faces. Rex and I were able to secure one of the last good places to sleep, an RV. Due to our combined state of cleanliness – which was appalling – we needed showers fast. We agreed this was by far the stinkiest and dirtiest we’ve ever been! ‘Meatball sandwich’ level as Rex and I described it!

The owners shuttled us out to the shop to get some food just before closing, and I grabbed a sandwich there and some small supplies.

We had a few beers with the others back at Hikertown, then went to bed.

Distance hiked: 20 miles (32.19 km)

Total PCT hiked: 517.5 miles (832.84 km)

Day 35 (02/05) – The Aquaduct Hike

Today, the plan was to leave Hikertown late in the afternoon to avoid the blistering heat along the aqueduct. This was the notorious hot section, which we had to walk along for many miles in the flat desert.

A midday nap and lunch filled up most of the day before heading out at around 4:30pm. Rex, Echo, Corky, Doc, Zero and myself all hiked out. The aqueduct was a huge semi-buried metal pipe that brings water from the high mountains to the Los Angeles region, where there is no water. We walked along it for about 15 miles (24.14 km) into the sunset. The sunset was one of the best yet on the trail!

Eventually, the surroundings grew dark. However, the stars allowed some vision, and being a wide trail, we didn’t use headlamps for the most part. The others started to retire to sleep along the way as it was getting late. Rex and I made it the furthest and cowboy camped in a dry riverbed at 2am, right under the turbines of the wind farm. At least they were the modern, relatively silent type. The thought of a flash flood in the dry river bed entered my mind, but not for long, as I had passed out!

Distance hiked: 18 miles (28.97 km)

Total PCT hiked: 535 miles (861 km)

Day 36 (03/05) – Turbines of Good Fortune!

We had an alarm set for 6am, but we ended up oversleeping and getting up at least 7am. Medic and Dale by this point appeared, who must have camped not far back near the road without us noticing as we walked past. They had started to make coffee, but I told them about a place I read about on my Hikerbot app. It was a detour to the Manzanita Wind Farm office, where they apparently offered coffee and Wi-Fi to PCT hikers. They agreed to take the detour with us, and we left a note for Corky and Echo, who were further behind.

Once we arrived at the office, we were greeted by the manager there, who showed us around. They had drip coffee, Gatorade pre-mixes, air conditioning and Wi-Fi! He asked if we were hungry, to which we replied we were, and said he’d grab some food from town. He then said we could set up stretchers (cots) in the spare back room if we wanted to ride out the midday heat. Eventually, Corky, Echo and Doc all arrived also.

Eventually, around two hours later, he returned with 6 boxes of pizza, two tubs of ice cream and root beer to make root beer floats! ‘Holy shit‘ we all thought. These guys are amazing! We thanked him for his generosity and got stuck into the food. We were all so glad we came here. After the food, we rested some more before 4pm came and we hiked on. We handed the guy a sum of money for the efforts, which he didn’t take at first, but eventually succumbed and said he’d use it to buy the same for the next group of PCT hikers.

We hiked out over rolling hills into more turbine wind farms. Medic and Dale got ahead of us, and Doc and Corky fell behind. Rex, Echo and I ascended into the evening hours along the sandy ridges, getting higher and higher all the time. It was humid that night and Echo and I tried hiking shirtless – it worked out pretty well! We could make out headlamps going from the side of the valley we just came from, but it was so far away now that it was at least two hours behind. I ‘cooee’d’ to them and got a return ‘cacaw’ which meant it was Corky. At least they were somewhere behind us.

Echo decided he had gone far enough and laid down his ground mat on top of a ridge – it was late, maybe 12am. Rex and I also agreed to set up camp somewhere nearby. I decided on a spot behind a tree on the apex of a turn in the trail. It was a great spot for star gazing.

Distance hiked: 9 miles (14 km)

Total PCT hiked: 544 miles (875.48 km)

Next Post:

Part 13 ‘Tehachapi Zero and Nero Day Morale Boosting’

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