7th May: Day 17 – Mile 306
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8th May: Day 18 – Mile 328
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9th May: Day 19 – Mile 342
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10th May: Day 20 – Mile 359
I leave Animal at Cajon Pass. We assume we won’t see each other again, because he is going slower to hit the Sierra later. In fact, I will see him again in about 1400 miles – he will flip to Canada and come back south, and we’ll meet going in opposite directions in Oregon.
I camp with Pep Talk and Ben, who let me moan on about the pains of hospital administration for a long time before they mention they are both hospital clinicians. I think we’ll be walking together on and off for a while, but actually I never see them again.
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11th May: Day 21 – Mile 384
25 miles and 6000 ft ascent to get over Mount Baden Powell.
Hard work getting through the deep snow. Rick – an ultra marathon runner doing 30 or more a day – catches up to me a few miles after the summit and expresses his amazement at how fast I went up. I realise later (but I don’t tell him) it’s because I had full length steel crampons on while he was going up just in trainers.
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12th May: Day 22 – Mile 406
Weird day walking along a highway, due to an endangered frog diversion. It’s closed at one end due to snow, so the LA kids with high performance cars come out here to drive up and down it at high speed. Presumably there are bonus points for clipping a thru-hiker.
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13th May: Day 23 – Mile 430
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14th May: Day 24 – Mile 444
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These are famous big rocks. But can’t work it out. They’re near, but don’t think these actually are, Vasquez Rocks
15th May: Day 25 – Mile 464
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16th May: Day 26 – Mile 486
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They’ll never find me.
17th May: Day 27 – Mile 503
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18th May: Day 28 – Mile 517
Today, Hikertown.
The story goes something like this.
Richard is an LA movie guy involved in LA county politics. He thinks he has advance information that they will build a city on the edge of the Mojave so he buys up a lot of land there. But then the city never gets built.
He finds a load of hobos on the land and goes to chase them off, but when they turn out to be rich, privileged hikers looking for water (because the PCT runs next to his land), he builds hikertown for them. For some reason he builds it to resemble a highly unconvincing Wild West film set.
This is the world I walk in to today. Richard makes me and Tables blueberry pancakes and tells us that Wee Vill, the other place hikers stay around here, is the meth capital of the county. He offers to drive us to a shop in his Ferrari, but first he has to drive us to Wee Vill to show us the methed our horror of it all (it looks fine). At the shop (which he also owns) he shows us the caretaker of Hikertown’s Emmy… basically, this is a weird place.
There are a lot of hikers here. Most memorable are probably Jay and Silent Bob – a guy and a dog (whose real name is Cairos, I’ve forgotten the guy’s real name). They are planning to go through the Sierra – after I’ve been through I will realise this is totally impossible with a dog – but am very pleased (and stunned) when I meet them again in Oregon and find out they did actually make it.
I sleep in a sort of shed because a storm is coming in. There is a hole in the roof which leaks directly on to my face.
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Sage bushes covered in butterflies – 2019 was a big year for painted lady migration.
A storm approaches a leaky shed.
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19th May: Day 29 – Mile 549
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20th & 21st May: Day 30 & 31 – Mile 559
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All you need for a resupply…