Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California Part 3

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22nd May: Day 32 – Mile 573

Out of Tehachapi and onwards towards the Sierra.
 
Hmm. Exciting photos today… There’s another storm, I give up early, and for some reason just take photos of my feet and my food bag.

Staples: m&ms, tortillas, instant mash, dried mango, cheese crackers. I can’t see it, but surely peanut butter is lurking menacingly in the shadows.

23rd and 24th May: Day 33 & 34 – Mile 618

23rd May – Mile 593
24th May – Mile 618
 
I complain in my notes about the pain up my shins (I’d forgotten how long this went on for).
 
Closing in on Walker Pass – the last major highway crossing to get off trail before the high Sierra. We’re now hearing stories of the people who have tried to get through so far – a lot of blizzards, frostbite, and quitting.
 
Most people I meet have decided to skip around the Sierra for now. I’m carrying on – I really want to do a continuous route to Canada and, anyway, I’d been hoping for a high snow year, this is the adventure I wanted. I’m confident on the basis that if one person is able to make it through, I’m sure I can too- the minor flaw in that being that we haven’t yet heard of anyone that’s made it through.  It’s still early days though.

First view of the beginning of the high Sierra will be over this hill

Can’t see any snow – must be fine..

In real life skunks are less blurry.

25th May: Day 35 – Mile 638

You’re told not to rely on water caches – where locals have brought water up to the PCT. Because, what if they’re empty the day you get there? You will run out of water and die. Instead you are supposed to carry back-breaking quantities of water and when you reach the water cache, just feel grateful that there is water there for someone who is a greater gambler than you.
 
Today I work out how much water I would need to carry and decide to risk death instead.
 
Not only are all the water caches full, but a man gives me a 7.2% beer as well.

Normally bear protection is defensive – e.g. sealed bags to prevent smell of food getting out. However – my bag has been infused with melted cheese oil and is full of holes. 

Therefore I follow the less practiced offensive bear protection strategy. I cover all my food with my socks. And there are few things in the world more offensive.

26th to 28th May: Day 36 to 38 – Mile 652

It’s a difficult hitchhike from Walker Pass to Ridgecrest and it’sabout 25 miles. No one was stopping for me. A birdwatcher called Steve was also up on the pass. I don’t think he’d really heard of the PCT before and was interested in what I was up to – he sort of edged towards me as his sense of pity was balanced by his concern that I might be a madman (remembering I haven’t showered in almost a week of desert walking)

He was going the opposite direction, but in the end drove me all the way to Ridgecrest (an hour and a half out of his way) and then helped me identify all the birds I’d seen so far.  Really nice guy – we kept in touch, and I appreciated his messages of support in some of the shitter times to come.

I now wait in Ridgecrest for the last big storm in the Sierra to pass.
 
Ridgecrest is one long long road with random blobs of shops every now and then. Seems like the sort of place where nothing happens. Then not long after I leave, it is hit by a 7.1 earthquake which splits that road in two.
 
I prepare for the Sierra.

Shoes that have done 650 miles and shoes that haven’t.

Day hikers gave me trouble picking these shoes up from the post office. When you post stuff to collect from the post office, you write that you’re a hiker and what your ETA is, so they keep hold of it for longer. When REI posted it, they couldn’t fit my first name on the label – so instead of ‘Nick Day’ it just said ‘Day Hiker ETA 26th May’. The post office then denied they had it, and I had to queue up twice before they mentioned they had got a package without a name on it and maybe that was mine despite it specifically (and unusually) saying it was for a day hiker rather than a thru hiker

This was the plan for the High Sierra, which I gave to my Dad. I’m not sure this was really going to help except possibly to find my body at some later date. But that is actually a significant (and sad) thing on the PCT, where people haven’t been found and their family are still looking, after two years in some cases, still putting up posters etc.

Anyway, for avoidance of any anxiety now, I’ll emphasise that I do survive and manage to bring my body back to the UK myself

10 days of very calorie dense food. So, unless you like drinking oil, maybe not a fun 10 days. I bought this same thing twice and posted half in a bucket to be (I think) snow mobiled into the Sierra. Though I would never manage to collect it.

29th May: Day 39 – Mile 673

Can’t remember today. But here’s a story from a few days before, from a lady who was giving up at Walker Pass, before the Sierra, because she’d had enough snow adventures in her life.
 
Her story (imagine it being told in a half Yorkshire, half US west coast accent) is set in a village in the French alps, in the late 70s, where she worked in a bar as a teenager. One morning she and her friend decided to go walking in the mountains. A storm hit, and they got lost. Eventually they saw a cabin to take refuge. Inside was a large group of men who were drinking heavily. At first they seemed friendly, but it wasn’t long before they felt they was in more danger from the men than the storm. So they set out in the storm, which quickly became a blizzard and then white out. They couldn’t see where they were going but tried to push on in the direction of a road, they thought. Many hours passed. By this time, a search party had gone out to try to find them but failed. They stumbled down the mountain in the dark and eventually came to a road. A car picked them up.
 
Where are you going? … Oh, no, you don’t want to go there right now – it’s too sad – haven’t you heard? The girls from the bar died up in the mountains last night.
 
A few days later the leader of the search party came to see her – he showed her the dangerous route they had come down in the dark and wanted to meet her to see, he said, what was so special that god had thought to save her.
 
(Another fun fact: she’d been in the GB Olympic gymnastics team!)

30th May: Day 40 – Mile 693

Bear attack!
 
I’m a fan of the line that, in a bear attack, you don’t need to be faster than a bear, you only need to be the 2nd slowest person.
There are 10 people at this camp, cooking – the last time I’ll see this many people at a camp – and a mother and cub come in to investigate.
 
There’s a lot of shouting and banging of pans. I am, however, in bed and I’ve no intention of moving until the other 9 people have been eaten.
 
Note 1: I’m of course exaggerating for effect the likelihood of a black bear eating a person. Realistically, that would only happen if the person was covered in peanut butter.
 
Note 2: I’m carrying enough peanut butter to do that

31st May: Day 41 – Mile 713

End of phase 1, now into the real mountains
 
I reach Kennedy Meadows general store, last stop before the Sierra (in Wild, it’s where they clap for her – there’s no clapping for me, and it would seem bitter to point out she’d only started at Tehachapi, 150 miles back)
 
There’s a lot of snow anxiety in the air: have you seen this on Facebook of a person up to their waist in snow, did you hear that guy has quit with frostbite etc. Ramble and Short Sticks are here and just heading out. They’ve got a group of 4 and one of them looks genuinely terrified when I say I’m going in on my own.
 
The terrified look haunts me a bit and makes me wonder whether I’m being an idiot – I think maybe I’ll try to catch up with their group and join them, as they’ll only be half a day or so ahead of me once I’ve picked up my bear canister and resupplied.
 
At camp, I meet the Swiss for the first time. Including power couple “Mountain” “Lion”, who are in their 60s, and (unlike the rest of us) know what they’re doing. In 2,000 miles I will finish the PCT with them.

Into the Sierra…