Pacific Crest Trail : Agua Dulce to Tehachapi

Miles this section : 121
Miles completed : 565

The Rock Inn.

The country around Agua Dulce, on the fringes of the Mojave I guess, forms a series of canyons, the PCT of course making its way by switchbacks down into each and up the other side.  Hard work in the desert heat, and it's little better when at the higher altitudes there's scrub forest providing some shade - for here dwell a multitude of horrid insects, I walk along with gnats buzzing in front of my face, and larger flies flit about, insisting on landing on me at intervals.

This continues on the second day out of Agua Dulce, if anything it's hotter, so I am pleased to find a shady spot beneath a rocky overhang to take a break.  OK, there is steady traffic of bees to and from a cleft in the rock, but they leave me alone - until I make the mistake of getting my lunch out.  Bees like chimichangas, who knew...  Well, I escape a little way down the trail with just one sting, and somehow dash back and forth to retrieve my stuff without suffering any more.  After that, a two mile trip off trail to end the day at a bar is definitely in order, they provide beer and a one pound burger, oh yes.  Place is called Lake Hughes, the eponymous lake being pretty empty - the drought here's been ongoing for seven years I am told.  Well, the lake bed makes a nice camp spot anyway.

Hikertown.

Back to the trail for a short day, just 14 miles, but honesty I struggle with it, the heat is killing and I'm feeling a bit broken.  Doesn't help that the day's two water points are both fully a mile off trail.  Still, I make camp for 5:30 or so, time for a good rest then, and indeed feel better for it the next morning.  Seems a bit flatter at least now, indeed I can see level terrain ahead, first though we have to descend, easy walking then.  Destination is 'Hikertown', wasn't sure what to expect here, in the event it's a collection of small buildings, sheds and so on, made to look somewhat like a wild west town, well why not.  I pay ten dollars and get a beer, a shower, and a real bed in the feed store / cat house, is good.

So much soda.

Many people leave Hikertown shortly before I go to bed - they're going to night hike the next section, which apparently can get very hot, not to mention it is sixteen miles, or maybe even twenty-four, to the next water.  Well, I need to sleep, then an early start and in fact it is fine, pancake flat, indeed for much of the day I walk the concrete top of one of many aqueducts feeding Los Angeles - I can hear the water, can't get to it though.  But, with a bit of rationing I get through it, still have a litre or so at sixteen miles where there is not just water, but awesome trail angels who give me sodas, chips (as in, tortilla chips), and even tacos, yay.

One more day to Tehachapi, I have the hang of this desert walking now, the first sixteen miles go by easily enough, aided by water from another angel.  Then I have a seven mile walk off trail into town, along a route I devised using google earth, mostly what I assumed were unofficial off road tracks through the desert.  In the event, I walk the maintenance roads of a large wind farm, navigating a few barbed wire fences on the way, still I make it.  Camp is a nice little site by an airstrip, and while it's another three miles to a restaurant, without my pack it's no problem.  I get a burger of course, then apple pie, I'm in America now...

Wind turbine and joshua tree, icons of the desert.

Photos to go with this post can be found here here.