Pacific Crest Trail : Tehachapi to Kennedy Meadows

Miles this section : 137
Miles completed : 702

Lavender blooming in the desert.

Funny place, Tehachapi - on the map, a substantial town built to a grid pattern, but on the ground it is mostly empty space, the odd block here and there filled with housing or retail, but separated by miles of desert.  It challenges my resolve to walk everywhere, but I manage somehow, not much of a rest day though as I find another, more central campsite - by Tehachapi's other airstrip - then make my way to the USPS and UPS offices, supermarket etc.  Just about find time for all-you-can-eat Chinese in the evening, and even a bar where I drink Pabst Blue Riband.  It's... beer.

It does get quite pretty at times.

I retrace my steps back to the trail without incident, and walk another long day through the desert, featuring many trail angels - over the course of the day I score two hot dogs, two sodas and two beers, can't be bad.  Before long though I am back to relying on my own resources, well I am carrying a lot of food and often water too, it is pretty scarce out here, sometimes twenty miles or more between springs, cattle troughs or whatever.  I start one monster section of some 42 dry miles carrying some 4.5 litres of water, there is a cache 7 more miles in, so a chance to 'camel up' again, but still the following 15 miles or so are hard work as I try to keep to a litre every ten miles.  Of course, there is then another cache, and indeed an angel with sodas, plus trail magic - pop tarts, which like much American food, taste oddly artificial.

The milestone of the beast!

The foot wide ribbon of dust and sand that is the trail winds on, over hills, down to cross dry creek beds, across saddles and through passes - makes for varied surroundings, bare sand and Joshua trees at lower altitudes, pine forest higher up.  I seem to have left the wind farms behind, perhaps because this is now protected wilderness... nice walking anyway, and I make good speed as the weather turns and with blanket cloud cover temperatures stay low, and it even rains - a bit.  My waterproof top stays in my bag, at least until the morning when it is perishing cold.

Kennedy Meadows.

Still plenty of hikers about, some familiar - Paul who started the same day as me, Pavel and Milo, reuniting Czechoslovakia on the PCT - others new to me, mostly fit young people who leave me for dust.  Still I'm doing the miles, over a quarter done now, and I can see the snowcapped Sierras in the distance.  First though, another zero day, Kennedy Meadows is the gateway to the Sierras, and not a lot else to be honest - population 200 according to the sign.  Still there are free chilli dogs, a store with beer, even a bar - two miles of empty desert away of course.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.