Hikertown to Mojave

PCT MILES COMPLETE: 280.8
PCT mile 517.0 to PCT mile 558.5
Section mileage: 41.5
Days: 6/2 - 6/4

Mountain Goat, me and PUPPIES!

We woke up to a the broken record of a rooster crowing extremely close to our tent and the hot sun shining directly on the tent. We hastily packed and retreated to the "hiker lounge" which was a garage converted into an open air hang out. It was already too hot to hike. The table was overflowing with hiker boxes. A few other hikers who had spent the night were preparing to head out. Not us. We wedged ourselves into old couches, slapping at flies.

Other hikers pulled up in vans, arriving from the Anderson's and opting not to hike the roadwalk. The massive hiker boxes got fuller as thruhikers picked up packages at the little post office. It wasn't a real post office. Because Hikertown isn't just a hostel. It's a fake old western town constructed from plywood and trash dump discards, situated in the middle of a run down town of dust in the desert. A herd of dogs roams the yard. A brand new litter of puppies lived in the "Sheriff" part of the town. A herd of alpaca lived next door. It was without a doubt, the strangest place that I have visited on the trail.

Walking the aquaduct!

We left town at 7 to walk along the LA aquaduct for the night. It is a completely flat, exposed section of trail that follows first the open water then the giant metal pipe that leads from the snowmelt fed rivers in the mountains across the desert to the thirsty, thirsty metropolis on the coast. We were punch-drunk tired, and started to listen to music. At one point we started a mosh pit (of two) on the trail. We walked towards red blinking lights on the horizon by the light of the moon. We kept pace with two speedy hikers, Handy Andy and Spencer, for a couple hours. They started on the same day as us, at the Mexican border, and have been averaging 30 miles a day. On a diet of maltodextrin and candy, primarily. They sped past us on a break. Soon after, we past them camped by the road. "Do you want some candy?" they called to us. And loaded us down with SO much candy, since they will be ahead of schedule to their next resupply.

Turbines and Joshua trees!

We feasted on milky ways under the milky way and stumbled a few miles farther to a tank of water set up as a hiker cache and almost empty.

The next morning, we woke to the sun already unbearably hot shining down on us. Across the aquaduct, we waved to Seahawk, Bumblebee, and Milkman. As we packed up camp, other friends arrived (Ducketts, Eleven, Mountain Goat, FedEx, Stealth). It was hot and exposed, and we had a half day of walking to the next water source. The landscape was full of wind turbines creaking as they awoke, just like us, and bizarre Joshua trees. The red blinking lights the night before were on the turbines, and we were now the edge of a giant wind farm.

All of us hikers stayed close for the day, hugging close to little pockets of shade behind wind turbines and little desert trees. We spent most of the day under a rare shade tree by a little "creek" which was really just a trickle of water just big enough to cover my feet and fill our bottles.We waited and napped in the shade until dark before heading up the ridge. At the peak of the unknown, unnamed mountain, at the water cache, there were about a dozen hikers at 11 pm. That's how it is in the desert: water sources become social places, since we're all tied so intimately, so vitally to water.

The next morning, we climbed down from the ridge past still more wind turbines in the heat. This morning, the turbines were already swooping to life. Our route took us to their bases, close enough that the wind turbine blades generated wind themselves. I felt tiny and weak, cowed by the power of sun and wind. Like this strange little fleshy bag of water that the desert would kill in days not weeks if I somehow got lost. It was a shifty morning, even though it was a town day. I made the mistake of pooping on a red ant hill. But sometimes it feels like the whole world is an ant hill out here! I dug a hole, and they began to pour out mid-poop. It was pretty distressing, to put it mildly.

At the road, we had the option of hitching west to Tehatchupi or east to Mojave. We chose Mojave, because it's a compact town. And all we wanted was to resupply at a grocery store and drink margaritas by a pool. It took about an hour to get a ride into town. We watched countless trucks moving water driving past, on their way to the solar farms, to help control the dust that blows over the giant panels. We were discouraged and grumpy, standing in the sun and wishing we'd just gone to Tehatchupi like all of our friends. They were probably in a movie theater by this point, bathing in air conditioning so cold it hurts and eating giant buckets of popcorn with fake butter drizzled on it, watching the X-Men movie. 

A man finally picked us up and dropped us off in the hot, steamy, depressing/depressed town of Mojave. We got nachos and checked into the motel 6. I met a man at the hotel with a Trumpish shag of blonde hair. He told me that he photographs thunderstorms, and gave me laundry detergent. Trail magic comes in all forms. We had burgers and watched TV and drank Budweiser brand mar-beer-itas by the pool. It was perfect. We even ran into Tintin and Tailor at the hotel.