Day forty

Jim

June 28, 2024

Forty days in the desert and I don’t know yet that I’m a changed man. I think yesterday was the nadir on morale, lesson learned is hiking on not enough sleep makes for an unhappy camper. I got 20.5 miles done today, and resupplied in Tehachapi which is quite a cute little town.

The trail angel who picked me up, Fran, said she was “pretty much done picking up hikers for the season” but was able to find errands to run around the places I needed to go and so hung out with/drove me around for the three hours I was in town. She gave great tour tidbits about the place, I think this is the first stop I want to come back and do a weekend visit sometime once I’m done with the trail.

I’ve got enough food to make it to Kennedy meadows, 150 miles away. It also means this is probably the heaviest my pack will ever be, especially since I’m dry camping tonight with 14 miles to walk tomorrow until I get to my next water source. I’m still in the wind farm region, so the wind is pretty aggressive again tonight; I’m trying a new camping tactic now.

I think the issue with high wind in my recent setup was I was doing just groundcloth and tent, with no rainfly to break up the wind. This meant the tent was catching the drafts and billowing pretty loudly, keeping me up. I haven’t set up the fly in a while now since I really only would need it for privacy and I’d rather not spend the five minutes doing it. I also enjoy being able to see stars when I inevitably wake up in the night.

So the new tactic tonight is no tent at all – for the first time in 40 days, I’m cowboy camping. It’s groundcloth, sleeping pad, sleeping bag. If a mouse decides to nibble on my nose in the night, so be it. I can only hope that this is an effective solution to the wind keeping me up. I’ll take a picture in the morning, but my location is nestled in some Joshua trees with a makeshift berm of sticks on the windward side hopefully blocking some of the gusting. Maybe I sleep terribly, but I’m glad I’m giving it a shot!

You can see the windstream in these hills with what I think is some smoke from a small fire nearby.

So many windmills!

An aggressively washed out part of the trail. Instead of a long jump, there was a short detour uphill under then through the barbed wire.

An entirely different field of windmills than before. So. Many. Windmills. So. Much. Wind.

Crossed a railroad! Several trains went by when I could view it, they always tooted their horns loudly passing the intersection. I bet they know it’s a crossing spot for hikers.