The wind never let up last night. And even though I had pitched my tent low with the rear to the wind, my tent bucked and shook like one of those dancing balloon men on the side of the road. I slept mostly rolled up in a ball with my quilt over my head so I couldn’t feel the tent walls buffeting me.
Oddly, I was rather stoic about it. Morning would dawn and I would pull all my wet stuff together and start hiking with my friends. I would warm up and eventually find a place to dry my camp stuff. And life on the PCT would continue.
To cloud or not to cloud
The clouds sent by the Pacific Ocean were in and out of camp all night. This has been the dominant weather pattern for weeks. Cool moist air from the ocean pushes over coastal ranges until they encounter a wall of hot dry air on the eastern side of the range.
Hikers and folks who live in the mountains have been the beneficiary of these conditions, but it can be cold, windy and miserable. When I start hiking today, the clouds are staying put beyond the ridge above camp.
There is a big difference between the north and south slopes of these ridges that run east to west. The south sides are arid; the north side often look like this:
But the ocean is not amenable to pleasant hiking today. As soon as we go back to the crest of the ridge, the cold damp clouds are there to meet us.
We are in the cloud. There will be no vistas looking south or west.
The good thing about these conditions is that we stay focused on the hiking. The clouds come over the ridge and soon there is no sun anywhere.
The flight to warmth
Eventually I get tired of this cold damp hiking. We have to get water and then I want to get down to the valley and to warmth. The water we are targeting is a guzzler similar to the one we used yesterday. The water in this one is higher. It is easy to use and the water tastes delicious.
Thirty minutes after collecting water we are at the top of Liebre Mountain. We take a hard right to the north and start our descent toward Pine Canyon Road. The ocean send one last cloud at us, covering the mountaintop in mist.
And then we break free. The warmth rises to us as the sun illuminates the valley below.
Those mountains on the horizon are the Tehachapi Mountains. Beyond those is the Southern Sierra Nevada range. The end of this desert section is about 200 miles away. This might seem far, but when you have already walked almost 500 miles, it seems close.
Here is another view of the valley looking more west. On the other side of those mountains is Bakersfield, California.
Basking
It’s lunch time and we sprawl out in an open sunny area. We lay our wet stuff in the sun to dry. Then we eat and lie down for a few minutes. Invariably, we doze for 15 minutes.
Today some old friends walk into camp. It’s Hannes and Mika. I camped with them on the first, third and fourth days out of Campo. Mika has a trail name: Hummingbird. Hannes is still Hannes. They say they have been a day behind me for a while. They have seen my name on the trail registers. We talk about what has happened and I tell them that Double Deluxe got off the trail (for good reasons). We should see them again in Hikertown tomorrow.
We hike down to our camp six miles before Hikertown. Tomorrow morning we will hike down and collect the food boxes we sent there. Then we will try to rest before heading out that evening at 2am to walk the Los Ángeles Aqueduct and the wind farm at the other end. That schedule might disrupt my blogging, but I will try to find a way to write when I can.
We grab an early dinner and retire to our tents. I hope the wind stays low tonight in camp and the dew stays away too. We need the next day to go smoothly to have success on the long exposed sections ahead.
But it’s time to eat.
- June 11, 2023
- Starting marker: 498.2
- Ending marker: 510.9
- Total miles hiked: 13
- Total PCT miles: 481