5/28/14 Wednesday 17 miles Like a Fly on the Windshield! 5/29/14 Thursday 14 miles The Second Day-Out Curse Proves Itself True

Trail Angels come through again,  we could have paid a taxi $50 to get us to the trail but we called a trail angel named Todd who takes hikers from Mojave to the trail for a donation of $5/hiker. Another PCT hiker named Mad Hatter was staying at our Morel and he rode to the trail with us. 

Todd and 2 other members of the Mojave chamber if commerce share trail angel duties to help hikers get back to the trail.  Thanks for the ride Todd!

We left our motel at 7am and were on the trail at 7:30.  It was cool and slightly overcast so we were grateful for that.  We have a 2300 ft elevation gain right off.  Six miles of up, up, up and we are both concerned about high winds and heat. The next water is in 18 miles so we're carrying full packs (6 days of food) and 4 L of water each. 

The wind was fierce, Peggy took a few videos of me fighting my way across open areas. I likened it to being a fly on the windshield of a car going 65-80 mph,  legs braced, head down and just hanging on for dear life. 

This is one open area we fought our way across.

A view from the top once we got up the mountain. 

At the top we found some scrub trees so we took a break at 10:30, tucked into a copse of pines. Then we stopped for lunch at 1:30.  At 3:30 I began to feel uncoordinated, tripping and weaving, we stopped for water, snack and rest. Finally we made it to Golden Oak Spring at 5:15 where about 20 hikers were spread out waiting to get water from two dripping spouts jammed into the wet mud.  We took turns getting 4 liters of silty water hoping to get to camp and clean the water when we stopped. 

 We went only about 1/2 mile down the trail and found a campsite where we collapsed exhausted.

Wind turbines are all around us, noisily churning out power. The wind is blowing in the trees above us but we are pretty well tucked in out of reach of most of it. We are letting our water sit for the night hoping the silt will settle. 

The next morning 5/29/14 we were cleaning the water and in the process of tossing out the settled dirt, we are short a few liters. We hiked back the 1/2 mile and filled more bottles so we were not hiking until 8:00.  I'm struggling with low stamina and all the baggage that goes with it. The green trees suddenly disappeared and we entered a large burned area- no shade, no water, a depressing sight in the growing heat of the day.

 We stopped for a rest and Peggy found a nasty blister on her foot giving her pain, she mentioned she was also feeling less energy than usual, we call this the second day curse. 

Sometimes even in the dirty burn areas there is beauty,  this is the Prickly Poppy plant. 

Close up of the Prickly Poppy. 

After hiking about 10 miles we entered an oak savannah, long grasses about thigh high and big, spreading live oak trees.  Great shade.  We rested and slept until about 3:00, we studied the PCT water report which we download and print new at every resupply place that has a computer. We visit a lot of libraries! 

Discussing the report, we feel like we'll be ok but will have to watch our consumption and visit all the springs that are listed with water.  This is a very dry section. After some pretty good uphill places which happily were in green forested hills we came to a saddle where there was a pretty flat area to camp among the pine needles.  At last a camp without wind turbines nearby.  After dinner (I had bugler wheat, vegetables and beef soup mix.) We were in our tents for the night by 7:15.  We can hear a lone cow bellowing somewhere,  hopefully nowhere too near us.