Day 41: Mile 517.6 - 534.9

So there was this grand plan.

After Hikertown, the PCT crosses the Mojave desert (at least I think it's the Mojave desert), walking along the LA Aqueduct (I do know it's the LA Aqueduct) for a spell before turning east and heading towards the wind farms. Over this stretch, the trail is notoriously hot and exposed, and many people thus opt to do this section in the cooler parts of the day: either early early in the morning, or late late at night.

So that's the first thing: people hike this portion at night. 

Now it turns out the night of May 25th, leading into the morning of May 26th, was a "supermoon": the brightest full moon of the year. Furthermore, it turns out this particular supermoon would be experiencing a total lunar eclipse that would be visible from California.

So that's the second thing: the opportunity to experience a celestial phenomenon.

Michael Be--who actually throws full-moon parties in his normal life--had noted the convergence of these two events about 4 days ago. And postulated, how cool would it be to hike the LA Aqueduct the night of the supermoon and see a total lunar eclipse? The answer: pretty darn cool. The problem, though, was that Hikertown was 100 miles away, meaning it would have taken 4 days of 25 miles/day to make it, and that wasn't happening.

That calculation, though, missed the Lake Fire closure. That's 25 miles, suddenly, magically, gone. Now if you're like me and OCD about this graph connectivity nonsense, then you do a 14-mile road walk anyway so the 25 doesn't completely disappear. But if you're sensible, you hitch past the Lake Fire closure and those 25 miles do, indeed disappear. Then suddenly, magically, convergence becomes viable.

Which Candy Corn had suddenly realized a couple days ago. Now it was so close, and she had to go for it, she argued, it was too good to pass up. Runts and I, though, figured we had just done a couple of big days and wanted a couple of smaller days to recover. And Runts was running low on food. But Candy Corn gave Runts some of her extra food, and Runts was feeling good so far, plus with the possibility of a Lake Fire hitch, well, Runts became convinced too. As for me, as long as I did the road walk, I was fine with whatever. And so it was on, and we hauled it down to the Ostrich Farm, then "yesterday" Candy Corn and Runtz got a hitch from the Ostrich Farm to the trailhead, hiked the 6.6 miles, got into Hikertown "early", ate, Runts resupplied, and they rested, in preparation for heading out that very night to do the LA Aqueduct under a supermoon while simultaneously experiencing a total lunar eclipse. And me, I hiked 11 miles of road to get from the Ostrich Farm to the trailhead, ate breakfast at the trailhead, then hiked 6.6 miles on trail, got into Hikertown "late", ate, talked to a bunch of people who I hadn't seen in a while, and then rested.

And at 1:30am, I woke up, checked up on Runts to make sure she was up (she was, and was about to come out and check on me, as per our agreement), saw that Candy Corn was already up, and joined a big group headed out at 2am.

The group was pretty big: Michael Be and two of his friends (who I didn't have time to meet, unfortunately), Kemo, Laffy Taffy and Yardsale (i.e., Nikki and Sebastian), Honeybee, Matt "Lone Wolf", Candy Corn, Runts, and myself, for 11 total (someone briefly dubbed us the Fellowship of the Moon for the group picture, but then that name never came up again). And we headed out into the dark, a fun bunch that quickly split into little smaller groups as people's paces lined up. Every now and then the folks out front would stop, and the group would reconvene, and then it would head out again, diverging into smaller pods. Y'know, how hiking groups do.

In the beginning, we didn't even need our headlamps the moon was so bright. (And the path was pretty even and broad and obvious, which helped too.) At the start, the moon shone through a break in the clouds, a great gash that stretched across the sky, letting some stars eagerly peek in. As we went, now walking along the Aqueduct proper, we looked up and asked, is that a cloud covering the moon or the eclipse?, and soon it became clear it was the eclipse, and the cutout grew and grew. Unfortunately, the clouds did too, covering the moon, so it became hard to see the moon itself, but the effect was obvious: at around 4:17 (I think was the official time), the bright spot in the sky was completely gone and we were in the dark. We did, indeed, have totality.

After that, the moon and the sunrise played off against each other: although the moon was starting to brighten back, so was the entire sky. As dawn broke, we did get to look back at the moon, now setting but also unclouded, and see that, yes, a chunk was still missing. And as it sunk below the horizon, that ended the moon experience!

But that didn't end the day. In the dark, I had commented to Runts that I wished I could hike this part during the day, partially to see everything, partially to see if I--brought up with hiking in the southern California heat--could do it. Well, as day broke we kept hiking, through the desert, on a broad dirt road that was mostly solid but would occasionally go to sand. The clouds overhead rapidly boiled away, the winds that had blown loud and scary at night disappeared, and now the sun beared down and the heat came down. I broke out the sun umbrella, but still it was walking an open exposed road, in the desert, towards a wind farm where the windmills were still and unmoving. So I got my chance to see if I could tough out the desert and, honestly, I didn't do so well. I mean, I got to my destination--the next water cache at a bridge in the middle of the wind farm, 17 miles away from Hikertown--but I admit the heat did do a number on me. I think with a day-pack I could have sustained it better, but I was properly humbled.

But as I said, we hiked into the wind farm, then continued until we reached a water cache next to a bridge. And then we all headed under the bridge for the shade. It would have been fun to time-lapse: watching hikers set up in a spot in the shade, setting down their tent footprints as mats, then eating, laying out, napping, tired and still as the shade slowly regressed and the sun slowly got nearer, but it hit them, and they would pack up everything and move to the far edge of the shade, and repeat. Me, I did it two times, maybe three?, it's hard to remember an afternoon spent snoozing under a bridge in the desert!

And that would be my day: after the 17-mile night hike from Hikertown to the bridge, I was finished for the day. Runts agreed with me: after so many long days, we were going to take the break. The others, though, were less convinced and eventually, in the late afternoon, they would head out again, hoping to make at least the next water source (6.6 miles away), aiming for the next good campsite (14 miles away), so that they could comfortably get into Tehachapi tomorrow. (Runts and me, our plan was to take it easy and get into Tehachapi in two 12-mile days, and after so many longer days, I certainly was going to stick to the plan!) So they headed out but Runts and I stayed, and we found some campsites in a broad ditch dug by a now-dry culvert beside the bridge, and after lazing the afternoon away, we bid goodbye to the rest of the group, then made camp and settled in for the night. And that was the day! A pretty good one: I got to see a beautiful sunset at Hikertown (enough so that even the volunteer staff got their cameras out), and a stunning moonrise (it was so big), then got to see a total lunar eclipse, then a dawn (albeit the sun rose into clouds, but still those bright linings in the breaks of the clouds, where the cold gray-blue bulk of the night-cloud meets the hot bright-white slivering from the sun--so nice), then a moonset. And then a whole afternoon just lazing around. That's a good day! 

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Some notes:

-- Hikertown > California Aqueduct > Wind Farm > Cottonwood Creek Bridge

-- As we headed out at 2am, Kemo played cuts from "Dark Side of the Moon" out loud on his phone. Seemed appropriate!

-- Today I met again Dean, who was surprised to see me--he thought I was ahead but, clearly, not so. He had gotten to the Lake Fire closure two days before, hitched into Lake Hughes to grab a bite, stayed somewhere I don't remember, then come into Hikertown yesterday. Dean was his usual amicable self, the same friendly guy who had first struck up a conversation with me back on the porch of Stagecoach RV Park. He was genuinely happy to see me again, and greeted me almost as soon as I entered Hikertown. It was good to see him, to catch up with where he was at, and later, under the bridge, we would get to talk some more. I did get to tell him that I still needed to hear him play--he had been fiddling on the piano keys as I had been leaving Idyllwild--and told him that he was playing chords, actually chord progressions, with transitions and everything! More sophisticated stuff than I do, certainly. He's been playing the piano for some time now, and plays it mostly as a form of expression, of gathering up all the experience of life and letting it come out in music. Makes sense: his day job is providing relaxation and meditation via various sounds (including a gong if I remember correctly), so music is his jam (excuse the poor pun).

-- Walking around Hikertown, I heard someone calling out my name, and I turned and who should it be but Jailbreak and Emily, and soon Gretchen as well. They were surprised to see me, thought I had gotten far ahead, but no, I had stopped to get my second vaccination shot. We need to get that too, they said, and they were planning to get it in Tehachapi, only they needed Pfizer which was evidently harder to schedule (I suspect because it's been approved for teenagers, so the supply is more constrained). Anyway, it was good to see them again, to smile and chuckle a bit as one would do with friends you haven't seen in a while, and to see that maybe I wasn't so far behind after all!

-- Today I got to talk to Gazelle. I mentioned Gazelle at the Acton KOA entry I believe, but he had gotten ahead of us--no surprise, he's *fast*. In the night, we had passed a seemingly random person camped out by the side of the road in the desert: that turned out to be him. He caught up to us, and I ended getting to talk to him some in the morning, before he took his breakfast at 7am. Gazelle is  construction worker back home, does metal-work like welding, specializes in hand-rails and windows. He's essentially an independent contractor from what I gather, so can take time off, although the PCT is rather long, and he'd like to restrict himself to one-month long trips after this. He's hiked some long hikes in Japan: one that goes around an island (whose name I forget), and one that goes north-south across the main island. I asked which he prefers: he couldn't decide. The first has the ocean and visits many beautiful temples, the second goes up and down over the mountains of Japan, both very good. He *hasn't* done Fuji, mostly because while he admits the silhouette is very beautiful, evidently the mountain itself is a bit trash-heavy, on account of all the people who climb it. As for the PCT, he's looking ahead to the Sierras, where he plans to take it easy, buy a lightweight fishing pole, and do some fishing and cooking. (Now, context is important: Gazelle is *fast*--when someone asked him how many miles he planned to do today, he casually said 34, and I believe he can do it--so I'm not sure how slow "taking it easy" actually amounts to! Dude, coming into the bridge, we actually saw him jogging--jogging!--in the desert heat, his silver sun umbrella clearly visible, along the road. And this is not an uncommon thing for him!) Gazelle is a really nice guy, very unassuming in manner, but always amicable. And, though he doesn't give off this impression at all, if you think about it, very bold: to be in a foreign country, with the limited English he has, and still do the PCT?--that takes more guts than I have!

-- I spoke with Runts quite a bit today, which is actually true for most days we're hiking together, even though I don't mention it here. I think it's because Runts has such an easy-going conversational style that, while there are plenty of stories, they glide by so smooth and easy that they don't stand out in my mind afterwards. But they're in there, nonetheless! So some notes on Runts: she always seems to find work with animals. Makes sense: she used to compete in equestrian (preferring the timed events to the judged events), and even has her own horse. But she's worked at the Aquarium in Long Beach, she's worked at Disneyland taking care of the horses and dogs (both those employed by the park and those that the owners leave for baby-sitting while they wander the park) and also cat-trapping (there are feral cats at Disneyland, and every so often they trap them, catch them, neuter them, clip their ear, then release them back into the park to help keep the rodent population in check), and she's worked most recently at the pet supply store. Oh, and she has a beef against Star Wars due to her work at Disney: when they installed the new Star Wars Land--whatever it's called--they uprooted (among other things) the stables, and those had been there since the beginning of the park. So Runts rather proudly stays away from anything Star Wars related; hasn't seen the movies I don't think.

-- Other Runts stories: there's the Mount Whitney story. She has climbed Whitney before, with her uncles, in the snow, and she got to within almost a mile of the summit, but due to weather had to turn back. (And she has a scary story of slipping on the snow up there, and finding herself with one foot on the mountain and one foot dangling in the air.) So she's rather determined to summit Whitney on this PCT hike: it's strictly a matter of vengeance at this point. One result of this, though, is that she has a ton of information on the Sierra portion of the PCT, based on her own experience (from Kennedy Meadows to almost-the-summit of Whitney) and also her extensive research. In fact, I spent a good chunk of the evening picking her brain about the Sierras, from where to stop and resupply, to calculations of days between towns, the whole kit-and-kaboodle!

-- Other Runts stories: once when taking care of her horse, she heard a loud bang in the stable, and quickly looked up. But her horse also reacted, and she hit her head on its teeth. She checked and her hair felt wet, but she had been riding so thought that was just sweat, wiped it off on her riding pants and continued on. Then she looked down and saw that, nope, that's blood. She finished up, then called her mom (who's a nurse) and asked about what to do. Did you black out?, her mom asked. No, Runts said. Then it probably wasn't a concussion, her mom said, and you're fine. So Runts finished up, then went to work. She called ahead to let work know about her condition--are you sure it's ok to come into work, they asked, sure she replied--and they insisted that she not bend over so she decided to just do computer work for the day. Only when she looked at the screen, the letters kept getting jumbled up: she found she had trouble reading. So they sent her home. Do you need a ride, they asked, no, she said, I'll drive myself, and so she did, and went home, and went to sleep. Anybody who knows anything about concussion protocol is probably cringing by now, but I will say this: tough one, that Runts!

-- At the bridge, there was a couple, southbounders, who were finishing up after getting waylaid by COVID towards the end of 2020. Like everyone else they were snoozing the heat away, but instead of below the bridge, they had found a spot on a ledge up close to the rafters. Towards the end of the afternoon, they stirred and then started packing up. She glanced down, saw us, smiled embarrassingly, then said there's a bobcat up here. What?, we said. Yeah, she said, there's a bobcat up here. I'm looking it in the eyes right now, he said, pulling on a shirt and looking into the rafters, and it's got two kittens. And they calmly got their stuff together and gently moved. The group was heading out about now but still, we had been sleeping under a bridge with a bobcat in the rafters? And they had been sleeping within just a few yards of that bobcat? Hmm, well, if it hadn't bothered us yet, then likely it wouldn't bother us tonight, so I didn't think much of it as I set up my tent further down the dry creekbed, and I dont think Runts worried about it much either: she cowboy camped that night!