Day 32 – The Summer Solstice
Originally published on Mason Hikes the PCT 2017.
Mileage: 11, since I counted the 15 after midnight this morning in yesterday’s mileage. Camped right before Joshua Tree Spring at mile 663.
It’s the longest day of the year! Hooray! 🎉🎈🎉 That also means that the thing I’ve been hiding from for the past three days is going to be out for the longest of any day of the year. ☀️😓🌵
I caught the 7:30 AM (actually around 8:00) bus into Lake Isabella, which was an adventurous drive taking mountain road turns at max speed. The scenery was amazing though and the driver was super nice, so not bad for $3 (actually $5, I need ones).
A lake!!!!
I got dropped off in town and immediately went to the grocery store to buy the few snacks I needed for my trip to Kennedy Meadows and then went to a café for a large protein smoothie (yummm) and some “hobo spuds”, even though I hate potatoes. I then went outside and immediately regretted it. It was a solid 104° out and it sure felt like it too. I wearily walked over to the hiker-friendly trailer park and set about organizing my things. I did my laundry, I took a shower, I plugged in my accessories, and I started reading about the Sierras. It was at this point that I realized that I had messed up.
My bear canister filled with food and my microspikes is not going to get to Kennedy Meadows until after I am planning to be gone. Whooopsies! I had told my resupply person to send the package too late and then I hiked 95 miles in 60 hours to make it even worse. Time for a new plan! I’m still working out what that plan is, but it likely means re-buying a bear can and microspikes in Kennedy Meadows, hoping I can return or sell the old ones, and resupplying in one of the Sierra mountain towns I was planning to skip, potentially by hiking down Mt. Whitney. We’ll see… Every day is a new adventure!
During all this commotion, I was hanging out in the trailer park rec room with Hot Toes and Drippy, who had a lot of helpful insights into planning for the Sierras. It wasn’t going to be helpful to worry about it now, so I came up with a basic plan and called it a day. After that was done, we continued watching some home remodeling shows and eating hiker box junk food, and everything was right with the world.
Since my basic plan required extra food coming out of Lake Isabella, I had to walk back to the grocery store and get even MORE snacks. The prize of this trip to the store was some Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake spread, which I can’t fathom eating in real life but sounds delicious to add to a peanut butter taco. Mmmmm… calories!
After resupplying, I met up with some other hikers and we completely filled the bus back out to the trail with about 25 smelly humans and one cute dog named Bandit.
Everyone wanted to hide in the shade until the sun went down, but Drippy and I decided to get the first climb out of the way before dark and hiked up to a spectacular dinner spot overlooking the desert cities. We sat and talked for a while before deciding that we could make it to the Joshua Tree Spring tonight and sleep near some water, though reports say that the water has a bit too much uranium for humans, so we’ll see how it tastes. Maybe I’ll grow some extra legs to help with the hiking. One can only hope…