Here is the 17th installation of my PCT trail journal (about two weeks off the present timeline as a safety precaution).

In this section I was supposed to make it to Acton where my friends Chunky Chuckwalla and Smiley were going to join me for the weekend. But all of the negative emotions and lack of motivation that had been dogging me over the last week or so had finally come to a head, and I had to get off trail early at Hughes Lake for a little R&R.

Follow my thruhike in section-by-section blog posts, or in daily posts on Instagram or Facebook (@JustAGirlAndABackpack.Blog). Please attribute all spelling/grammar errors to autocorrect and exhaustion at the end of the day.

---

Statistics for the second part of my journey are as follows:

Statistics for this section (Tehachapi to Hughes Lake) are as follows:

---

PCT 2021 Series: Friday November 5, mile 2164.8, Zero in Los Angeles (0 miles, day 35)

I zeroed in Los Angeles at Andrea’s beach-view house. Unfortunately the fog was low so I couldn’t actually see the ocean, but it was still a beautiful home. Didn’t get out of bed until 11am, and breakfast was a massive honking omelet made by my gracious host. In the lighting of her kitchen I noticed my fantastic sun-glove tan: the OR (for Outdoor Research) was outlined on the back of my hand, about an inch above my wrist was a line where the glove ended, and my fingers from the second knuckle down were considerably darker than the rest of my hand. I spent the rest of the day and much of the night using Andrea’s old laptop to set up my blog posts, stopping only for pizza dinner and a few hours of chatting and laughter. I literally had 4 full days of food left somehow so I didn’t need to do a resupply. I used a bit of bleach to clean out my water system for the first time since getting on trail, and I’m so glad I did because my cnoc vecto was smelling so badly from the gross water sources I had been drinking from for so long haha. I have a lot of fun with those two, and I’m so grateful they gave me the opportunity to rest up for two nights at Andrea’s house before I got back on trail again.

---

PCT 2021 Series: Thursday November 4, mile 2155.9 to mile 2164.8, +2.4 to Lake Hughes (11.3 miles, day 34)

I woke up around dawn with some more control over my negative thoughts. I was able to think of things that made me smile, even if the smiles were a little strained and fake. They say that even if the smile is fake, it can trick the brain into thinking you’re happy, and might help trigger some of the happy chemicals that the body makes naturally.

• 

• 

The trail through here got even more crispy and barren: either the fire had been a lot hotter and had burned more of the plants completely, or there had just been less plants in general.

• 

• 

• 

• 

It was clear though that the fires had caused some major erosion problems, since parts of the trail were washed away and there were deep cuts through the little valleys that had formed in the contours of the land.

• 

One of the water sources was located in a burned out grove of trees, and looked like a flat concrete slab that collected rain water into an underground tank that looked, smelled and tasted like it was full of rotting plant material. This was probably the grossest source yet, so I had to put some flavor packets in my water to make it drinkable. The water was still a brownish color, though, even after filtering.

Something strange about this section of trail was several clumps of what I can only describe as long, silver hair coming out of the ground. I literally have no idea what it was. It looked like someone had taken a person with thick, long, silver hair and buried their entire body, except for the hair. But in multiple locations. It was very strange and not a little disturbing, especially once I had the thought of it looking like human hair. I used my trekking poles to give the “hair” a tug, but it was firmly in the ground.

• 

The only spots of color in the whole landscape were some beautiful prickly poppies, that looked like matalisa poppies until I saw the thorns, and the new, red tips of the manzanitas resprouting from their burnt stumps.

• 

• 

• 

I stopped at one point after crossing a road so that I could use the toiletries. I was in the midst of squatting over my cathole when gun shots rang out very close to me. I quickly pulled my pants up and went to the road, hoping that at least I’d be more visible and less mistakable for a deer, and saw three men with guns dragging a deer into their pickup. They must have shot it right on the road while they were driving, but if that’s the case I can’t imagine why it took three shots to get it. (I kind of wondered if they accidentally hit it and they were putting it out of their misery.) One of the guys was saying “Hay una persona allá.” And one of the other guys was saying “¿Dónde?” and ” No es nada. No es nadie.” It WAS somebody! It was me! I was thinking “Please don’t shoot me”. Also the drips and the puddle of fresh blood on the road was the most blood I’ve ever seen in my life. They drove by my spot on the road very slowly, waved and then kept going, but they circled back around. It was a weird interaction.

• 

Thankfully, right after this section the burned area ended and I had no more interactions with hunters. But that’s about the last of my luck for the day.

• 

I arrived at the first natural water source I’ve seen in awhile that still had water: a little spring that runs across the trail, surrounded by poison oak (no leaves) and columbines (which shockingly still had a few flowers on them, albeit very sad flowers).

• 

I sat down to eat lunch, read my book, and get a feel for the rest of the day by looking at guthooks, but somewhere between looking ahead on the map and reading the comments people had left, I began to spiral down into thoughts of what would happen if I got off trail and took a break with a shower and real food.

I went so far as to call the Rock Inn in Lake Hughes to see if I could get a room for the night, but when they answered and told me that the hotel part of the inn had shut down during COVID and never reopened, I finally cracked.

“My first tears on trail!”

Slowly Dying

I called my mom and the moment she asked how I was doing I started crying. My first tears on trail! Who’d have guessed?

I asked if she could ask some of her friends who live in Los Angeles to see if one of them could come pick me up and bring me to somewhere where I could get a shower and a comfy bed for the night. I was really hoping that those creature comforts would be enough to perk me up and get me back on trail. She was worried about me and texted some of her friends before she had to get to a work appointment, and she told me she’d let me know if she got any hits.

I told her I was going to do the two mile road walk into Lake Hughes and get some real food at the Rock Inn (the bar and restaurant hadn’t closed). I also had the backup plan of staying the night at the local ostrich farm (Quail Run Ranch) if I couldn’t find a way into town that night.

I took a left onto the highway and, trying not to get hit by any cars on the windy road, and I walked with my thumb out in case anyone wanted to take pity on me and bring me into town (they didn’t). The town is one of those places where the real estate is probably pretty cheap, so it was an interesting combination of nice looking homes that someone was able to spend more money on since the land itself was cheap, and homes that looked like they were barely standing.

The inn itself was in fact made of rocks (or at least it had a rock facade), and a very nice waitress let me pick my seat. I decided to be outside since it was a nice day and the interior of the building was dark and didn’t smell very good.

• 

I got a bacon cheeseburger with avocado, tater tots and a Stella, then called David to update him on my change in plans.

• 

Andrea, the family friend who had driven 4 hours one way to help me get to town out near Lone Pine, texted me and said if I needed anything, she could be there within an hour and a half. I hadn’t texted her for help originally because she had already done so much for me, but since she was offering, and since my mom’s other friend in LA was considerably further south, I couldn’t say no.

“…he didn’t think I was having fun anymore”

Chris, a family friend

My sister called to see if I was alright, and we chatted a bit. Then my dad called to check in on me as well and he said something that resonated with me. One of his friends had been following all of my blog posts for awhile now, and he told my dad that the tone of my posts had changed. He said he didn’t think I was having fun anymore.

“And you know what, I think he was right. I think I was lonely, homesick and burnt out. But I was also really not wanting to quit. What an anticlimactic place to just give up the ghost”

Slowly Dying

And you know what, I think he was right. I think I was lonely, homesick and burnt out. But I was also really not wanting to quit. What an anticlimactic place to just give up the ghost.

A man and his 10 year old son (I want to say their names were Aaron and Peyton, but I can’t remember almost 7 days later as I’m writing this) came in for dinner near sunset, and I got to talking with them. They were locals. He worked in Hollywood so you can imagine his shock when he learned what I had been doing since July, and the bigger shock when he learned I was hiking alone, and couldn’t believe I had a long distance boyfriend while on trail; I got the vibe that he was wondering why my bf would allow me to do something like this, but he only asked what my mom thought lol. He seemed pretty disillusioned of relationships, though, so I cut him some slack.

Two other folks came out to smoke a cigarette, and on their way back inside one of them asked me some questions about the PCT and bought me another beer.

Andrea and her friend pulled up outside the inn and I gave them both big hugs and profuse thanks for being so amazing to come and get me after dark, in LA traffic. Top notch trail angels right there. We grabbed dinner at The Kettle, which was super rich and I could hardly eat more than a third of the pasta dish I’d ordered. (Lunch for tomorrow!) Then Andrea set me up with clean towels, a bed upstairs, a shower, clean clothes to sleep in, water, and anything else I needed. I got clean and snuggled into the bed where she had turned a heating pad on to keep my toes warm. Thank you Andrea.

• 

---

PCT 2021 Series: Wednesday November 3, mile 2142.1 to mile 2155.9 (13.8 miles, day 33)

I woke up in my tiny little clearing where I had shoved my tent, and had a very good view of someone’s house on the hill directly above me.

• 

The chaparral was just like my home growing up, before it burned last year, except that it looked maybe 20+ years “younger,” since the signs of the last fire were still obvious and the shrubs themselves were shorter and less dense. Today was just not my day unfortunately.

• 

• 

• 

In the first mile I came upon a road with a small water cache, which I took .75L from, and I sat on a rock for at least 15 minutes (maybe more since I can never tell how quickly time passes when I’m reading) before finding a little motivation to keep moving.

• 

• 

A little, not a lot, because not even 2 miles later I stopped again on a very slight uphill and plopped myself in the shade underneath some buckeye trees and started reading my book again. The falling buckeye nuts gave me a start each time they hit the ground because it took me a few minutes to figure out what the sound was.

• 

I made it a little further, but by then I convinced myself it was time for lunch, so I chose a nice spot under the shade of the black oaks. The orange leaves of the oaks superimposed over the bright green of the fresh grass had a lovely appeal. A group of five or six older folks walked by me, and some of them clearly knew about the PCT but one of them thought I was joking when I said I was walking to Mexico.

• 

• 

• 

The oak grassland in this area really was beautiful, reminding me even more of home.

• 

The trail crossed a road and on the other side the land had clearly gone through a recent burn, because the commentary on Guthooks suggested that earlier in the year the section was closed and people had to road walk around it. It was especially interesting, and perhaps especially ugly, since the fire hadn’t burned so hot that the trees burned to ash. Instead the black scraggly branches of oaks, mountain mahogany and manzanita remained in stark silhouette against the sky. The only way I could tell what those plants used to be was from the little sprouts coming out of their bases as the plants regrew.

• 

• 

Some of the plants that were sprouting looked almost prehistoric, and others clearly were accidental seeds that just randomly had the chance to grow since the fire had removed the shade, or maybe because of the nutrients left in the ashes. Although a sad sight, the regrowth gave me hope for the regrowth of my childhood home.

• 

• 

• 

At some point I hit the 500mi to Mexico mark, but it didn’t feel like that much of an accomplishment since I hadn’t really done 2,153mi.

• 

The water sources here were just as whack as some of the last ones I’d encountered. One was a corrugated metal roof about three feet off the ground that was slanted towards a little drain the emptied into a tank underneath it; to get the water, a person has to crawl under said roof and reach into the scary darkness of the tank, where leaves and other things float around inside. Another water source was a massive concrete cylinder that has a history of animals crawling into and dying, only to rot until someone fishes them out.

• 

I followed a trail of plastic bags down the trail, picking them up as I went, and the last bag had an entire roll of toilet paper: why do people suck?

• 

• 

At the edge of the burn zone a small grove of cedar trees had met their end, and inside of the grove I saw my first poison oak since coming down out of the mountains to cross the Columbia River at the border of OR and WA.

• 

“It was just thought after thought after thought saying I should give up and quit and asking what I’m still doing out here”

Slowly Dying

I called David for a little moral support to try to have something to focus on other than all the bad thoughts that were running through my head, but there were enough silent spots in our conversation that the thoughts didn’t go away. I couldn’t seem to do anything to quiet my mind. It was just thought after thought after thought saying I should give up and quit and asking what I’m still doing out here. I made some really unpleasant freeze dried stroganoff for dinner and it made me miss homecooked meals so badly, since my dad makes a mean strog.

• 

• 

I almost stopped at about mile 13 when there was a sign to a campground, but just barely was able to push on another .8mi. I stopped for the night when I just couldn’t stand listening to my shitty thoughts for another second, and I was really hopeful that a good night’s sleep would help my brain settle down and give me some new perspective. I camped in a bare patch of earth in a meadow with all of the storm doors open on my tent, since it was warm and the fresh air is always appreciated. A little kangaroo rat was scurrying around, but the odor proof sack must be enough to keep them away from my food because she didn’t try to get into my tent. While I was getting into my sleep clothes I found a very small tick crawling on me, which prompted me to check everywhere I could see, which leaves a lot to be desired and is just one more reason to hike with a partner.

---

PCT 2021 Series: Tuesday November 2, mile 2129.7 to mile 2142.1; (12.4 miles, day 32)

I woke up in the middle of the night to the wind tearing at my tent. I closed my storm doors, tightened all the guy lines, and pressed down all the stakes, then passed out again.

The less than 7 miles to Hikertown were brutal, with those new hot spots from my little 30mi adventure the day before giving me some serious grief.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The road made a turn and then the aqueduct pipeline was above ground. It passed by some homes with pretty horses, and few homes with very aggressive dogs, one of which was on a rope and the other which I’m shocked didn’t jump over the short fence and come get me, because he looked like he wanted to.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Then the road turned again and the Aqueduct was an open, concrete river with lovely blue water and ducks floating along trying not to get their wings caught in the wind.

• 

• 

I finally got to Hikertown, opened the gate into a massive yard, and saw a veritable ghost town: little sheds with an old western façade, labeled Sheriff, Bank, Tavern, Hotel, etc. With nobody in sight, it was a little weird, especially since there was a private residence at the center of it. I used the bathroom then called the phone number on the wall to get a ride to the market and cafe a few miles down the road.

• 

• 

Alex showed up in a van, decked out in some steampunk style glasses and armband. I grabbed some traditional Filipino adobo for lunch from the cafe and then charged stuff while I did some things on my phone with the wifi. I chilled there the whole day, not really in a hurry since Chuckwalla and Smiley were planning on joining me on trail in Acton on Saturday, which was a good bit less than 20mi/day away. Also, my feet were not up to the challenge of more walking just yet.

• 

I stocked up on some candy and electrolytes since the market had some new options I hadn’t seen before. I probably could have carried only 2 days of food from Tehachapi and done a full 5 day resupply here, but enough people had commented on Guthooks about the expense and some of the items having gone bad that I didn’t want to take a chance. I also didn’t see any good dinner options for backpacking (but I didn’t really look).

• 

I had street tacos for dinner (not super good) and then Alex gave me a ride back to trail. It was newly dark, and the first thing I saw as I crossed the road was a sign saying the PCT crosses through hunting club land, so be careful from 8am to 4pm during the hunting season. Which was right now!

• 

The ecosystem around the trail became very similar to home, with chemise and mountain mahogany over-growing the trail, and snatching at my clothes and skin with stiff, spiky branches, and even the rocky dirt made me feel nostalgic.

I saw one of those shooting stars that affirms the fact that they’re hunks of space rocks that have been skipped across the Earth’s atmosphere, only to burn up in little blasts. It crossed a good portion of the sky, flaring so brightly, and each “bounce” showed that more of it had burned away.

---

PCT 2021 Series: Monday November 1, mile 2099.7 to mile 2129.7 (30 miles, day 31)

It was cloudy and windy all day today, which was a blessing and a curse because it was too windy to wear my hat or use my sun umbrella, but the sun wasn’t as scorching through the clouds.

• 

• 

I walked from one wind farm into another one, or maybe just a different section of the same farmland, but either way I was looking at windmills the whole day, and even got up close and personal with one as the trail crossed a maintenance road.

• 

• 

• 

• 

There’s a spot where the trail crosses the private property of a man named Daniel. He has a little setup for hikers called the Tehachapi Cafe, which includes some metal chairs, an umbrella, a water cache, a log book and a snack cabinet. Pretty sweet. I gave a $5 donation since I took some of the fresh fruit. There is a chipmunk that seems to live in the water cabinet and just chirps and makes a general ruckus in there.

• 

• 

• 

• 

From here, the trail is a long series of switchbacks and traverses that dip steeply down into eroded flashflood valleys that have wiped the trail out in places, and then shoot back up out of them on sandy trail that can’t seem to stay stable and is falling down the hills in some places.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The rabbit brush here was still at peak flowering, so the hills were dotted with beautiful yellows, but the smell of their blossoms is a strange combination of sweet honey and rotting garbage, so although visually appealing, the smell is atrocious.

• 

I met a man who was doing a section of the PCT to close a gap in the sections he’d already completed from about 200mi north of Mexico all the way to up north of Shasta. He asked a lot of questions about water and the caches available and I gave him my answers.

• 

I saw three of the staples of the American southwest today: a roadrunner, a jackrabbit and a tarantula! I’ve been keeping an eye out for a tarantula since I started heading south again, so the lil baby one I found was an exciting discovery.

• 

At dinner where I sat huddled behind a juniper to help block the wind, I tried out nutritional yeast on my fancy ramen, sprinkling it like cheese like my vegan friends do. In my opinion, it looks like fish food and doesn’t taste much better.

• 

• 

There are so many ants in the desert, and different species too. Ant holes abound.

• 

I spent the entire evening road walking through the wind farm and then along the LA Aqueduct, which was when I realized I would probably never get such a flat, smooth experience again, so if I wanted to try to beat my current PR for miles in one day, today was the day.

• 

• 

I was already tired by mile 20, but to PR for this section, I had to beat 22.3mi. To beat my PR from the earlier section I did before the smoke and fires kicked me off trail, I had to beat 23.3mi. And to beat my all time record, I had to go more than a marathon (26.5).

• 

At mile 22 I was thinking to myself, “Well, if I get at far as 26, I might as well go for a nice round 30 and really just blow my PR out of the water!” Easier said than done! I gave poor David a call and woke him up, but he chatted for a bit and supported me to give the 30 miles a try.

• 

After the 20mi mark I was stopping nearly every 2mi to take my shoes off to rest because my feet were just in excruciating pain. I also had hot spots developing on the inside part of my heel, which I didn’t recognize as hotspots until it was too late and I had a blister nearly formed.

I became very vigilant for a time when I heard coyotes in the hills nearby that set off all of the dogs in the surrounding area. Not only was I worried the coyotes would come give me a sniff, I had also read on guthooks that there have been some very unfriendly dogs here that chase people in this section.

• 

I was so so so ready to be done moving before I got to 26mi, but I was also so close to my goal and I knew I could rest in Hiker Town next day even if I died today. I saw some pretty good shooting stars as I walked with my light off, enjoying the ease of travel, although not loving how the hard packed ground hurt my feet.

• 

By the final mile, my feet hurt so badly that I was watching the map intently. I was looking so closely that when it hit the 30 mile mark, I immediately dropped my bag and set up camp. I wonder if I could have gone even farther if I didn’t have the extra food, water and winter gear weight?

---

PCT 2021 Series: Sunday October 31, mile 2087.1 to mile 2099.7 (12.6 miles, day 30)

I had hoped to sleep in today but no such luck. The day started out foggy, although that would burn off soon enough.

• 

I played on my phone for a bit, making 3 playlists: songs to memorize while hiking, songs to hike to, and songs that remind me of thruhiking to listen to when I miss being on trail.

I left $40 and a thank you note on the bed for my hosts to find later, took the sheets off the bed, and started repackaging my resupply since Cheryl wouldn’t let me help prep breakfast. I ate some tasty banana pancakes with Cheryl while Ted watched football in the other room, then returned to finished prepping my food (for 7 days) and water (for 50 miles).

I put the Sawyer filter I’d found in their hiker box, and took out a sun umbrella to use in the desert, worried that there would be more days of near heat exhaustion. I had to rig some new cord to my backpack strap so that I could make the umbrella stay on, but it’s not super secure and needs some work. I also tried to put Velcro for my gaiters on my new shoes but it wouldn’t really stick; just one more reason to hate them rip.

• 

Cheryl was gone when I was ready to go, so Ted took me to the trailhead, stopping at the bakery for me to grab a sandwich. He wouldn’t let me buy him lunch as a thank you, so I’m especially glad I left the cash.

• 

I crouched in the shade and wind protection of a bush along the frontage road where the trail ran parallel to the highway to eat my lunch, then hiked for ever and ever up the switchbacks with my enormously heavy pack. Probably the second heaviest pack I’ve ever carried at 46ish lbs, second only to the whopping 68lbs I had to carry while guiding a group in the Cottonwood Canyons when I was a guide for UCSB Adventure Programs.

• 

• 

• 

As the trail approached the wind farm, the wind started howling and tugging at my pack. I had to put my headphones away, which was all the better since I had started Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish, which is a tough book for a native Spanish speaker (like any of our old classics that we force high schoolers to delve into with the help of a teacher, extra literature, and research papers), and was nearly unintelligible to me. I’ll have to pick a book that’s not set in the 1600s and written in Castilian Spanish and hope it’s more comprehensible before I come back for this one!

• 

• 

The wind farm was a slog. Uphill and windy, with only shrubs and windmills as far as the eye could see.

• 

• 

• 

Something cool that I noticed though, was the plants were responding to the inch of rain they had received last week. New green leaves and twigs were poking up on mallow, mormon tea, and oaks; black mustard and poppies were resprouting from the base of their dried out branches; little tiny seedlings were popping up everywhere on the trail; and plants like datura and buckwheat that had given up flowering early this year popped out a few final blossoms.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

There were also some areas with some sort of squash, pumpkin or melon in little pumpkin patches (not sure if they’re native), which was so exciting for me because I was sad I wasn’t able to dress up and celebrate Halloween. I popped one of the round fruits off and carried it with me with the intention of carving a jack o’lantern during dinner.

• 

• 

There was a bench just outside the wind farm with a water cache and a list of trail angels where I started heating my pasta water. I got out my multi tool, took the top off the pumpkin (it smelled like pumpkin, idk), cleaned out the innards, and carved a little face in it. Then I tried to get some leaves and toilet paper to burn inside of it just long enough for a pic, with only minimal success.

• 

Some day hiker ladies from LA walked up as it was getting dark and asked a lot of questions and seemed excited to meet a sobo hiker.

I called David and we chatted as I hiked through the rest of the wind farm area. He got to hear how I respond verbally to glowing eyes in the night 😂 and we made plans to see each other before Thanksgiving. I’ll be getting off trail for a week or two to see him and my family. He passed out but I had to keep walking for a bit longer to find a camp out of the wind.

• 

---

Thank you so much for reading! What’s your best trail angel memory? Comment below!