Day 34 – 36 mile 558 – 624
Even though the bed was comfortable and I slept well I woke up at 6am and wasn’t able to fall back asleep. So I watched the Moto GP on my phone, after missing two of the races I could finally see one again 🙂
Around 9 the 3 of us were awake and we started packing our bagpacks, getting another shower an calling home.
This took almost 3 hours and we left around 12 ready to get our resupply. The first supermarket was cheap, but didn’t had enough of the food we needed so we had to go to another.
We walked only a few yards on the side of the road when a car stopped and offered us a ride to the hardware store where we wanted to go.
Jeff drives around Tehachapi on weekends picking up hikers and driving them around for free. He offered us swiss chocolate and after a few minutes we arrived at Big5. He gave us his number to call him when we needed a ride back after shopping.
I got a new gas-canister because I didn’t want to carry 2 half empty ones. There are always half empty canisters in hiker boxes but because I need food for 7 days I need space in my backpack.
I bought one of the fancy hikerfoods for 10$ reach just to try them, but for the rest of the resupply I got the cheaper version which are from 2-3$ and some ramen for 39 cents.
Resupply takes usually 2 hours because I just wander around in the supermarket to see what they have instead of hurrying up. We wanted to head put late, so there was no reason to stress myself.
As everyone was done, I called Jeff and he took us to the Thai Restaurant where we’ve been yesterday. We had lunch and dinner there.
Jeff drove us afterwards to the trailhead where we started just after 6pm for an 8 mile stretch to the next highway.
The evening walks into the sunset are amazing, it gets cooler and therefor one can enjoy the hike more then if its burning hot during the day.
When I arrived at the highwaycrossing with Manuel we took a few pictures and waited for 90 minutes to see if Julia would arrive or not. But she didn’t answered her phone and we continued hiking at 10:30pm.
After 3 more miles I set up my tent and Manuel continurmed for 2 more miles.
The night was windy and way to short.
I snoozed my alarm twice before getting up at 5am but before I left I spent an hour playing with my phone.
I didn’t felt well, I couldn’t walk fast and my stomach was hurting a lot. I lost the battle against my body and had to trow up only 30 minutes into the hike.
Unfortunatly it wasn’t better afterwards, the next miles uphill were horrible but I was running low on water and had to get to the next watersource which was 17 miles from my campsite preferably before the heat in the afternoon.
Manuel passed me, I had started earlier then he did, and he told me that I wouldn’t look good at all… well thanks for that…
After having second breakfast I started to feel better and I was able to pick up a normal pace. But because I lost so much time during the morning I got into the heat and I was running very low on water.
I tried to rationise it a bit but ran out luckily just 1 mile before the watersource.
There were a lot of new faces at the source but I just took some water, drank it and then slept on the ground for an hour. When I woke up, I cooked some ramen and fell back asleep right after cleaning the bowl.
I left the source at 4h30pm for another 10 miles before I got to my campground.
I reached the campground at 8pm, set up my tent and cooked the fancy meal.
I won’t buy those meals again, they need a lot of water, this one did missed a lot of salt and you habe a huge amount of waste to carry… only good thing is that ypu dont habe to wash your bowl.
I got up at 5 and left the tentsite just before 6am. The first 9 miles were only uphill so they took me a bit longer as I thought but I felt good 🙂
The views were georgeous the whole day.
I didn’t made to many breaks because I had big plans for today. I only carried the minimum of water to the next source to save as much weight as possible.
For lunch at 1pm I had already done 16 miles!
But the goal was to get to the 1000km market by the end of the day so I had to do another 10 miles more.
Nevertheless I took a nap of an hour and started fresh into the afternoon hike 🙂
At the watercache 8 miles later I was terribly lucky, after 12 hours of walking I arrived the exact time as the guy who was filling the cache up and he had some trailmagic for me
After this amazing refreshment I felt good again and did another 8 miles before I arrived in the dark at 9pm set up my tent, cooked and went straight to sleep without even washing my bowl. Bad idea as I learned the hard way the next morning…
One does not simply do the dishes after walking 50km 😉