Start point

Walker Pass, mile 653.3

End point

Tentsite at mile 666.3

Miles hiked

Lucky 13

Wilderness area

Owen’s Peak Wilderness

People I met

Sunshine

Moe

Stay Gold and two others

Karate Kid

The day on trail

I’m really glad I skipped ahead a bit. It ended up being 85 miles, which is the entirety of Section F of the PCT. It’s a comically short section being from Tehachapi to Walker Pass. It’s really nice to be with Sinead; I’ve missed my trail family.

Today was all about getting our legs back. She’s nursing a knee injury and I’m just wanting to get my trail legs back. I’ve missed the strength I’ve felt cranking out 18-23 mile days by the late afternoon. I love the how I feel when I have a long day hiking and still feel energized by the end of the day.

So far my new shoes, the Lone Peaks, are working out well. The sides fit really nicely and tying them with a heel lock seems to help. I’ll really know more in 100 miles how they’re holding up, though I’m cautiously optimistic right now.

Walker Pass is hot. And it’s named for a colonist, Joseph Walker. Lots of these areas are name for colonists or people who died there. Forester pass: settler. Donner Pass: the famous Donner Party (ironically my phone autocorrected “Donner” to “dinner”).

We need to take it slow so Sinead can heal her knee up, and the heat combined with so much time off means lots of breaks. It’s nice being back and it’s extra nice taking it easy knowing we’re near the end of the Southern California desert.

The first section of trail today had so many caterpillars. Like, so, so many. They had eaten through many of the flowers and were crawling all over the stems and all over the trail. I didn’t get many photos because we were focused on hiking. I just couldn’t believe how many there were.

The Joshua trees had started to bloom and I’d never seen them. I loved it. It was so big.

I enjoyed the views throughout the day because you can really start to see the changes in terrain. It shifted so much as I went through the day. The first of these is looking back at the desert, the others are progressing as we get closer to the Sierra. I can’t get enough of the changes in textures. Even the air has a different quality.

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About halfway through the day we found this sign. I couldn’t tell what it was until we ran into some other people. It’s obviously 25%, but the percentage sign looked odd to me then. So…we’re 25% done with the trail!

I hiked the Tahoe Rim Trail in 2019. I remember lots of scree in in Desolation Wilderness, which is part of the Sierra. So what came wasn’t a surprise, and I’m hoping there’s not too much of this.

It’s just exhausting to walk on. And with my new shoes having less cushion, I can feel the rock edges a lot more. But at least it’s not washed out trail! And at least my feet stay dry!

I found this vertebral column of some animal. It interested me.

Sinead was flying up the hills.

We came across this sign — you know I love a sign.

It was to what would be our last chance for water in a normal year. There was a small stream a half mile before this we were able to fill up from, so we didn’t have to go off the main trail.

After a little further I found a really cool funnel web spider web.

Shortly after that we set up camp nestled in some shrubs with pine duff all around. It was wonderfully sheltered.