5.30.18. 21.9 miles.

Just another day of hiking out on the PCT! Nothing too exciting happened today, except for the drastic shifts in scenery and coming upon full water caches!

I didn’t get a great sleep last night, which was a bummer bc it was a nice night. The morning was pretty nice. We walked in the forest for a little bit and through a field of these super nice flowers that smelled like amazing flowery laundry detergent, and then had a long, gradual descent to the first road with a water cache. I topped off my water there, and started my cold soak for lunch - ramen.

The climb out of the water was not very fun at all, and super exposed and hot. I listened to my podcast for the climb up until I ran into LOL and Butters taking a break. I took a short one with them but then we pushed on to our lunch spot at another dirt road that had cell signal, per guthook’s. We found Hot Mess there, under the shade of a Joshua Tree and we hunkered down for our lunch break & rest time. During that time we tried to come up with a plan for Walker Pass, but the only thing that’s set in stone is getting the bus from the pass on Friday morning and going into Lake Isabella.

The afternoon climb was pretty terrible. About 1,000 ft but the trail was just complete sand. Every step I took, I slid back another half a step or sunk in a foot into the ground because of how deep the sand was. It was not fun. I lost Hot Mess & Butters pretty much once the climb started getting steep, but I ran into Dead Zone near the top on her phone bc there was service! I took a poop break and then we left together to tackle the rest of the climb. After the worst of the climb, it was all downhill to Bird Spring Pass, where there is a water cache and the spot we all agreed to camp for the night. It’s super windy at the pass and there’s not the greatest room for tents, so LOL and I are cowboy camping next to Hot Mess & Butters. Hopefully I’ll get better sleep tonight! I did take a Benadryl before dinner bc I’ve been so stuffed up and it will hopefully help me sleep better (and I’m getting droopy-eyed writing this).