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Day 30--Grass Mountain Road to Hikertown

Day 30--Grass Mountain Road to Hikertown

Otter's 2021 PCT Thru-Hike

Written Wednesday, 19 May 2021

Okay, I need remedial training in camp site selection. What a windy night! That breezy spot overlooking Grass Valley turned into a wind tunnel overnight. Wow! That didn't help me sleep.

Surprisingly, given the circumstances, I still decided to sleep in a little, and I didn't get on the Trail until about 0600, after the sun was well above the far horizon.

I left Taquito, snoozing in his sleeping bag, but just around the corner, I found Kitty, who had come up early to find some cell signal. He's trying to order a new tent to be delivered to him up the Trail.

I don't know how those early hikers managed it before smart phones. And I'm not being ironic here. The smart phone has completely transformed the hiking experience--nit necessarily for the better or for the worse, but certainly for the easier.

Kitty is just finishing up his transaction so we fast-walk down the Trail together for an hour or so, having a conversation about our off-Trail lives. Kitty is a bartender, most recently from Austin,Texas who has already thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. He's also quite speedy, and, by the time we arrive at Lake Hughes Road, I'm panting.

Unfortunately for hikers, Lake Hughes Road is the start of another long road walk around a fire closure area, 14 miles of pavement to bypass about 20 miles of fire-seared trail. A lot of PCT hikers will hitch around the closure, but Kitty and I are still trying to preserve our "continuous foot-path from Mexico to Canada" hikes, so road-walking is the order of the day.

We take a right turn and first head down into the town of Lake Hughes. We've both heard of a good restaurant in town, and we figure to get some breakfast there. Alas, when we arrive, we discover that the restaurant doesn't open until lunchtime.

They are missing out on good business from hungry morning hikers!

At Pine Canyon Road, we make a left and head out. The shoulders on the road aren't very generous, but the traffic is pretty sparse (mostly vehicles from crews that are clearing burned trees from the area) so we don't have any trouble sharing the road.

A couple miles up Pine Canyon Road, we pass an ostrich farm that somehow escaped the blaze. But, sadly, no ostriches this morning. Maybe they are sleeping in. Darn. That was probably the only chance I'll ever have to pet an ostrich. Foiled! Well, that will have to remain on the bucket list.

Shortly after we pass the ostrich farm, with its lazy ostriches, Kitty decides to break for a snack. I continue on, sure that me will catch up because he is such a fast hiker, but I don't see him for the rest of the day.

Unlike my last road walking experience, just outside of Wrightwood, this one doesn't have great views or anything else to recommend it. Just mile after mile of burned trees. It's sad to know that, in this area, many people lost everything they had worked for during their entire lives. Just devastating.

Along the way, I stop and talk with some of the crews who are clearing unsafe, burned trees from the land. They say they are working hard and are concerned for what this summer may bring since the winter and spring have been so dry.

If the road-walk doesn't have anything to recommend it, at least I make pretty good time, and I get off the pavement by 1315. Somewhere on that paved stretch we passed the 500-mile mark on the PCT.

At the Trail junction, I decide to eat lunch and get some water from a nice water cache that someone has left for us poor, parched hikers.

I notice an RV parked about a hundred feet down the road, and, while I'm eating, a couple emerges from the RV and approaches the trail junction where I'm sitting.

Jim and Denise are from Seattle. He is hiking the PCT, and she is driving the RV around to meet him at accessible road crossings and trailheads. That way he gets a bed, a shower, and decent meals a lot more frequently than the rest of us. Now that's the way to hike!

Denise asks what my trail name is, and I tell her it's Otter. She smiles and says that sea otters are her favorite animals. Turns out she is a long-time volunteer at the Seattle Aquarium and she actually helped raise an orphaned sea otter pup to maturity. We have a long-ish conversation about sea otters, and Denise really knows her stuff! Very impressive. I mean, what are the odds that two sea otter enthusiast meet at a Trail junction in the desert, discover their mutual interest, and have a chance to talk about it? Crazy! Long-distance hiking is full of coincidences like this.

Jim and Denise head up the Trail. She's going to do a couple miles and turn around to backtrack to the RV. He will continue on to Hikertown, which is also my destination.

After some water and snacks, I finally found the motivation to hike the last 6.6 miles if the day. The Trail wasn't particularly difficult, but there was definitely a noticeable change in the terrain. Thus is our first tiny taste of the Mojave Desert, and this terrain is much drier, dustier, and more tan than what we have been hiking through for the last couple of days.

It's also hotter! The temperature must have gone up by 15 degrees while I was resting back at the road junction. Still, I have plenty of water, and the trip into Hikertown is do-able. By 1600, I'm there.

How to explain Hikertown...? It's kind of a hiker hostel built in the style of a western movie set, except it's a western made by Looney Tunes. But not the high class Looney Tunes. And most of the hostel guests sleep on the ground on the dusty cartoon Main Street or behind the sets, where Yosemite Sam and Petunia Pig hang out smoking cigarettes between scenes.

Anyway, there's a picture above.

Honestly, if this place we're anywhere else, nobody would stay here, but it is located at the very beginning of the Mojave section and a very dry stretch so 90% of northbound hikers stay here to regroup before the drag across the desert. Plus it's donation-based, which means people pay whatever they feel like paying. I dropped a 20 for my overnight stay on the ground.

I did get a ride to the local convenience store/short order restaurant where I had a delicious Filipino breakfast for supper and took away a breakfast burrito for tomorrow morning.

Into the Mojave tomorrow...

But I'm safe, dry and wsrm-ish here in my little corner of cartoon land


Miles hiked today: 37.7 Total Miles Hiked: 517.6

NOTE ON TODAY'S MILEAGE:. I didn't actually hike 37.6 miles today. More like 27.5, but 14 of that was around another fire closure, and my hike today (including the re-route) brought me to mile 517.6 on the PCT. Today's numbers reflect the trail distance rather than actual miles hiked.


Sea Otter Fact of the Day: When rafting, sea otters have been seen holding paws with each other to avoid drifting apart while napping.

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