Cottonwood Creek Unmarked Tentsite (534.9) - Tehachapi Willow Springs Rd (558.5) | Mileage: 23.5 + 1.1 (Walking to dinner in Tehachapi)

Our post-Hiker-Town-dystopia continues. Kidding, everything looks different and less foreboding in the daylight. Well, mostly kidding, because the people were zombies and the post-apocalyptic scenery persisted for a while.

We woke up and were out of our tent at 6:15 which was supremely speedy and impressively early and something we would’ve liked to brag to Sweet Pea about except that of course he was already packed up and long gone. Oh well, what can you do. Somehow overnight about a billion other tents had materialized, some quite close to us, which was a little jarring to realize that they set up without us hearing while we were sleeping and they must’ve gotten here real real late. Guess they did the real Hiker Town late evening exit, wonder if they’d say it was worth it?

Anyway we continued walking on the post-apocalyptic sometimes dirt sometimes concrete road surrounded by wind turbines and weird concrete and metal boxes and aggressive no trespassing and deadly electric current signs and desert scrubby brush and nothing much else. Until a lone dirty white Jeep comes barreling at us down the dirt road (which still fits the post apocalypse vibe btw) and we’re like WTF ASSHOLE, until we realize it’s a young woman about our age driving it and we’re like DAMN SHE’S COOL. Ohhh oh stereotyping and assumptions and defying gender norms.

And then we turn off the road onto the familiar single track trail of the PCT and head deeper into the wind turbine field. Which is absolutely massive by the way. And also windy. Which obviously is why they put the wind turbines there except it’s aggravating to walk for miles and miles and miles when you are getting smashed by wind that is trying and succeeding at blowing you off the trail and you can’t talk or think or eat or do anything but attempt to make mostly futile forward progress and have delusional half-thoughts like maybe the wind turbines are creating the wind and if they stopped spinning that would make the wind stop (super logical, cause and effect totally not mixed up). Or, I bet when we get to the next fence or the next wind turbine the wind will magically stop and it will be quiet. And obviously when we get to those points the wind is still blowing just the same and I set more half delusional targets for where the wind will magically stop. And this repeats for hours until finally the half delusional wish worked, i.e. we hit the start of the foothills which are very effective wind blockers.

And that is where we saw zombie person number one! Zombie person number one is splayed out totally asleep right smack dab in the middle of the trail in their sleeping bag (well actually like a few small feet to the side of the trail, but you get the idea). It is 9:00, broad daylight, already quite hot, and given everyone else is usually up way before us it’s wild and truly quite the event to be seeing someone still totally out at this time of day.

So we immediately lower our voices into a half whisper and tiptoe around this zombie person and carry on, now fully in the foothills back on the classic flat ribbon of sandy-dirt carved halfway up into the side of the hills that has been our steadfast, familiar friend for the last month-ish. And which also makes the landscape feel much less dystopian and apocalypse-y. And then we see Sweet Pea on the trail ahead of us, where basically our side switchbacks down into a valley where there’s a river and then crosses the river and switchbacks up the other side and he is there on the other side as we do big arms in the air waving and he sees us and does the same back YAY!

But despite all this normalcy, we soon encounter more zombie people. Or in other words, we hit the stream at the bottom with a bunch of tents and cowboy set-ups surrounding it and see more people totally conked out even though it’s hiker noon (i.e. 9:00). And we see some awake people too that are not really awake seeming because they are totally space-y and out of it and look like they should be sleeping but instead are seeming to be sleepwalking around in slow motion.

And one of them is Sin Nombre!! Which is totally crazy because how did he get ahead of us when we left Hiker Town soooo much earlier than him yesterday and didn’t see him pass us today? But apparently, he hiked all night long, along with the rest of these people and that is how. He left Hiker Town at 4:00pm, hiked until 10:30pm, then woke up at 3:00am and has been going ever since. And these other people left at 6:00pm and hiked until 3:30am. And seriously, we are HORRIFIED. I mean truly just appalled but impressed too because that sounds MISERABLE and I totally would’ve just been like eh nvm it’s late let’s just do a short day. And still besides the fact that it seems to have become somewhat of a rite of passage or a tradition or whatever to night hike this section, I simply do not get it when the weather isn’t that hot and in fact is the same degree of hotness and minimal shade as literally every other day we’ve been out here hiking. But that explains why there are so many zombie people today I suppose. 4 hours of sleep or less is not sufficient imo.

So we refill our water and listen to the very exhausted people who just woke up chat to each other about how they are tired and how they maybe will do short miles today and how they maybe will have a lot of their instant coffee. And then we are off again because we need to catch up to Sweet Pea and then stay up with him since Alaina his girlfriend is our ride to Tehachapi and of course it would be very rude to delay them.

And we come around the corner of the first switchback and Sweet Pea is there waiting for us!! Which once again makes us both very happy and also feel very bad because it’s so sweet of him and we are excited to see him but also oops we made him wait again because we were slow talking to Sin Nombre and filling our water and eavesdropping on the zombie people.

And we walk with him for approximately 5 minutes but we are now going uphill which is Maddie’s nemesis and also we haven’t eaten real breakfast yet, only bars, and not enough food is her other nemesis and the two combined makes her a zombie in slow motion. So it’s clear we absolutely have to stop at this very moment like RIGHT NOW and fall behind Sweet Pea again even though he so very patiently waited for us to catch up with him and is also very clearly impatient to get to Alaina asap.

So we sit down and eat our oatmeal with chocolate and I am timing this break and planning to move us along after 10 minutes. But then someone comes by and we get chatting and find out this person is Tony from Michigan and we get so sidetracked chatting that the minutes go by and then it’s been 25 minutes and we are late and also we absentmindedly ate all the oats (we had been planning on having just half because we are almost out of food and still have 16 miles to go and need to be rationing). OOPS.

So of course we are now once again very behind poor Sweet Pea who really wants to get to the trailhead to see his gf and we are probably slowing him down whoops. So we start zooming up the uphill, no breaks, chatting about confidence and weirdness which is a great distraction honestly. Basically Maddie says that she is interested in the fact that I have really weird, niche interests (her description not mine lol) but somehow I am not embarrassed about them not being “cool” preferences and I talk about them in a confident, socially savvy way that makes other people think those interests (and I myself) are cool even though its not the stereotypically “in” sort of of activity or personality. And that makes other people like me and get drawn to me and stuff. And she is wondering how that occurs or is possible (this conversation is also an ego boost for me ngl). And I think about it and I think this is all true but also because I like the attention I do sort of seek it out. And then I think about Maddie and I think she could be the same way, except that she is so modest that usually she is not hyping herself up, other people are (to an insane degree ofc). And that if she was more attention seeking I think we would get really similar social reactions from other people. So I tell her this and we go back and forth ideating about attention seeking and confidence and arrogance and coolness and why people display certain behaviors and if these are changeable or just person-specific fundamentally ingrained ways of interacting in society for each individual.

And then we run out of conversational steam because the uphill is very long and hot and dragging on sooo very slowly.

But finally we hit the water source, which happens to be a huge barrel thing filled with water by some trail angel from some stream somewhere. And Sin Nombre is there (how does he always arrive everywhere first but tell us he couldn’t possibly hike with us because we are too fast???! We ask him this but he doesn’t have a good answer just says we are too fast! Hm.) and so is Sweet Pea and they clearly have been there for a while. So instead of eating our cold soaked rice (the last of our food besides some chocolate) which isn’t even done anyway we fill up our water quickly and head out right away with Sweet Pea (my stomach, for what it’s worth, is very vey grumbly hungry but as I’ve mentioned repeatedly we are on a zoom to get to the trailhead for Sweet Pea and tbh I am also really ready to be done and in town where there is yummy food and showers and sitting).

We keep going and just when I am thinking I am going to have to pull a Maddie and sit us down and eat even though we just re-met up with Sweet Pea who waited for us (and disclaimer we are only like a mile from the water we just left at this point) Sweet Pea announces he has to dig a cathole and disappears off the side of the trail and I think thank god we can hike a bit more, have a head start, and eat without slowing down or inconveniencing him at all woohoo!

And that is exactly what we do. But then of course Sweet Pea catches us just as we are finishing eating and within minutes is literally a small speck far ahead of us because he is absolutely moving ridiculously fast and we cannot keep up which is fine at this point because we only have six miles left and it’s all downhill and we think maybe he should have a few minutes alone with Alaina before we barge in.

The six miles absolutely drag even though it’s downhill and I listen to all of the new RKS album and all of the new Cage the Elephant album and all of the Plastic Picnic and we are still not there and just in case you forgot how the PCT works, for this entire six mile period we can see the trailhead that is our destination so close to us but we are weaving back and forth and back and forth on imo completely unnecessary switchbacks that means our forward progress occurs at a snail like pace.

But at long last we hit the last turn before the trailhead and there are a few trees so I decide I should pee so that I’m not super uncomfortable on the drive and I do and I think I flash a whole family that suddenly appears around the corner but no matter because we are done done done!! And we walk up to Elaina’s car and chat with her and Sweet Pea and she is super nice and gives us moon pies and cheese sticks and I devour them and her dog zooms around and is really cute and we pile into the overloaded car that HAS A SKATEBOARD and Maddie is staring at it like it’s the most beautiful thing she’s seen in forever (you’d think she could stare at me like that but she generally just looks at me in horror/disgust on the trail because my face is usually coated with dirt such that it looks like I have sideburns and eye black paint like we used to wear in kids soccer to be cool alas).

And then we’re driving and we try to chat but the wind is too loud and so are the road noises and we end up just looking at all the wind turbines that we are zooming by so fast they are just blurs (always crazy to be in a car after so much walking) and the breeze and the sitting feels like heaven and then we are at our hotel and we are showering and it is bliss and then we walk to a Thai restaurant and eat plates and plates of food and have a Thai tea which is also bliss and I feel so good.

But there are no ice cream places (well one place two miles away where every review is horrible and comments about spoiled milk and scams and food poisoning so that doesn’t really count). And we are like what are we supposed to do we are in town we must eat ice cream! But then we find a cute coffee shop open til 8:00 that has smoothies and is phenomenal and super cute and sort of like something I’d expect to find in Brooklyn and we sit in there on a couch and drink our smoothie and journal a bit and it is luxury.