Day 45: Everything Always Goes Wrong
May 25, 2017
Mile 608.90 Landers Trail Camp to Mile 630.87 Bird Spring Pass
I think the desert felt bad that we’ve had to hike it in such a wet and mild year because today the PCT was like, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” While the temperature wasn’t all that high, at least compared to what it has been, there was pretty much no shade for a good 20 miles. The whole landscape was sage, Joshua trees, and desert scrub resulting in miles of open and exposed wasteland. Our only salvation was a steady breeze that took the edge off the heat. Seemed to be the theme of the day, though: adversity followed by some form of consolation.
Lil desert nubbin.
Since we were expecting to have to hike 35 miles with no water and iffy water caches we packed out six liters and camel’d up at camp before leaving. About seven miles in, though, we came across a water cache with water and ice cold Strawberry Daiquiris. Overly fruity watered down alcohol never tasted better.
After getting nearly 15 miles in by noon, Glow Worm and I stopped for lunch (Dr. McDirty and Cougar are still a ways behind us). It was a very small patch shade under a Joshua tree with cell service (a rarity in this section of trail). Sadly, Glow Worm had received an email stating that her payment for the purchase of her new shoes had been denied and she was supposed to be receiving them in Lake Isabella in a few days. We already were going to have to spend long than planned so Cougar and Glow Worm could receive their packages due to the delay with Memorial Day, but if she wasn’t able to sort it out then it would either push us back even further or would force her to walk another week on her already very worn out shoes. So she called customer service and it looked like she was going to be able to sort it out, but for the package to arrive by Tuesday she would need it sent overnight due to the holiday weekend. The problem though is that you can’t ship FedEx overnight to the post office so we had to call the hotel where we planned to stay and ask, but just as she was wrapping things up the call ended due to the service dropping for some reason. We tried a few more times but were unable to connect a call. At this point Glow Worm was pissed and dejected. She’s already been struggling with foot pain since she has about 500 miles on this pair of shoes. So we hiked on in hopes of finding sere elsewhere in this God forsaken place. Finally after about half an hour I was able to get enough service to call the hotel and confirm we could send a package there and for Glow Worm to reorder her shoes.
Then, while at camp, I was halfway through cooking my meal and ran out of fuel and I have one day to go! Fortunately I was able to borrow Glow Worm’s fuel to finish it up. So despite all of these mini disasters it wasn’t a bad day.
Our accommodations for the night à la Joshua tree and sage brush.
