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Our original plan was to hike out in late afternoon. However, especially Bigfoot wanted to stay for another night, so we agreed upon leaving early Tuesday instead. The Andersons’ Casa de Luna really did live up to its reputation to be the hardest place to leave on the whole trail! I used the unexpected extra time to work on my journal. Sleeping in after an exhausting day felt really good. I finally managed to get out of my tent when the rising sun started to turn it into an oven. For breakfast, Joe Anderson was serving delicious pancakes to all hikers. What a great start into a zero day! We had decided to stay at least another night since we had almost no time left to relax at the Saufleys in Agua Dulce after taking care of all the food shopping, mailing and the other chores. I spent most of the day working on my journal at a nice and quiet spot in the backyard. For dinner the Andersons served taco salad again. I could have that every night! Yummy! Bigfoot left at sunrise trying to outrun the expected heat. Stanimal and I were ready to go at 7:50 a.m. There were no natural water sources for 25 miles between Agua Dulce and Green Valley. We had left Hiker Heaven with 4 liters of water per person and had to go 3 more miles to the first water cache maintained by the Andersons, trail angels based in Green Valley. When we got there, we found the cache almost empty. Stanimal and I managed to extract the last two liters which we shared equally. We later found out that the cache was restocked just minutes after we had left. The heat was almost unbearable now. We had to make it another 6 miles to the hiker oasis, a luxurious cache also maintained by the Andersons. Soon I was completely covered in sweat. Every time we stopped for a short break, hordes of biting flies started attacking us and drove us crazy, so we had little choice but to keep moving. At 12:30 p.m. we finally arrived at the oasis, the outpost of the Andersons’ famous Casa de Luna in Green Valley where we would stay for the night. The huge cooler fully loaded with ice cold sodas and the camping chairs in the shade of some trees were like heaven as the temperature was knocking at the 100° F mark in the shade according to the thermometer at the oasis. Besides Stanimal and me, Mojave Rain, Cheeks and Elk were at the oasis. We stayed until 4:20 p.m. when the heat finally started to level off a bit, and then set out to get in the final 7 miles to Green Valley. The trail was slightly downhill, so we could move fast and arrived at the Green Valley Ranger Station at 6:30 p.m. Only minutes after Stanimal had called the Andersons, Joe Anderson showed up with his van to give us a ride to his house. However, we did not take off right away, but waited for the other 4 hikers that came down the mountain a couple minutes after us. Upon our arrival at the Anderson’s Casa de Luna, we were greeted by numerous other hikers and Joe’s wife Terrie, and were then given the welcome tour around the large property which included a nice Manzanita forest in the backyard where most of the hikers set up their tents for the night. At sunset dinner was served: huge amounts of the famous Andersons’ taco salad to satisfy all the hungry hikers. I love taco salad, but after today’s 17 miles through the heat it tasted even better! I had always wondered how many calories the huge amount of food would contain that we ate day in day out on the trail. So before repackaging yesterday’s purchase, I did the math and came up with a whopping 73,000 calories for 16 days (this equals about 4,500 calories per day). They say that a thru-hiker burns through 5,000 – 6,000 calories a day, so I would still lose weight if I did not make up for the missing calories while in town. Sorting the huge amount of food and packing the resupply boxes for the Sierra Nevada took the better part of the day. I also took a serious look at my gear and send everything home that had turned out to be unnecessary or did not work as planned to lighten my pack. Snow related equipment such as the Whippet trekking pole and long underwear was sent ahead to Kennedy Meadows. Since Hiker Heaven implements a maximum stay of two nights, we were required to leave before dark. At 6:30 p.m. we were finally done with all our chores and ready to go. We thanked Donna Saufley for the great time we had at Hiker Heaven and then headed back to the trail. Using our headlamps, we hiked until 10:30 p.m. to complete the 2,000 feet climb out of Agua Dulce in the cool evening hours. Right at the end of the ascent, we found a good spot to set up our tents for the night. After a much needed sleep in, I spend the morning taking pictures of Hiker Heaven and doing resupply planning both for the upcoming leg of the trail to Tehachapi and the first part of the High Sierra starting at Kennedy Meadows. We had to mail food ahead because there would be no sufficient resupply options at Kennedy Meadows. At 12:30 p.m. Stanimal’s Aunt Carrie and her boyfriend Jim from Ventura paid us a visit. Also Wendi, whom we stayed with in Wrightwood, came over for a visit. Carrie and Jim took Stanimal, Wendi, Bigfoot and me out for lunch at a barbeque restaurant in the neighboring city of Santa Clarita. We had a great time! After lunch we went to Walmart to buy food and other supplies for 16 days – or biggest resupply so far. Carrie and Jim had to take off to Ventura again while we were still shopping. Unfortunately, Bigfoot left his camera in Carrie’s car, and Carrie did not notice this before she and Jim were almost home. After some debating, we agreed that the only practical solution would be an unplanned road trip to Ventura to pick up the camera at Carrie’s house. Wendi was happy to provide her car to accomplish this. After little more than an hour we arrived in Ventura, Carrie and Jim welcomed us into their house, and Bigfoot was happy to have his camera back. We did not stay long, but before heading back to Agua Dulce, we took a short detour to the pier at the Pacific Ocean since it was only a few blocks away. Also a short stop at Starbucks was necessary to tank some caffeine for the trip back. We got back to Agua Dulce at sunset and spent most of the evening relaxing and chatting with other hikers. Bigfoot left the campground early because he wanted to walk slower to not worsen the pain in his left shin that he had felt since last night. Stanimal and I took our time since there were only 11 miles left to Agua Dulce where we would take a zero day at the famous Saufleys’ Hiker Heaven. The hike was nonetheless exhausting because of the heat, so we took many breaks along the way. After the Highway 14 underpass, Stanimal hiked ahead with Swiss Miss, but unfortunately took a wrong turn at a trail junction, so I rolled into Hiker Heaven one hour before him. Hiker Heaven was located on the outskirts of Agua Dulce, and it was huge! The Saufleys had indeed established a well thought through enterprise on their property that carried the name Hiker Heaven for good reasons. Everything a hiker could have ever wanted was there. Laundry, showers, camp beds inside huge tents, hiker boxes, mail station, computers, free Wi-Fi, grills, kitchen, fridge, TV, movies, piano, library, and more. For me, there were four packages in the mail, so I spend most of the afternoon unpacking and sorting through my stuff. Later Stanimal and I used two of the free bikes provided to ride back into town to pick up some steaks at the grocery store for dinner. Our bodies were yearning for protein replenishment after the 5 exhausting days of hiking. The steaks were great, even though we had to put them into the oven after we could not get the grill to work (the gas was probably depleted). I estimated the total numbers of hikers staying at Hiker Heaven to be more than 30 today, among them many familiar faces, but also many new ones. Thank you, Donna & Jeff Saufley, for having us hikers at your house! I did not sleep well this night. The humming sound of the high voltage power lines near our camp site kept me awake for a long time. Then, at about 3 a.m. a rustling sound woke me up. First I thought, the wind was blowing at the plastic bags containing part of my food. But after a while, I was pretty sure, it must have been something else. So I switched on my head lamp and was starring at a fat mouse sitting right on top of my food bag. I do not know if the mouse or I was more startled at first. After the first moment of surprise, I felt really pissed about having a mouse inside my tent in the middle of the night. My first strategy to chase it out of the door failed miserably. So I reached for one of my socks, put it on my right hand and somehow managed to grab the mouse’s tail. As I was holding it up, it was helplessly looking at me. With my left hand, I grabbed my camera, activated the flash and tried to aim it at the uninvited visitor hanging head down from my right hand. After I took some shots, I opened the door of the tent and threw the little beast as far away as I could. In the morning, Stanimal laughed his ass off, when I told him the story about my nightly visitor and showed him the pictures. Bigfoot had already left for an early start, so it was just Stanimal and me hiking together this morning. According to the map, the official fire detour took a strange and indirect route today even though there was an obvious shortcut visible on the map. We had noticed this a day earlier while at the McDonald’s and had called Halfmile (author of the detour map) to ask him about that. Apparently, due to some private land issues, they could not promote the shortcut as the official detour, but between the lines there was no problem in choosing this alternative. Stanimal and I decided to give it a try and save ourselves about 3-4 miles of road walk. The shortcut turned out to be the right decision. Along the way, I had the chance to take some good close up pictures of a horned toad that was perfectly camouflaged by looking almost the same as the surrounding soil he was sitting on. At 11:30 a.m. we arrived at Blum Ranch near the town of Acton which was listed as a water source and break spot on the detour map. We were welcomed by the owners Elizabeth and Ray and offered a shaded place to rest and sit out the heat of the day. They told us the story of their ranch, how it was founded over 110 years ago and how they lost a lot of their trees and land in one of the last wild fires. Half an hour after us, Bigfoot showed up, too. We had passed him by taking the shortcut while he did not. When the temperatures began sinking again in late afternoon, we left Blum Ranch to complete the last miles to the end of the fire detour at Soledad Canyon Road. We arrived at the KOA campground at the end of the detour at 6:30 p.m. and decided to stay there for the night when we found Tomer and Fuzzy already set up there. The fire detour happened to pass the small town of Little Rock within a mile. Among others there was a McDonald’s, so would have a perfect place for a long lunch break to sit out the heat. We left camp early at 6:40 a.m. to get there before the heat would become unbearable. The road walk turned out to be less crappy as we had feared, since there was almost always a wide enough shoulder we could walk on. So it was more like a very boring and monotonous trail than a paved road walk. As we stopped for a last break on the outskirts of Little Rock, a huge Sheriff’s truck pulled over a 100 yards away on the other side of the road. We did not really see what was going on there, but as we passed the truck after our break, the officer offered us ice cold Gatorades for free. Wow! I had never been offered a free drink by the police before! We arrived at the McDonald’s at 11:15 a.m. and took a very extensive lunch break until 4:30 p.m. Besides eating, we used the free Wi-Fi to catch up on emails, journals and phone calls. Since three smelly and dirty hikers would not go unnoticed, some people came up to us asking what we were up to, and we would tell them our stories about the trail. After the heat had died down sufficiently, we continued the road walk to get in some more miles so we would be able to complete the detour by the end of the next day. On the dirt road leading out of Little Rock back to the official detour, we encountered a huge rattle snake right on the road. Finally a rattler that was easy to photograph! Back on the detour, a car pulled over, and a lady offered us to stay at her place for the night. After some debating, we decided to decline her offer since it would have messed up our plan to much. But it sure was hard to forego hot showers, a home-cooked meal and a night inside a house! Shortly before sunset we found a place to camp for the night. Unfortunately, some people had trashed their old furniture and some other junk there. But flat spots were rare along the road, so we took it. For dinner we shared 40 Chicken McNuggets we ordered at McDonald’s for take out before we left. Stanimal and I are no good at getting up early, especially when it is fricking cold outside. This morning was one of the colder ones, so early riser Bigfoot had to wait for us until 8:30 a.m. to leave camp. We made it to Islip Saddle, where the PCT crosses Highway 2 again, in little more than an hour. I fell behind because of ongoing pain from my shin splints. Bigfoot and Stanimal were waiting for me at the picnic tables at the parking lot. Islip Saddle marked the beginning of the fire detour around the vast area of the Angeles National Forest that was reduced to ashes by the devastating Station Fire of 2009. 57 trail miles beyond Islip Saddle were closed for recovering efforts and for safety reasons. The detour itself was 47 miles long. On the one hand, this would save us 10 miles to our next stop in Agua Dulce, but on the other hand, meant a 37 miles walk along paved roads which is barely something to look forward to. Before continuing to hike, I had to do something about my shin splints since Vitamin I alone was obviously not doing the trick. I taped my lower left leg really tight with Kinesio Tape in the hope of providing some additional support and holding the whole thing together. Apparently this was a good call since hiking was considerably easier and way less painful. The detour led us down South Fork Trail towards South Fork Campground. After a freezing cold morning next to snow patches, the temperature now rose quickly as the trail lost elevation quickly. Even though I had less pain, I was still hiking slowest, so I rolled into South Fork Campground last. I found Bigfoot, Stanimal and a few other hikers sitting with a Latino family who was spending the Memorial Day Weekend at the campground. They invited us to join them and offered us so many drinks and so much food that we could barely walk anymore afterwards. The ribs from the grill were the best ones I have ever had. It seemed to be incomprehensible to them to hike across the whole country, so they had lots of questions about our thru-hike. Bigfoot left a little earlier, Stanimal and I continued our hike towards Devils Punchbowl County Park at about 3 p.m. After crossing the river next to the campground via rock hopping, the trail climbed steeply to a saddle and then dropped again into the neighboring valley. Due to the increasing heat, hiking up and down the hills was rather sweaty business. The seismic forces concentrated at the nearby San Andreas Fault were clearly visible in this area. The movement of the earth’s crust had slanted the rock layers in a very impressive manner so they were now sticking out of the ground at an angle of about 45 degrees. Stanimal and I arrived at the County Park shortly before sunset, but missed the tail magic provided by some ex-hikers by a few minutes. Bigfoot, however, was able to save two bottles of Gatorade and a couple oranges for us. Because camping was not allowed within the county park, we had to move on a little further. It was road walk from now on for a whopping 37 miles to Soledad Canyon Road where we would finally rejoin the PCT at the end of the fire detour. Just about 15 minutes outside the county park, we found a nice spot next to the road to set up our tents and cook dinner. |
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