Saturday May 17, 20.5mi/33.0km

Old Ridge Route (139.6/3550ft) to La Liebre Hills PCT (160.1/3470ft) (CA)

I awoke to a wet tent, and much to my surprise a cold (40s) and very foggy morning.

It wasn’t raining or even sprinkling but the wind was blowing the fog so that it condensed on surfaces. I hiked in my raingear most of the morning as my umbrella was relatively useless in such conditions. After 3 miles I came to the site of the old Tumble Inn.

It had a concrete water tank which was easy to get water from. Apparently previous hikers had to use a straw or hose to siphon it out of a small opening.

I didn’t need to get much water since it was only 48°F/9C, and the Misty / foggy morning continued as I turned onto a dirt Forest Service road to climb up to Liebre Mountain.

A couple hours later and I was on the top of Liebre Mountain, which had some cool artwork.

It was cold so I continued for a couple of minutes to join the PCT.

As soon as I started to descend the mountain I came out of the cloud.

It was cool to suddenly see the entire valley below me, where I will be hiking for the next couple of days. The PCT is such a well-maintained trail, I didn’t have to worry about brush or poison oak.

It’s even marked at all the little road crossings.

Looking behind me I could see the top of the mountain was still shrouded in the clouds.

Looking to the Tehachapi mountains to the North, and the valley with Hikertown, the famous PCT resupply stop.

I had descended over 2,000 feet from the mountain, and I was now in the Mojave Desert again. It had also become quite windy so I looked for a sheltered place to camp and found one in this dense grove of Scrub Oak and Manzanita bushes.

It’s a pretty sweet camp spot. I can hear the wind roaring above me but there’s not even a breeze here.