Monday May 19, 23.6mi/38.0km
Cottonwood Creek PCT (178.8/3120ft) to Oak Creek PCT (202.4/4110ft) (CA)
It wasn’t a great night of sleep, as I had to move my tent to the other side of the juniper bush when the wind shifted direction. At 11pm, ugh. I finally got moving this morning at 7:30am and finished the easy hike along the aqueduct.
A mile later I came to the usual cottonwood Creek faucet.
LA water authority makes a big deal that they’re giving us free water and yet they’re stealing millions of gallons of it from the desert every day. After that I entered the wind farm area, nice to see that it hasn’t really changed since 2015.
That sign always gets me, electrocution danger but it’s okay for PCT hikers, haha. I saw wind turbines all morning.
After gradually climbing for a couple hours I came to Tylerhorse Canyon, the other water source for today.
I saw a couple groups of hikers lounging by the creek, and talked to them for a while while I took a break. It seems most of them started the PCT the first week of April. I told them I started April 6th….of 2015, ha! I started the climb up out of the canyon, but they had slightly rerouted the trail since 2015 and since I was hiking off of memory, I actually lost the trail. Embarrassing. I checked my maps and quickly regained the trail, and chatted with a fun trio of hikers, they were from New Zealand, England, and USA/NY. I love signing the trail registers, even though I don’t know any of the hikers out here, it’s fun to see the creative trail names.
I saw probably hundreds of lizards today, most of them moved too quickly to get a photo, but this one stayed perfectly still.
I kept climbing gradually up over a ridgeline, good thing it’s not hot today, this would be miserable.
At the top of the climb, a local trail angel had left a water cache along with a bunch of chairs and shade structures. Amazing!
I don’t remember this being here in 2015 but the sign says they’ve been doing it every year since 2001, so I probably just missed it in the cold foggy day I had that year. The descent off the ridgeline was very gradual and took the rest of the day, as the trail weaved in and out of every little side gully.
At the end of the day I made it down to Oak Creek, which is just before the first road into Tehachapi/ Mojave. I love that they label the water sources and also that it’s in metric.
I set up my tent under some trees next to the creek so it was protected from the wind, which I could hear above, as all the wind turbines were turning. As I was setting up my mattress, I noticed I had started to develop the bulge of death. Darn. I’ll have to contact Thermarest to get a replacement… again.
Tonight’s campsite is so much better than last night, protected from the wind and also next to a flowing creek. which means there will be humidity and maybe mice, but there won’t be wind!