Tuesday May 20, 8.5mi/13.7km

Oak Creek PCT (202.4/4110ft) to Highway 58 (211.1/3840ft) (CA) -0.2mi correction

I started super early today as I had to catch the bus at 9:30, and I had 8 miles of hiking to cover. The trail was pretty peaceful at 5:50am!

I pretty quickly passed by a group of tents, presumably still sleeping. PCT hikers. After crossing a paved road, I entered the main part of the wind farm, it even had an interpretive sign.

This area was expectedly windy and didn’t have any trees but was oddly beautiful, especially in the morning light.

In 2015 I had accidentally missed this little 8 mile section, as there are 2 roads that access Tehachapi, and the trail angel who gave me a ride returned me to the trail in the wrong spot. So I got to see it for the first time!

Today was forecasted to be hot weather, but since I got all my hiking done before 9am it was quite comfortable.

As I started to descend from the hilly windfarm, I paralleled a fence which had this random sign on it.

And a mile later there was a nice bench that was installed as an Eagle scout project.

I definitely had to sit and test out the bench, I can confirm it’s an excellent place to enjoy sourpatch kids while overlooking the valley. The trail descended down to another road where I was greeted by three identical looking friendly dogs.

They had collars but no tags, hopefully they’re not lost. They followed me for a minute and then turned around back to their shady spot. I could hear a train in the distance so I hurried down the road and got across the tracks before a very long Union Pacific train came through.

I got to the bus stop on Highway 58 at 9am, a half hour early but I had plenty of time to sit and relax and snack.

The bus arrived right on time and apparently it’s also free for the month of May. This is a new service, the Kern county Transit authority added a stop on the PCT along their existing route, and it goes to both Tehachapi and Mojave, about five times per day. Sweet.

I was in town before 10am and walked directly to the post office to pick up a package. I love these little towns with their artwork on every building.

Then I walked down to the hardware store to buy another fuel canister, and the McDonald’s to eat lunch and hang out until I was allowed to check into the motel. That was another PCT hiker there, a guy from Germany who is skipping up from here to Mammoth. He was the first German backpacker I’ve ever met whose English wasn’t good so we struggled to converse but it was still fun. At 1pm I walked over to the Erth motel and checked in, dropped off my stuff and then went over to the Family Dollar to resupply.

Uh-oh. Closed. This was my intended option for resupply as the big grocery store is over a mile away and I don’t want to walk that far. Also, I wondered what could have possibly happened that caused the health department to shut down a store that does not serve prepared food. Mystery! I ended up finding a little local convenience store and pieced together a resupply for the 3 days between here and Lake Isabella. The rest of the day I spent relaxing in the motel room and snacking and planning the next sections of this hike, which is being complicated by the snowmelt runoff in the Sierras and high river levels. I called a ranger station and got some advice. I might have to skip the Sierra section and come back to it in the fall, darn. I went out and got dinner at a Mexican food truck a block away and then relaxed while watching movies, flipping between Lord of the Rings, and Weekend at Bernie’s. Good day.

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!

Sunday May 18, 19.6mi/31.5km

La Liebre Hills PCT (160.1/3470ft) to Cottonwood Creek PCT (178.8/3120ft) (CA) +0.9mi correction

I left my cozy little spot in the bushes and had an easy hour like to Hikertown.

When I got to the road there I called the WeeVill Market for a ride, since I knew they did this for hikers. It’s kind of a general store and convenience store with a grill.

The first thing I ordered was a massive breakfast burrito.

For Third Breakfast®, I had a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and some fruit.

After a couple hours I couldn’t eat anymore, and I got a ride back when another group of hikers called for a ride from the trail. Now back at Hikertown, I went in to explore the place to see if it had changed since I had last been here in 2015.

It seemed basically about the same and still looked like an old Western movie set.

They did have a shower setup, so I figured why not.

Their hiker box was massive, featuring the usual assortment of mystery foods, plus at least six pairs of old Altra shoes, insoles, and even socks.

Yuck, who wants used footwear. I spent an hour there socializing with the other PCT hikers and then continued on the trail, along with two other hikers. Most of the hiking today was along the LA aqueduct, which was uncovered at first.

This section is famously dry, with the next water being 18 miles after hikertown. But, I noticed a local resident had set up a spigot and some benches in the shade for hikers. Nice!

There were a couple other hikers already here resting, Stones and WhaleTail. So our group of three hikers had now become five, and the shadeless hike along the aqueduct continued. Last time I was here in 2015 it was a miserable 80°F. Fortunately today it was only 65ºF but also quite windy.

What do hikers do to entertain themselves when walking for 5 hours on dirt roads? For this group, impromptu karaoke, and then a fun current events trivia game, similar to NPR’s “Wait wait don’t tell me”. Eventually after much laughter and loud singing, our voices were tired and we just admired the scenery. I knew I was in the Mojave Desert but I forgot that I would be seeing Joshua trees again. Neat!

There were many hours of walking along the LA aqueduct. At this point it is covered over in cement, so you’re literally walking on top of millions of gallons of rushing water, without access to any of it.

Toward the end of the day we started to enter the area with all the wind turbines.

And by 7pm I had found a nice big juniper bush to set up my tent behind, to be protected from the massive blasts of wind.

There’s actually a high wind warning for tonight, I hope it doesn’t get too bad.

This area is always windy, it seems.

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.

Friday May 16, 13.5mi/21.7km

Interstate 5 (126.1/2520ft) to Old Ridge Route (139.6/3550ft) (CA)

I had a nice relaxing morning in the motel, I slept in and then ate the breakfast I had picked up the night before. After a second shower and also washing some of my gear, I went over to the laundromat and washed all of my clothes. From there it was a short walk to the Wendy’s for lunch, where I charged my phone and downloaded some maps. I had originally planned on getting another Uber to the big grocery store, about 10 miles south on the freeway. But then I saw there was a Dollar Tree in this shopping plaza and that was close enough. After my resupply shopping, I got an Uber back to the trail at 2pm. It was on a paved road all afternoon, but it was very quiet and almost no traffic.

Hey, a free dryer!

After a couple of intersections the road got smaller and also more scenic.

Looking north pretty much all afternoon.

I passed through a tiny village of like six houses and then I was on the historic Ridge Route, which I think used to go from LA to Bakersfield. There were occasional interpretive signs, though some of them were faded or overgrown.

It was a nice relaxing afternoon with easy walking and good scenery, and no navigation or other obstacles to think about.

Such a different hike from yesterday! When it was approaching 7pm I started to look for a spot to camp, which was difficult since the road is on top of a ridge and there’s basically no shoulder. I found a spot on the inside of a curve, and squeezed my tent between a couple bushes and called it a night.

Thursday May 15, 16.6mi/33.6km

Log Cabin Camp (109.5/1530ft) to Interstate 5 (126.1/2520ft) (CA) + 1.5mi updated route

I started off the day with one final Crossing of Agua Blanca Creek, where I refilled my water before a decent climb.

The Potholes trail was nice, it climbed gradually through a forest before emerging in a meadow with an old decaying cabin.

The inside looked like it had been used recently.

I’m not sure why they call this area the potholes but it was a nice meadow.

Pretty soon I climbed up onto a ridge, it was a nice cool morning and a perfect temperature for uphill hiking.

As I started to descend the other side of the ridge, I noticed behind me there was a sign. Apparently I had been in the Sespe Wilderness the last couple of days.

Descending the ridgeline.

Piru Lake to the southeast, I think it’s a dammed reservoir not a real lake.

In the previous meadow the trail was fine, but for some reason in this meadow it just disappeared into the tall grasses.

Trail. If you say so, Forest Service!

Hiking through these flowers was even worse than the grasses, they were tall and tangly.

I emerged at a trailhead area and followed a paved road for a mile before leaving it and crossing Piru Creek.

The guidebook says this is the last water for 28 miles, but I plan to hitch into town at the interstate crossing in 13 miles. For the rest of the day, the guidebook descriptions were optimistically inaccurate about the trail conditions I would be hiking. The first couple miles was on a “nice two-track road”, which was barely a cow path to follow.

Then the next mile was a “defined trail” which led me from the creek up to the ridge. There was no trail, there were only short sections of old trail tread completely obscured by overgrown bushes. It was very difficult to follow unless you were standing directly on it and also squinted just right. I laughed when I saw a smartwater bottle on the ground, generally only thru-hikers carry those and no one would come on this old overgrown trail except Hot Springs Trail hikers. The bottle appeared to be at least a couple years old. I wonder who it belonged to?

After over an hour of bashing my way up that trail to the ridgeline, I was looking forward to the “motocross trail” as the guidebook described it. It was in slightly better condition in that it existed more often than not, but it was equally overgrown.

After a couple of miles of pushing through tall yellow flowers, and thick bushy sections, it gradually got a little better.

I also came across this weird benchmark surrounded by tall overgrown bushes.

Finally, at 5pm I emerged onto a “Jeep road”, which wasn’t currently a road but probably had been in the last 10 years, so it was easy to walk. Someone even put a Hot Springs Trail sticker at the junction, ha!

I was a little shocked to see a small sedan perched on the edge of a cliff, I can’t imagine anyone driving this road in its current state. They must have driven it back here years ago, before the road got abandoned.

The “larger road” for the last couple of miles was nicer but clearly not a drivable road.

The overgrown road wound its way down to the interstate, and for the last quarter mile I had easy walking on a paved road. I had kinda forgotten what it felt like to walk at 3 mph, and I was relieved to see the usual interstate signs, marking the end of my day.

By this point it was 6:30pm and I was covered in dust, leaves, sticks, pollen, and who knows what else from the bushes all day. So I grabbed a $20 Uber and went to the town of Castaic where I got a cheap motel room. In my tired state, I put the wrong motel into the Uber app, so I had to walk three blocks to the correct motel. But on the way I stumbled across a pretty good New York pizza place. After stuffing myself with lasagna, garlic bread, salad, and unlimited sprite, I stumbled over to the motel and had the best shower ever. Today was difficult and dirty hiking, and didn’t at all resemble the expectations I had from the guidebook. Tomorrow should be easier!

Wednesday May 14, 20.9mi/33.6km

Sespe Hot Springs (88.6/2680ft) to Log Cabin Camp (109.5/1530ft) (CA)

I left a camp at 6:30 and said goodbye to my neighbors through their tent.

It was an easy mile walk back down to the main trail. The trail junctions are all signed, but they are so old and faded it’s almost impossible to read them.

I crossed the Sespe river a few more times.

And then had a short but steep climb up over a ridge dropping into another river basin.

The descent from the ridge was a nice surprise – fresh trail maintenance!

Instead of a brushy trail like many of them in the Los Padres NF, this one had all the bushes trimmed back so it was an 8-ft wide corridor.

Once I had descended to Alder Creek, I was now on its namesake trail. And the good trail continued for 5 miles, all the way up the next climb. It was a nicely graded trail so after many switchbacks I was at the top of a ridge with all these cool colored rocks.

The trail goes a few miles out of the way to connect to a local trailhead, I didn’t need that so I decided to make a shortcut. Up a wash, of course.

Eventually the wash ran out and I had to push through some bushes at the end, but I reconnected at a point 3 miles up the trail, even though my shortcut was only 2/3rds of a mile long. Sweet, I saved over 2 miles. The trail I reconnected to had lost its well-maintained status, the guidebook describes it as a wilderness trail. It wasn’t hard to follow it was just very brushy with negligible trail tread. At least it had good views.

It descended steeply into the Agua Blanca River valley, where I was surprised to see a dilapidated picnic table at the end of the trail near the river.

I decided to have lunch there in the shade, though the table was of little use, it could barely support the weight of my backpack. I finished lunch around 12:30 and the rest of the day was occupied by following the Agua Blanca River downstream. There’s basically no trail, so it’s basically 8 miles of hiking in a shallow creek.

It was kinda fun for a couple hours. I was seeing all sorts of wildlife and some pretty big fish.

Every time my splashing scared some fish out of their hiding places, I noticed they always fled in the upstream direction. Statistically I would expect about half of them to also flee downstream, so there must be some built-in instinct for them. It was a peaceful walk.

The sound of rushing water was a little loud, and I didn’t realize how loud until I could barely hear this snake rattling.

I’ve seen snakes everyday on this hike, and more often near rivers and water. I basically never see them on the desert hikes! After a couple miles I noticed the canyon started to narrow.

Apparently water snakes are a thing here. I don’t know what kind but they always quickly fled from my splashing.

And this isn’t the best picture but there’s a turtle hiding under that rock.

The canyon narrowed even further, and I noticed I was on a spot on the map called Big narrows.

So skinny.

Some of the spots were pretty deep, in a few places the water was deeper than my waist, so I had to get creative to avoid those.

The first four miles of creek hiking to the narrows were pretty slow, about 1 mile per hour. After the narrows, the creek became less rocky and more gravelly and it was easier to walk fast. Plus there were plenty of parallel old creekbeds to hike in.

By 7:30pm I had covered the other four miles of the creek walk, which meant it took me 7 hours to hike eight miles in a creek today. It was super cool and very beautiful but I was exhausted and stopped for the night at Log Cabin camp.

Tuesday May 13, 20.6mi/33.2km

Nordhoff Ridge (68.0/4990ft) to Sespe Hot Springs (88.6/2680ft) (CA)

it was a cold night and since I zipped up the tent, it got pretty damp inside. I spent a little extra time drying it out and then got moving at 7:30.

I had a few more miles on the truck trail and I was mesmerized by the clouds blowing in from the ocean.

Sometimes the clouds would completely surround me.

And then all the sudden they would clear out and it would be blue skies. After an hour I came to the end of the truck trail road, and it became a regular hiking trail.

The trail stayed up on the ridgeline for another hour and I had more mesmerizing clouds.

I hiked over a small pass and then started to descend, down 3,000 feet to the Sespe River valley.

The trail started off nice enough, maybe just slightly overgrown, but I could still hike almost 3 mph. It also had these cool little retaining walls to hold it up on the steep hillsides.

As I descended further it got brushier, which was annoying but only slowed me down a little bit. And then the trail started to follow the streambed pretty closely, which is where the poison oak grows. So I spent an hour going slowly and dodging all the poison oak, it kinda felt like doing the moves in the matrix. I was so focused on the vegetation I almost didn’t notice this cool little tunnel.

Finally I was down at the Sespe River.

It was a wide river and generally had sandy banks so that made for easy hiking.

Pretty soon I came to the turn off for Willets hot springs, which was an easy half-mile hike uphill to a little protected canyon.

Someone had installed a round metal tank and piped the water directly into it which was really convenient. I sat and soaked for half an hour, and it felt really nice even though it was a hot day. I returned back to the main trail and the Sespe River.

I followed the river downstream for like 4 miles on a pretty good trail, and even saw a couple other groups of hikers. I saw barely any poison oak and even the repeated stream crossings were pretty easy. Towards the end of that stretch, I climbed high up on a bank and had an amazing view of the valley.

And of course the trail immediately descends right back down the other side.

I hiked another side trail up to Sespe Hot Springs, and since it was almost 7pm I decided to camp here.

As my dinner was cooking, I walked over to the steaming creek and soaked in one of the little rock pools that people had built.

What an amazing spot to be camping! I also met a young couple who was out on a three-day backpacking trip. Kylie and Parker are relatively new to backpacking but decided to celebrate their 3rd anniversary this way. Cool! And congrats guys.

Monday May 12, 14.8mi/23.8km

Ojai (54.3/1440ft) to Nordhoff Ridge (68.0/4990ft) (CA) +1.1mi to Ojai

I slept great in the campground with the little stream burbling nearby, and the chorus of frogs. I hung out with camp neighbor Juliana for a couple of hours, and she shared her nice breakfast with me. Eggs, bacon, fruit, tea… amazing!

My tea bag had a nice message, and pretty good timing given that I’m about to climb 5,000 ft today.

We had a fun conversation going all morning, when I realized it was already 10am I started packing up to leave. I was going to catch an Uber to the post office but she really generously offered me a ride. My new shoes!

I unpacked my new shoes in the lobby of the post office (along with a few delicious treats from Toppy, thanks!), and put them on. So much better! Juliana even gave me a ride right to the trailhead so I didn’t have to do the roadwalk through town.

And then from 11am onward, it was uphill almost all day.

The trail was nicely switchbacked, and even had an occasional bench to rest on.

Still going up…

After 3,000 ft of climbing, I gained a ridgeline, and had a nice break at the top of the lookout tower on Nordhoff peak.

The view to the South, into the Ojai valley:

All afternoon I followed the Nordhoff Ridge truck trail, which is drivable with 4wd but I didn’t see any vehicles.

Around mid-Afternoon I noticed some clouds started blowing in from the ocean. They were doing these cool swirling motions around the tops of the peaks.

I carried 5 liters of water from town because I knew from the guidebook there was a long dry stretch, but I did come across this little muck pond which would have been an emergency backup.

Towards the end of the day I arrived at Chief Peak, which isn’t technically on the route but is a short detour.

It was a fun little scramble and pretty quickly I was at the top.

Views:

And the requisite summit selfie.

Looking West, towards tomorrow’s objectives.

I placed a special rock on the summit, and then started eyeing my descent route.

In half a mile I was back on the road. Easy and very scenic!

I started looking for flat places to camp that were out of the wind, it seemed like I could only check one of those two boxes. So I set up in a flat spot at a wide curve in the road. It’s a little windy but hopefully the small bush provides a little protection.

After doing my evening chores, I noticed my watch told me I had ascended a ridiculous amount today.

6073 feet! I’m going to sleep good tonight.

Sunday May 11, 11.2mi/18.0km

Matilija Creek (45.2/1600ft) to Ojai (54.3/1440ft) (CA) +2.1mi to Ojai

I knew that I didn’t have far to walk today, so I slept in and didn’t leave camp until almost 8am. The dirt road was easy walking but then quickly took a turn to cross the creek, which was clearly a makeshift crossing, probably from when the creek flooded its banks 2 years ago.

These huge flowers had a wonderful smell that permeated the valley.

In less than 10 minutes it became a paved road and I entered a tiny fancy little neighborhood.

And this geriatric chocolate lab tried to follow me for a little while, it was adorable.

Most of the neighborhood houses were fancy and had gates on their driveways, and some had confusing little signs.

It was a long road walk, I was on pavement for over 5 miles, and in some places the road was in need of some serious repairs.

The guidebook mentioned a lake down there, all I saw was a grassy meadow and a dilapidated old dam. Not sure what happened to the lake.

And then I had to walk paved highway 33 for over a mile, which was much better than I expected. All the traffic was going slow, since there were tons of cars parked on the roadside where people were enjoying swimming in the creek.

And then I hit the best quality trail of the hike so far.

It climbed up a few hundred feet and I could see the town of Ojai far below me.

Nice little path.

More views.

When I got to my planned camping spot, it was only 2 pm, so fine. I’ll just relax and read a book for a while. But when I looked around I saw there was no practical place to camp as the trees had burned and it was just brush left. I quickly came up with a plan B, and found a campground in town (all the hotels are crazy expensive). So I hiked down into town, to the bus stop at the main intersection. Fortunately the main intersection also had an ice cream shop.

It’s a fancy little town. Lots of little boutique shops and vegan restaurants and kombucha places.

I would describe the architecture as Old Spanish mission style.

I rode the $1 bus/trolley to the Vons grocery store and did a resupply for the next trail section. When I saw these cookies I pretty much had to buy them!

From there I walked to the little campground, at Camp Comfort. I had already eaten dinner at the grocery store Cafe so I quickly setup my tent and then hopped in the shower. I was getting ready for bed when I met my nice camping neighbor Juliana, who travels a lot we had some fun stories to swap.