PCT 25 – Aqueduct and Beyond

Daily Miles: 26
Total Miles: 548

During the night, the wind started to rage. It was so loud and strong it was difficult to sleep. Beardoh put in his ear plugs, but SweetPea didn’t because she was worried she would miss her alarm (which she ended up doing anyways).

Luckily we just happened to wake up only a half hour later than we had planned. We got up quickly, packed our stuff and headed out on the trail. We had wanted an early start to avoid walking in the heat of the day, while still getting in quite a few miles.

The first half of our day consisted of walking along the aqueduct. The water was covered with what looked like a cement lane, so we basically walked on that. The walking was pretty monotonous and the scenery fairly unspectacular, so we both put in our headphones and listened to audiobooks or podcasts. That certainly helped to make the time go by.

We made it to our first water source for the day (13ish miles) just before 11am. We decided we would just take a short break there and the take a longer break at the next water source 6 miles further down the trail. There were several other hikers resting at the water source who had started their walk today at 3am. So, they were taking a well-deserved nap.

We just got our water, ate a snack, rubbed our feet and then headed back out into the sun. We finally left the aqueduct and headed through a large wind farm. It was pretty cool to walk to close to the big windmills and to see just how enormous they are. Collectively, they made a noise like an airplane in the distance.

When we made it to the next water source, we found a piece of shade and made ourselves comfortable for an extended rest break. We ended up hanging out there for a solid two and a half hours. Basically we knew we wanted to hike further, but preferred to wait until the heat of the day had passed its peak. It seemed like the other hikers in the area had the same idea, because everyone started to leave at 5:00.

We filled up 4 liters of water, since we had 23 miles coming up to hike without any more water source. We headed out in the trail and enjoyed feeling the temperatures cool down and the shade engulfing us as the sun started to go down. We really like hiking in the evening because of the nice light and the cooler temperatures, but doing so usually means a really long day, since we start so early in the morning. For example, today we started just after 5:00am and finally picked a camp spot around 8:20pm.

We were getting pretty tired, but the wind has really picked up again this evening, so it was hard to find a spot out of the crazy wind. Our spot is a tight one with us sleeping on the ground between two big bushes. There isn’t enough room for us to lie next to each other. Instead, our bodies make a “T” with parts of our body under the bushes. We can still feel and hear the wind, but a significant amount is blocked, so we are hoping for a decent night’s sleep. We are planning for another early day tomorrow so that we can make it into the town of Mojave around lunch. We’re already thinking about what we’ll order at Denny’s.