Towards Kennedy Meadows

It is 5.50 am, I eat a Snickers bar for breakfast. Here in the desert you can only eat them in the morning after a cool night. During the day, you would have to deal with Snickers soup.

Poor Felix, his cough got really bad. I am sure he would now rather sleep in his own cosy bed at home and drink hot tea. Rather than dragging himself through the hot desert. But he keeps up the good and happy spirit and does not complain.

Great guy!

We break camp in a windy and cold morning and get ready for the next up, direction Walker Pass! Not too long now and we will reach Kennedy Meadows at Mile 702! A huge milestone and accomplishment for every PCT thru hiker! As this is where the desert ends and the Sierras start.

Felix is still coughing his way up and down the mountains.

Today, we seem to “leapfrog” with Heather and Guru. This is hiker slang for seeing the same hikers again and again throughout the whole day. Each time we pass each other we have a chat.

Heather says to me:

“Felix and Andy are really nice guys. You are so lucky to hike with them”.

Yes! I know!!

We arrive at Walker Pass! Pretty cool and remote up here! There is a road but hardly any traffic.

Felix asks in his typical modest way, whether somebody would perhaps care to hitchhike into Lake Isabella (so that he can sleep in a hotel bed and go to a pharmacy…)

I think he would never say something like:

“Guys! I am freaking ill, I am coughing my lungs out and I can’t breath and I fucking need more medicine, so let’s not waste any time here at Walker Pass but let’s hitchhike into town and book a room as I bloody need to sleep in a real bed tonight!”

No, he says: “does anybody care going to Lake Isabella perhaps?”

Sure we do! We do not need to resupply in town as we had fully loaded our food bags to the ultimate maximum in Ridgecrest two days ago, but we sure come to town with Felix! No question at all!

So the three of us make ourselves ready to hitch, right on the pass. I seriously strip a bit and get out of my pants and put on my shorts, to show some legs. I want that drivers see from far away that there is a woman in this little group. The lady who had picked us up when we hitched into Tehachapi told us that she only stopped for us when she saw that there is a woman in the group.

So we stand there with our thumbs up. And sure enough a woman with a red pickup stops for us. In fact, she passes us and then turns around!

“I only picked you guys up because there is a girl in the group. I am sure you are no axe murderers!”

Really! She said that!

So we get a ride, we get a hotel room, we get the medicine for Felix and we get sandwiches in Subway. (Sandwiches in fact which are very difficult to eat as they are so heavily loaded with ingredients! I have mayonnaise sauce all over my hands and face. But that’s OK!)

I go to bed and, you know it, pass out right away.

So now we have to get out of Lake Isabella and back to Walker Pass.

It seems more difficult to hitch out of than into town. Funny that, as we all smell much better from town to trail rather than from trail to town.

We try all tricks: Showing legs, no sunglasses, eye contact with the drivers, smiley cheery faces. Nope. Nobody wants to give us a ride.

Felix suggests we should perform a little dance in order to attract attention. So we dance on the street with our thumbs out.
We have great fun and the people who pass us in their huge pickup cars seem to have great fun as well, as they smile and wave at us…

But nobody stops.

I know we get a ride! We just have to be patient and well spirited.

A rusty old pickup stops. Loaded with a guy and two huge dogs. The guy tells us that our spot is not ideal, we should hitch 6 miles further down the road … He will take us out of town to a better hitching spot. We toss our packs onto the back of the pickup, where they have to share the space with two big dogs. The dogs check out the packs by sniffing at them. One dog even licks at one of my water bottles. Uarg!

I just ignore that for the moment.

Now, it turns out that the guys name is Burt. He tells us about his (way of) life and what he has gone through and talks about how he looks at life and death.

Andy asks him whether he would drive us all the way up to Walker Pass if we would pay him. Apparently he is super busy and has a lot of packing to do as he is going on vacation tomorrow, but:

“Heck yes, I drive you guys up there.”

Awesome.

There are no seatbelts in the back of this old pickup and Burt drives fast and talks with his hands (which means he lets go of the steering wheel rather a lot), but that’s OK, it will be fine.

We arrive at Walker Pass, Felix slips 30 dollars onto his seat. We heave our packs from the back of the pickup and I make a group selfy.

Burt sees the money:

“I don’t take no money for this ride”.

Oh my! I am deeply touched by this guy.

We all are.

Thank you Burt!

Hitchhiking has been great great fun so far! An ideal way to meet intresting locals!

Ok, we are all safely back on the trail. Let’s see what comes next.

We will soon reach Kennedy Meadows at Mile 702 and the desert magic will be a thing of the past. That makes me sad. Even though it was hard, sometimes even very (!) hard, when I look back now at the last six weeks, I can say, I was really, truly happy.

We plot along towards Mile 702.

The PCT follows the Kern River for a while. This is the first real river with real lots of water in it! Hopefully we can have a bath and camp nearby.

Oh my, what a glorious sight. A real river, fed with melting water straight out of the Sierras!! We follow the river for a minute and find the perfect camp place for our tents. We chuck our backpacks to the ground and jump all into the water. With our cloths on! We just all sit in the cold fresh river and don’t move for a few minutes.

That water is absolutely awesome!!

Felix says:

“that river washes 700 miles of pain away”.

Andy replies:

“if that really works then I have to sit in here for a loong time”.

I have nothing to add to that.

We cook dinner, have a great chat, feed ants with crackers and watch them carry the crackers to their home, and finally crawl into our little homes ourselves.

I hear the river flowing very loudly just next to me. How very very wonderful! All that water! I am not going to pop in my earplugs tonight! I want to hear those sounds all night long!

We sleep in today, as we only have to hike 5 lousy miles to Kennedy Meadows today. I lay in my tent (on my Neo Air X lite mattress which seems to have a hole! AGAIN!) and listen to all this water a little more!

Alright, we get our stuff together and do these five miles. I am excited, happy, proud, grateful and sad all at once! (That’s a lot of feelings for one little heart).

We need to leave the trail at Kennedy Meadows and drive north. There really is simply too much snow up there in the Sierra still. And it begins to melt, so the river crossings are downright dangerous!

I am sad.

But Andy’s dad and his wife are coming to Kennedy Meadows to pick him and Felix up and drive them further north…..

And they take me with them!!

I am the most lucky person in the world!

I have a veggie burger at the famous Kennedy store when Andy’s dad and his wife arrive. They brought a gigantic bowl of super super good water melon for us to eat! A thru hikers delight!!

“Thank you so much!”

Awesome!

An hour later we sit in their enormously gigantic car, driving away from the PCT, towards Bishop.

I sit in the back of the car, together with Felix and Andy and stare at the snow cowered Sierra mountain range. They are huge! The ride in the car is amazing! On the east side of the car we see the Death Valley, on the west are the snow covered Sierras.
Very strange to see them fly by and not being able to hike them.

We have dinner in Bishop tonight in a nice Brewery. We talk about our 702 miles and try to think of our favourite parts so far. I have a hard time picking my favourites, as I really had favourite moments almost every day!