Trail Day 38: Landers Meadow Camp (mile 608.9) to Bird Spring Pass (mile 630.8)

21.9 PCT miles

There was a huge difference between yesterday morning and this morning. Yesterday I woke up so hungry that I had to immediately eat something before I even exited my tent. Today I woke up still satisfied by last night's trail magic.

I packed up and was one of the first people out of the campground. I started off the day by walking down the dirt road to its the junction with the PCT,  noticing that the road wasn’t as rutted as I originally thought and wondering how hard it would be to get my car up there. Lost in thought I blew past the PCT and ended up having to backtrack to the junction.

When I was finally on the right trail, I really enjoyed my hike. I was still walking through beautiful pine forest. That changed quickly,  however.  I hit the edge of the big pine trees and all that was left were shrubs and boulders.

Morning light near the edge of the pine forest.

Another cool cloud layer sighting.

I headed downhill for a while, where there were still a couple pine trees, but they were a smaller species and mixed in with junipers. Pretty soon all the hikers I had camped with last night had passed me.

The scenery while heading down in elevation.

Looking pretty barren below.

It turns out that everyone was carrying less water than me. There was a water cache at Kelso Valley Rd, as well as one at Bird Spring Pass, but there were plenty of notes in the water report about not relying on caches as they might be empty by the time you got there. Somehow I missed the part of the discussion last night when the trail angels had reported there was plenty of water at each of the caches.

I made my way down toward Kelso Valley Rd and was a little dismayed when I started to see Joshua trees again. Entering the Sierra section, I thought I was mostly leaving the desert behind.

But...this is the "Sierra section." Sad face.

I still had plenty of water when I reached the first cache, so I passed it by. It was definitely well stocked. When I passed the road and continued on the next section I was pretty upset. It looked to be desert for miles. After leaving the forest,  the trail had dipped back down into the Mojave Desert.

Plenty of water at the Kelso Valley Rd. cache.

Welcome back to the desert.

I was unnecessarily angry for a while. Then I got over myself and enjoyed the beauty of the desert. I normally love the desert,  but I had not expected to return to it.

I took my lunch break in the shade of a large Joshua tree. There were a lot of late season wildflowers blooming and there was a cool breeze in the shade.  Cool breezes and soft, warm sand are a perfect recipe for taking a nap. I almost fell asleep after lunch, but made myself get up and keep walking.

Lunch break.

Late season wildflowers.

Fuzzy stems are different.

After lunch the heat hit again.  I was walking in the Mojave Desert so it was both hot and there was the radiation from the trail due to lack of vegetation.  To make matters worse I had a lot of uphill to do and a lot of the uphill sections were through soft sand.  I had to rest under pretty much every Joshua tree that was big and wide enough to provide shade.  I didn’t even take my backpack off.  I just kind of laid down, sprawled out, and resting on my pack while still strapped in.

Looking east into the Mojave Desert.

Shade. I'm looking for shade.

During one of these breaks I heard a loud noise near me.  I had my music n so at first I thought it sounded like a woodpecker, but much louder. I took my headphones off to try and find this mystery animal.  It was making sounds like I have never heard before (this is what it sounded like:) .  I finally saw it.  It was a large, striped bird hopping around in the Joshua tree above me.  It took me a while, but eventually I realized it was a roadrunner.  I have never seen on in a tree before.

There is a roadrunner in that tree.

After much effort, and many rests, I dragged myself into camp at Bird Springs Pass. There were a lot of tents set up, and it was very windy, so I scouted around for a good tentsite for a while.  I found one down the dirt road a ways that was subject to way less wind than the ones right at the pass.  As I didn’t want to keep going up and down the hill, I decided to fill up with water from the cache right away as I went back to grab my pack.  

The last hill I had to climb before Bird Springs Pass.

The view late in the day.

The water cache at Bird Springs pass was also well maintained.  In addition to water there was a cooler filled with junk food.  It would be probably about 30 minutes before I could eat dinner, so I grabbed some pop tarts while I was refilling my water. Again, this is something I would normally consider gross, but while on trail they were satisfying calories.  There was also a hiker supply box with some essentials like medication (e.g. anti-inflammatories, pepto-bismal), duct tape, and battery chargers. The battery charger was a really nice amenity since I had gone a whole day (where it was overcast and raining) where I had not been able to use my solar charger, so my battery on my phone was lower then I would have liked. I plugged my phone into one of the chargers and went to grab my pack to take down the hill and set up my tent.

Cache at Bird Springs Pass.

Foooood!

Outside of box.

Inside of box.

That is when I saw a car had silently driven up while I was raiding the cache.  That was, again, unexpected as you could only reach that spot via dirt roads as well.  Since it had parked next to my pack, I cautiously approached it wondering if it could be the trail angels who maintained the cache.  A man got out of the car and immediately offered me a beer or soda.  Beer!  I finally was going to have a dinner trail beer after hitting those other beer caches in the morning.

Mmmm, beer.

Beer was the magic word.  Not long after he said that, other hikers literally were emerging from the bushes (where they were camped). The wonderful trail angel introduced himself as Brewhiker, a name that some of the other hikers knew.  He is a PCT-famous hiker from last year who brewed beer while he was on the trail.  Having dabbled in home-brewing myself I grilled him on his methodology to understand how it was possible.  He only did a pint at a time, cooking the wort in a pot and fermenting it in a seltzer bottle.  As I found out the details of it, I learned that he really knows the intricacies of brewing and his lightweight, backpacker brewing system was pretty ingenious.  In addition to giving us drinks, he said that he brought ingredients for making burritos and offered to make us all dinner.  Was this for real? It seemed to good to be true.

After we had gotten acquainted we all split for a while to finish setting up our respective tents.  When we came back we chatted for a while again and Brewhiker actually made us burritos using fresh potatoes, onions, garlic, and cheese. Fresh anything is amazing on the trail.  He even offered to toast the tortillas for us.  While he made dinner we were treated to a beautiful, colorful sunset.  A couple more people showed up around this time and Brewhiker made burritos for everyone.

Dan, Taco, Sunshine, Jared, and Brewhiker.

Bird Springs Pass sunset.