Day 39 : The wind

29th May 2013
Mile 542 to mile 558 : Tylerhorse Canyon to Willow Springs Rd
Mileage : 16

In my last post I said that that day was the most difficult on the trail so far. I was very wrong. Today was, by far, the most difficult thus far. It was the first and only day so far that I have really not enjoyed myself and really questioned what i was doing out there. There was one day at Rodriguez Fire Tank during the first week near mile 65 that I previously had thought was difficult, but it doesn't compare at all. It doesn't even come close. Today was just horrific. In fact the only good thing about today was that it ended.

With my bandanna covering my face I slept better than I thought i would, but still everything was covered with sand and grit when i woke. I had hoped that the wind would die down overnight but it became clear as i started the day that that was not going to happen, it actually felt stronger if anything. Worse than the strength of the wind was that fact that it wasn't constant. The evening before the trail led almost directly into the wind as we climbed out of the desert, so it was 'relatively' easy to just lean into it and keep on slogging away at the trail. By contrast, today, the trail was back to its usual winding self as it proceeded northwest through the hills. Although the main direction of the wind was unchanged, the turbulence caused by the hills meant the wind was constantly changing, and the winding nature of the trail meant the wind seamed to be buffeting me from all directions at once. And again there was no respite, the only way to get it to stop was to finish the hike and get to the road from which we'd be hitching into Tehachapi. It took forever. 16 miles by now is not a long way, even with climbs, but today was different. It took forever. It took so much effort mentally and physically to walk in a straight line on the one foot wide trail i was exhausted after only a couple of hours, it took forever. To compound the difficulty of the weather, I was additionally hindered by the fact that the tip of my remaining hiking broke off at some point and was sliding around on the rocks and making me nervous about putting real weight on it rendering it close to useless. I have been less than impressed by my Leki poles, and would not buy them again given the chance, but i am stuck with them for the time being. On top of everything I have described above, the straw that finally broke this camel's proverbial back was my achilles, which flared up again in style. I had thought it was getting progressively better, but after the climb today it really started to hurt again. After stopping to attempt to quell the pain with many milligrams of Vitamin I, I struggled on. I was not a happy bunny.

Usually I have nothing but admiration for the PCTA and the trail, but today there were many expletives used to describe whoever routed the trail in this section. Instead of using the relative shelter of the valley that I could see from the heady heights of the trail, the route in fact lead just below the windward side of the crest of hills we were traversing. It was less than ideal. Retrospectively, i know that in this section there is a lot a private land around which the trail has to skirt, and that the wind was uncommonly strong, but it didn't stop me venting.

My extremely bad mood persisted for hours until the road came into view. As the road appeared in front of me so did a hiker who informed me that the trail was closed for the next couple of minutes as a fellow hiker was taking a loo break in sight of, if not on, the trail. I sensed a perfect opportunity to vent my feelings and let rip. I felt so much better for it, and to be honest, even retrospectively, the abuse i hurled was justified, although I could perhaps have gone about it a little more diplomatically. The trail for 4000 + kms is one foot wide, meaning most, if not all, of the land through which we are hiking is not the trail and even in the desert sections there are, and indeed in this specific instance there were, innumerable bushes behind which a hiker could have gone about the necessary in relative privacy. In my mind there is therefore, little excuse for being so lazy as to go to the toilet within sight of the trail requiring a fellow hiker to stop all other trail traffic. Having less than politely informed (although i promise there there were no expletives used, it was more that there was a lot of sarcasm and withering looks) the traffic warden hiker of the aforementioned information, and feeling much better for it, i proceeded past him uncaring of the toileting hikers privacy who was indeed squatting one foot off the trail, and arrived at the road a couple minutes later, glad that the day's hiking was over.

My mood much improved, even more so after getting rides almost immediately from Keith and then Melissa, I met back up with team PRT doing what team PRT does best, taking on calories and not hiking, and I added my considerable expertise and talents in these matters to the group's, slowly calming down after a very long and difficult day.

Mr Green struggling uphill into the wind

There is a reason there are so many wind turbines!