Day 48 : The end of Southern California

6th June 2013
Mile 676 to mile 698 : The second last hill before KM to the Kern river
Mileage : 22
Today was the last day of Southern California!

700 miles!

It was another very early start after not much sleep as i tried to get the last climb of the Southern California section of the PCT done before the heat. The day was mostly uneventful except for the fact that i finished Southern California today! Have i mentioned it enough yet? Probably not. I am.done with SoCal as of this evening! Woohoo! The end could not have come any sooner. The last 140 miles from Tehachapi have been especially difficult and mostly enjoyable. As i have said many times this is almost entirely due to the heat. It was been extremely challenging to say the least. It is jot only the heat that makes hiking difficult, it is everything that that entails. The early mornings and late nights mean it is not not possible to get enough sleep. Although in theory there is lots.of free time during the long break in between in which to sleep, it is usually too hot to sleep so most of the time i am very fatigued. The heat also has a massive effect on my appetite. I find that i have almost none, which is not good. The hiker hunger has definitely kicked in, meaning most of my fat reserves are now gone therefore i have to eat huge amounts just to be able to do the miles and not waste away. This has been a major challenge of the desert sections, and one i won't miss as the trail climbs high into the Sierra Nevada.
All these combine to make the hiking through the desert sections pretty miserable at times, and in particular during this last week.But its not all bad, far from it. I have been amazed at the variety of geography, geology, flora and fauna in Southern California, and especially the rate at which it changes, even on foot going at 3 miles an hour. On more than one occasion i went from blisteringly hot desert with rattlesnakes, scorpions, cacti and tumbleweeds to cool shady pine forests high up above the desert floor complete with bears, mountain lions and nights so cold my water bottles turn to ice overnight. It has been varied in the extreme, and it has been amazing.
Natural elements aside for a moment, the trail thus far would not have been half as incredible as it has been without the people on it. Loosely, people on the trail fall into one of 3 categories : other PCT hikers, trail angels, and trail town locals, and they have all been amazing. I usually hike with about 5 other people most of the time. We are all incredibly different apart from the fact that we are all on the trail. And because we're on the trail all the other differences are irrelevant. We all go through exactly the same hardships day in and day out, all experience the same highs and lows, and all enjoy sharing this adventure with each other, inspire of our differences. Apart from the guys i hike with all the time, there are another 15 or so that are on the periphery, as it were. These are hikers with slightly different speeds and styles, meaning i might only see them every few days or so, but when do it's like greeting old friends. Decidedly odd given that i know so little about most of them, but none of that seems to matter out here, we all just get along. The trail angels have been equally incredible if not more so. What they do is hard to describe, why they do it even harder. Most, but not all of them, are ether former or aspiring thru-hikers and enjoy the community that surrounds the trail so much the they provide magic up and down the trail. Some are spontaneous, others established. Funsize had an experience where he turned up at a campsite just as 2 angels were leaving. They angel 1 day a year and bizarrely no-one had showed up so they were leaving. He got a full meal complete with wine, a bed in their campervan, and breakfast the next morning. Other angels keep water caches stocked up in crucial locations throughout the hiking season, and these caches are worth their weight in gold. I'd like to think i could have not used these caches, and relied only on natural sources, but it would have made life much more difficult especially in a very hot year such as this one and would have required a great deal of night hiking. I can't emphasise enough just how incredible these guys are. Last but not least are the locals in the trail towns through which we pass. Small town America is great, and so different to an equivalent town in France or the UK so it's great to see them as see a partook America most people don't usually get to see.

Finally a view of the Sierra Nevada, with snow on them even! I can't wait to be there

This is an incredible picture taken by Peter Pan of a rattlesnake in strike position

The same snake with rattle in action