At 5:30 am, I woke Bill up so we could both take our “waterbug medicine,”  and I was very happy to find that I was feeling much better already.   The nausea was minimal, and I felt stronger.   I actually managed to eat breakfast–very slowly, and in little nibbles, but I could eat again!  Hooray!

Bill and I spent the morning resting, drinking water, nibbling at food, and reading.  The Rosanders have an awesome collection of hiking books,  thanks to Christy’s enthusiasm for backpacking.   And the weather report contained an advisory for rapidly rising rivers–the snow is melting fast!   Very good news!    On the sobering side, though, reports from the PCT did not sound encouraging.   Forester Pass “needs mountaineering skills and ice axe to traverse” right now.    We talked about what to do.   Neither of us are in any kind of shape right now to tackle that, much less the climb from Tehachapi Pass up into the Sierras.   It is beginning to look like we may need to go home for a little bit to get well again, then come back.   We are definitely getting better, but still nowhere near as strong as we were when we first got here to Tehachapi.

Good thing we rigged the tarp last night–it RAINED! It wasn’t a deluge, but I am so glad we weren’t out in it, “rigging by headlamp.”  The wind was pretty bad when we got up a bit after 5 am to begin the 1,600 foot climb out of the canyon and up to the summit.   It was 38 degrees, the wind  felt like ice, and there was fresh snow on all the mountaintops around us.  The PCT follows many LONG switchbacks up the sandy mountainsides, and hooray!  Somebody had really fixed up the trail itself and put up lots of PCT signposts to guide us through the maze of motocross trails.  We were never “lost” this time, as we were in 2005.

But sadly, there had been a forest fire, so instead of green trees and grass high in the Tehachapis, we were walking through blackened, skeleton forests.  One tree had a worried note on it, titled, “Have You Seen Billy Goat?”  It was dated in April.   I added a note saying, “He’s fine–we saw him in Big Bear in May”.

Eventually the PCT took us to the “windfarm side of the hill.”  I knew we were in for it, windwise, but what we didn’t know was that today there was a wind ADVISORY for up to gale force.   No kidding!  We spent the afternoon battling through winds that were strong enough to almost knock me over.  All I could do was stop, brace both legs and trek poles and try to stay upright.   It was as if the wind were an invisible, roaring river that was literally trying to knock us down and snatch our trek poles right out of our hands.   At around 3 pm, we found a large juniper bush and got on its lee side for a badly needed rest.   Stepping out from behind it into the gale again was quite a shock, but we pushed on and by 5 pm, we’d made it to Highway 58, where we connected with trail angel extraordinaire Christy Rosander.  Even getting our packs into her car was a battle with the wind.   And bless her foresight–she had a thermos of hot chocolate for us–what a treat after fighting cold wind for hours!

Walk to Lórien: Yuledays camping near stream

Hikertown is home to a whole flock of banty chickens, including several roosters, who started crowing enthusiastically around 4 am!  By 5:30, most of the hikers (including us) were in the hiker lounge eating breakfast that included “coffee from New York City” sent by one hiker’s girlfriend.  (”What was she thinking?” he puzzled.  “What am I supposed to do with a POUND of coffee on the trail?”  We all told him, “Don’t worry–we’ll take care of it!”)  But unknown to me,  Bill was not feeling well.  He did not feel like eating, and  had to just choke down his breakfast.

After that, we spent till almost 1 pm doing the notorious “Aqueduct Walk”.  It was not hot. It was not windy.  It was COLD, and even rained a bit!   There were rain clouds and “walls” of rain all around us, up in the Liebres to the right and the Tehachapis to the left.   I hiked along the aqueduct, eyeing the clouds and rain, thinking “Oh fun–we’ll be up IN there tonight!”   As far as the aqueduct walk itself, I know a lot of people enjoy grumping about it, but why waste your time being a grouch?   I love the sweeping views, the weird little houses, the quirky people, and the wildflowers along the way.   But I got worried at dinnertime because Bill would not eat.   He said he felt nauseous.   My heart just sank.   Could this be a rerun of what we went through in 2005, starting already?   I was worried.

And then as we turned north, into the Tehachapi Mtns. a wonderful thing happened.  The clouds began to lift,  break up, and float away.  And so we wound our way up and up into those amazing mountains, all the way to Gamble Canyon, where we managed to make a “hunker down” camp in a very strong, cold wind.   The clouds were reassembling and looked a bit ominous, so we battled to put up the tarp, using rocks instead of stakes, since we were on soft sand.   Bill went straight to bed and just collapsed.    I  prayed.

Walk to Lórien: Walking Southwest in low mountains

Brrrr!  It was a 31 degree morning, with frost!  By 6:30, the coffee was ready and by 7:00, Terri Anderson was dishing up STACKS of great pancakes.  She uses two electric griddles to keep up with all the hungry hikers!  Then it was more hang out and talk till around 10 am, Joe took us back to the trail.  The PCT quickly took us up to great views of Green Valley, where Casa de Luna is located.   What a great place!  We will be walking in the “glow” of it for awhile!

It was a chilly day, great for hiking, but not so great for a poor little gopher snake that was lying across the trail, so cold it could hardly move.  By lunchtime we’d reached the cache at Elizabeth Canyon Rd, where we cooked a nice dinner and the other hikers were all eating tortillas and peanut butter.   We kind of rubbed it in about how nice it was to be eating DINNER!  Then came a 3 hour climb up into the Liebre Mountains–all sorts of plant communities to walk through, from manzanita & sagebrush to oak trees & miner’s lettuce to pine trees & soft duff.  Climbing hour after hour is not “fun” but I did enjoy the plant variety.  Around 4:30 we reached the “guzzler”–a water-collecting device–but the water was gross, so we decided to just ration what we had.  Other hikers were there, filtering, boiling and cooking dinner.  We mushed on, and awhile later came to a water cache!   Yahoo!  No more rationing!   And the trail was increasingly beautiful.  We felt as if we were walking through springtime, especially with the oak tres just leafing out.  We camped on soft oak duff on a chilly, very windy evening.

Walk to Lórien: Empty country near Bruinen

Boy, are we glad we camped DOWN in a gully–all the hilltops were in cloud this morning!  And sure enough, 5 minutes of walking had us at “The Oasis”, complete with all its usual accoutrements of skeletons, pink flamingo, “Class of 2010″ banner, and coolers with cold sodas.  Too cold for a soda today!  Brrrr!   We walked fast till we were well warmed up, then stopped to gobble down granola.  When we reached the road, we ALMOST decided to just hike on, but the Andersons had put up a sign about “Come on down to our place 24/7–all the pancakes and taco salad you can eat.”  That did it.  “Hmmm, we need to let the Sierras melt some more!” we said.

And so we ended up in a fantastic time warp zone called Casa de Luna.  The Andersons (Terri & Joe) call it “Hippy Daycare”.  We felt like we were back in the 1960’s in a “hippie house” (we really did live in a Christian “hippie house” for awhile) and we found a perfect campsite in the “Magical Manzanita Forest” out back.  We spent the whole rest of the day lounging around wherever we could find a sunpatch, eating, talking to other hikers, and sure enough, the famous taco salad for dinner, followed by hilarious “trail tales” from Joe & Terri, especially the one about how they started hosting hikers.  It all began with the Joy of Cooking recipe for vegetable soup…

Walk to Lórien: West of River Bruinen