Sooo, I'm lying under the shade of a Joshua tree in the middle of the desert, doing what all sane desert dwellers do in the middle of the day...hiding from the freakin sun. I gotta say I didn't quit see this coming. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but well...dammit we were in the pine trees this morning! We hiked 11 miles before lunch and somewhere around mile 5 or 6 they all went away. So here we are hiking through the desert again, timing our marches between water sources.

Right out of Tehachapi it was more wind farms and, of course more wind. Our first march started with a couple of miles walk next to hwy 58 where it was Shiny's turn to get chased by a rattle snake...a near miss. It even took a swipe at her...fangs out and everything.

After that, it was dinner by the freeway, then a night assent up the wind swept shoulder of the mountain. When I say wind swept, I mean that he wind blows so hard and continuously that ther is nothing living up here except what is too knarly and pissed off to get blown off the mountain. Seriously, it was impossible to walk a strait line in some places. We finally camped at about 10 pm, gratefully finding shelter behind one of the few Junipers trees to be found on the hillside.

What followed was four more days of the most grueling hiking we've done yet. Yes, there were some beautiful forests once we got some altitude, but no water. We routinely had to carry 4-5 liters of water each (at 2lb per liter that's 8-10 lbs of extra weight) and planning our days simply from one water source to another, hoping it still existed by the time we got there.

Some of our most reliable sources were mere trickles coming from a pipe stuck in a spring. Some were caches of bottles left by trail angels.

The last two days were the longest and the hottest. Sunday we hiked 23 miles, much of it in the Mojave at the wrong time of day, hiking toward a water cache that we were praying was still there. It was, mercifully, because we had only one liter left between us and another 7 miles to he next water source.

Monday we hiked 21 miles, most of it with few trees, little shade and rising temperatures, into Walker Pass where we would hitch a ride into Lake Isabella.

We have been here a day and a half eating, sleeping and drinking (water and electrolytes) trying to heal from the last five days.

Next up...the high Sierra!