Had to trek to the water catchment which was 200 feet up some hill and in an obscure location.    Took a while to find it.   

Once I found the thing, I had the figure out the operating procedure.   First you take a stick with a leaky Gatorade bottle, kneel in the mud, and try to reach under the enclosure to a small pool of water.   Of course, once you pull the Gatorade bottle out, it has 3 or 4 holes in it leaking all over me, the ground, and my pack.   Less than half the bottle eventually reaches my platypus bladder per round, so I get plenty of time to practice.

 

Chatted with the car campers up here and got the route on the dirt roads.   This is another one for a moto trip next year.

Ran into the 500 mile marker.   This one is kind of significant for me.   Stopped to have a little fun.

Soon the trail broke out of the tree cover and began the decent down to Lancaster.    Going to lose 4k feet today. 

Most folks stopped at Pine Canyon Creek for lunch.   It is the only water stop on this 20 mile stretch.    Most of the gang from Casa De Luna was here.   Trash Panda, Joe Dirt, Manny Pack, Grams, Melinda, Bad Ass, Iron Man, Mashed Potatoes, and others.   Most of us hung out hoping the heat would go away (it wasn’t), then finally getting up one by one and taking off.   

The last 7 miles sucked.    Downhill, super hot, no wind.   If we are lucky there is some thorny scrub.   Mostly it is just burned misery.   I decided to trail run some of this.   Made great time until I ran into an area where someone had cut some bushes off the trail leaving little 1 inch diameter stumps sticking up on the trail.    They were hard to see and one got me on the left foot.  Man that hurt.

Of course, this is another one where the destination can be seen while there are still miles of switchbacks to hike.   Afterward everyone shared my frustration.  

Made Hiker Town at 4:00.   So this place looks like a big movie set.    There is a bunk house and a bunch of shacks and old RV’s that you can sleep in.   The caretaker comes out and gives me a trailer to sleep in.    It had two bunks, so I invited Bam Bam to take the other.  

Every hour the owner from the cafe down the street shows up in a van to take hikers to his place.   They’ve a general store there as well.   It is quite a racket….everybody wants a burger and beer. 

Did a solid 20 miles today.   Plan for tomorrow is to hang around Hiker Town until it gets cooler, then take on the Mojave Desert.  Bam Bam seems to have a similar plan.   We might be hiking together tomorrow night.