Climbing up out of Tehachapi Pass, the wind swept over the ridge like an ocean current. At times, I could barely make forward progress as the strong gusts screamed over the barren landscape. Other times, I could barely stay on the trail as the current buffeted me to one side and then the other. As I passed other hikers, we yelled to one another and still couldn’t hear what the other person had said. Throughout my time on the trail, I have learned that hiking on lose sand is exhausting. Lose rock or scree isn’t much better. Slushy snow is even more exhausting to traverse. High winds, however, make for some of the most exhausting conditions that I have experienced. The lack of tangibility and the unpredictable nature of wind keeps you constantly on edge. With sand and rock and snow, you can see it coming. You can examine the contours of the path ahead and plan for each step. With wind, however, it is impossible to know when the next gust will hit. Will it be a short, quick gust or a lengthy, gale-force current? It’s difficult to say. By the time we crested the ridge, we were battling sustained winds of sixty to seventy miles per hour. Gusts were even stronger, as we were barely able to stand against them. Anchorman and I finally found a sheltered campsite under some trees and decided to stop for the night. Jackpot and Sausage decided to push a little further.
The next day brought a substantial change in scenery. The trail followed a narrow, rutted dirt road for some time. We had camped in a grove of trees, (one of the first wooded areas that we had seen since before Hikertown) but the trail soon emerged once again into low, arid shrubs. The difference, though, was the view in the distance. Instead of endless, brown desert ridges, the hillsides began to acquire a shade of green. As I walked, I could distinguish healthy, green valleys and springs in the distance. Even a few hilltops and ridges were green with grasses and a few small trees – a big difference from just a few miles south where almost nothing could survive in such exposed conditions. Eventually reaching a spring, I caught up to Anchorman and Sausage and sat down in the shade for a lengthy break. As we rested, we could hear what sounded like heavy machinery in the distance.
Now, I wouldn’t consider myself an environmentalist. Yes, I love our planet. Yes, I believe we should take reasonable actions to preserve and protect it as much as we can, but I am typically not opposed to human impact if it is for the betterment of humankind as a whole. Furthermore, I typically try to avoid (maybe out of pure naivety) the more nuanced and conflicting ideas and concepts of modern conservationism and the “green” movement as a whole. What I witnessed on this day, however, demands consideration.
Leaving the spring and climbing the next ridge, I immediately spotted the source of the racket that permeated through the wilderness. We had just entered a plot of private land, and just over a mile away was a construction site for a new windfarm. To my knowledge, windfarms and wind energy in general have long been touted as one of the safest and most effective sources of clean energy that we have developed. I have personally heard discussions on numerous occasions, in which the claim that the development of wind energy was one of the greatest environmental victories of recent history was eloquently presented and effectively defended. I wonder if proponents of “clean and safe” wind energy are aware of or have ever seen what I witnessed firsthand as I walked through the property, owned by a company that claims to be among the most environmentally friendly in existence.
Simply put, they were stripping off the top of a mountain, not just the foliage, but actually excavating and removing several hundred feet of elevation for the purpose of a more gradual surface in which to construct a massive new windfarm. Several other mountains (now better described as hills or “humps”) had already been brought to the same fate. Excavators and bulldozers and road graders and dump trucks worked tirelessly upon the massive mound of dirt, spewing black smoke up toward the sky. Wide roads had been cut through the surrounding ridges. Entire mountainsides had been clear-cut down to exposed dirt to accommodate the machines. Dust filled the air. The smell of diesel smoke hung thick over the valley. The land was now scarred. To the west, was seemingly endless ridges and valleys of pure wilderness, untouched by human development: absolutely beautiful. To the east, and all around the trail for several miles, however, was the best efforts of humankind to preserve this magnificent environment, the tireless efforts of countless environmentalists, corporate managers, and the trust of the supporting public who believe that they are actually helping the earth, helping each other, helping us all. This area used to be beautiful, and to one direction, it still was. Isolating that single direction into a full sense of existence, however, was impossible. There was too much construction, too much destruction.
As I continued, I passed through valleys and over ridges, but never very far from the cacophony of environmentalism. Everywhere I looked, lay signs of a once-pristine land: dry creek beds were a funnel for rocks and debris from construction. Trees lay dead in the valley, toppled from the heights above in the prime years of their existence. No squirrels played among the trees. No chipmunks darted from rock to rock. No birds sang from the heights of the forest. All the signs of a healthy environment that I had become accustomed to were ominously absent – all in the name of saving said environment. Pushing late into the afternoon, I finally climbed up and over a major ridge, leaving private land and depressing human impact behind. Finding Anchorman (and about a dozen others) camped in a large cow pasture near a dirt road, I set up my tent nearby. There were no cows to be seen, but among the green grasses and low, twisted trees, signs of cattle were easily identified.
The next morning, I found myself passing through a large deciduous forest, punctuated by brief pockets of towering pines. Passing by broad, green valleys below and cool, shaded hillsides, I was truly enjoying the landscape for the first time in a while, and looking forward to a more forested trail as we approached the Sierra. Reaching Robin Bird Spring, I caught up to Sausage and Anchorman and several others. Jackpot had apparently camped at the spring overnight and was now five to ten miles ahead of us. As we rested, we learned that two of the hikers there were suffering from what we assumed were the symptoms of heat stroke – exhaustion, puking, diarrhea, dehydration, and all the other unpleasant symptoms that come with that – basically all the symptoms that you don’t want to have when you’re in the middle of the wilderness. They had stopped at the spring last night, but still felt bad this morning so decided to stay until they were able to arrange a pick-up from the next forest service road, a few miles further down the trail. Eventually, they secured a ride into Lake Isabella and made their way out to the road.
By mid-afternoon, we pushed on toward Lander spring through some of the most beautiful coniferous forest that I had seen. The forest was open, with wide views, but the forest canopy was dense enough to still provide ample shade. Granite boulders protruded from the ground among beds of pine needles. The trail was generally rolling, through open glades and shady hollows. I’ve only been out west a few times, but when I think of western forests, this is what I think of. We seemed to be following along either a shallow valley or a short plateau, but eventually the land around us rose and we descended slightly into a basin at Lander Spring. Typically, springs in Southern California are small, outputting a couple liters per minute on a good day and maybe only a liter every few minutes in a particularly dry area. Lander Spring, however, was gushing fire-hose style, with more water than our camp of several dozen hikers could ever need. Ample water and wide-open areas for camping among the tall pines made this one of the best campsites on the trail so far.
We thought that we had crossed through the worst of the desert. We thought that we were coasting through the transitional lands between the barren Mojave and the thriving Sierra. We thought that the next week or so of trail toward Kennedy Meadows would be easy. We were wrong. Despite giving us our first views of the snow-capped Sierra range in the distance, by mid-morning the trail promptly plunged us back down into the hot, sandy, exposed desert. There was no water to be found, and the only shade was from the stunted Joshua Trees – incredible trees in their own right, but their presence crushed our morale. We were undoubtedly back in the desert. How the landscape changed so quickly, I’ll never understand, but the fact that we could still see the green ridge from which we had come, made the desert even more depressing.
We eventually reached the Kelso Road water cache and I stopped briefly to rest. There was no shade anywhere, so I simply sat in the hot sand, in front of hundreds of gallons of hot water. On one of the jugs was a hand-drawn map describing how to acquire water if the water cache was empty. Apparently, there are some reliable cow ponds several miles away in the valley below. I couldn’t imagine showing up here only to find each and every five-gallon jug empty. Talk about depressing. Soon, I collected an extra couple liters and kept walking. With no shade, there was no reason to hang around. The sun was now reaching its highest point in the sky and the heat was radiating off the sand in every direction. As the trail wound through the ridges, out and around the valley to the north and west, I began to lose track of distance. There were no landmarks, nothing to put the endless maze of valleys and ridges into scale. I was simply walking through the expanse, up a gradual slope that appeared to eventually drop off into nothingness. How far away “eventually” was, however, I couldn’t determine.
As I walked through the hot, endless, featureless, landscape, I began to hallucinate. There are (understandably) many misconceptions about hallucinations, one of which is that it’s typically impossible to tell what is real and what isn’t. For me, however, I can almost always clearly distinguish reality from whatever it is that isn’t really there. I have, after all, had a lot of practice. From swimming and running long distances, I’m no stranger to having my mind try to play tricks on me. As I struggled through the heat of the midday sun, I passed by many people attempting to take shelter under Joshua trees. As I passed by some people, I could see their faces, they were real people, fellow hikers – actually there. Other times, I passed people but could not distinguish their faces, they were simply figments of my imagination. I also spotted numerous shapes of people and large animals moving across the landscape, parallel to the trail – images formed in my mind as I struggled in the heat.
I did, at one point, pass a sight that, at the time I wrote off as a hallucination, but later learned that it had been very real. I had almost reached the top of the climb, the point at which it appeared that the trail ended, dropping into some kind of abyss, when looking to my right I spotted an older man, laying in the sand asleep, with a book on his chest. The only clothes he wore were a pair of shorts that should have been just a little longer. His shirt, hat, shoes, socks were strewn over the sand beside him. His gear wasn’t packed into a single, large pack, but rather strapped to the outside and crammed inside of two small bookbag type backpacks that he had lashed together with rope. The strangest part was that he was laying in the middle of the baking sun, with no shade in sight. He never awoke as I passed, and I assumed that he probably didn’t exist. At some point over the next few days, I mentioned the strange sighting to Sausage and Anchorman, and they surprisingly confirmed my sighting. Their confirmation brought more questions than it answered, questions to which I have no answers.
Once I finally crested the ridge, I could see my objective for the rest of the day: four distinct five-hundred-foot climbs and descents through the rugged, undulating desert to Bird Spring Pass and the next water cache. Cloudripper, who we’d met the other day at Robin Bird Spring, eventually caught up with me and we began walking together. We were both struggling with the heat and were shooting for the same campsite. Pushing hard, I led the charge up a couple of the climbs and he led on the others. At one point, I had gotten several hundred yards ahead and suddenly spotted a Mojave Green Rattlesnake spread across the trail in front of me. I stopped in my tracks and, when it just laid there and didn’t rattle, reached for my phone to get a picture. When I looked back up, it was gone. Vanished. The only thing more disconcerting than trying to get around one of the most poisonous snakes in the world is trying to get around one when you’re not exactly sure where it is. Cloudripper and I, after waiting a substantial period of time, circumnavigated the area by about fifty yards and safely continued on our way.
From this point, we had about two miles to reach camp and Cloudripper pushed ahead. I, on the other hand, continued slowly. I was exhausted, beyond exhausted. My stomach began to churn. I knew something wasn’t right, but I figured it was just heat exhaustion, and at the worst, heat stroke. It had been a long, hot day, and I hadn’t eaten enough. I also felt that dehydration was a pretty safe bet in these kinds of conditions. If I could just get to the pass, I would be able to eat and rehydrate overnight and hopefully feel better by morning.
Getting to camp, however, proved more difficult than expected. Over the course of the last two miles, I took six lengthy breaks, taking off my pack and sitting down. Four of those breaks were in the last mile. Keep in mind that I typically only take my pack off three or maybe four times per day and you’ll get the picture. I felt awful. Reaching the pass, I found Anchorman, Sausage and Cloudripper, along with some others, and attempted to downplay how bad I felt. I wasn’t able to eat much for dinner, and barely had enough strength left to set up my tent. Crawling into my sleeping bag, I remembered the two hikers from Robin Bird Spring who had been feeling bad. Whatever I was dealing with seemed similar. Maybe the heat was just too much, and we were all dealing with heat stroke. Suddenly, my stomach began to lurch. I scrambled out of my tent on all fours and proceeded to puke my guts out. Great. Let’s just say that the rest of the night was not a pleasant experience. I didn’t get much sleep.
Throughout the night, I began to get worried. What if I was the only one that was feeling bad? What if, when I finally fell asleep, I overslept and everyone left camp without me, not knowing that I was unable to continue? What if I tried to continue further toward Walker Pass, but was unable to make it that far? Some of the questions that raced through my mind between trips in and out of the tent were logical and valid. Others were born of painful fear mixed with slight panic. Feeling this ill in the middle of the wilderness isn’t something I particularly recommend. At least we were camped at a dirt road. It may be many bumpy miles, but we could get picked up here if needed. That thought finally brought me some peace and my stomach finally calmed down just enough to get a few hours of sleep in thirty-minute increments for the rest of the night.
I awoke late in the morning to the sun beating down on my tent and the interior temperature steadily rising. I still felt awful. Dragging myself from my sweaty sleeping bag, I looked down the hill and saw three tents remaining: Anchorman, Sausage, and Cloudripper. Cloudripper was lying in the fetal position on the ground next to his tent, heaving into the dusty dirt. Sausage was propped up against a signpost, looking only half aware that it was, in fact, morning. Anchorman was attempting to take his tent down, but the task was clearly more than he could handle, as I watched him pause to catch his breath every thirty seconds. I slowly made my way down the hill, about thirty yards to the others, and we all looked at each other and understood. We needed to get to town. Sausage was the only one who had cell service (Republic Wireless for the win!), so Anchorman and I logged onto his hotspot and began searching for a ride down the mountain. I put out an SOS post in the Walker Pass Trail Angels group on Facebook. Anchorman tried calling various shuttle and taxi services. Sausage searched through recent Facebook posts for the phone numbers of trail angels that had picked up hikers from this location in the past. After about an hour, we thought we had secured a taxi from Bakersfield, but after waiting for almost two more hours, he called back and said that his vehicle couldn’t make it up the dirt road to the pass. We were back to square one.
As we sat in the dirt, waiting, some trail angels drove up from the east side of the pass and set up a trail-magic station: Drinks, hotdogs, chairs and shade. I took a Gatorade, and we considered asking them for a ride but decided against it. They had driven all the way from Utah to come up here and hang out with hikers as they passed through, we didn’t want to pressure them to spend several hours driving a truckload of sick hikers down the mountain. Finally, Cloudripper called us over to where he was laying and told us that he had gotten enough service to call his wife from Las Vegas to come and pick him up. He was pretty sure that there would be enough room for all of us. That was a good thing for us and an even better thing for him. He was clearly the most ill out of the four of us. A little while later, his wife pulled up and we all managed to cram ourselves into her Subaru. The only thing between us and a hotel room was an hour-long drive down the bumpy dirt road to Lake Isabella. As we left the pass, a helicopter was making its sixth or seventh trip to a ridge just around the hillside, several miles away. We couldn’t help but wonder if others were in our position and just happened to not be right by a road crossing. If we had been several miles from a road, we may have had to call in a rescue team. We were lucky.
Reaching the Lake Isabella Motel, we unloaded and said goodbye to Cloudripper and his wife. If it hadn’t had been for her, I’m not sure what we would have done. It’s people like that along the trail, that show up at just the right time, that I wish I could properly thank. Words didn’t seem like enough, but she wouldn’t accept any money. She simply said that not puking in her car was enough. I guess that’s fair. It had been a struggle. Deciding to go ahead and pay for two nights, Sausage and I shared one room and Anchorman bought his own. The rest of the day was a blur. After sleeping for several hours, we did wander out to a Mexican restaurant to pick up dinner. I’m not sure why we thought that was a good idea. I don’t think anybody finished their food. The next day was more of the same. We ventured out for lunch, but we agreed that we felt even worse after eating. It was all I could do to walk down to the post office to pick up my new shoes.
Over the next couple days, we discovered that almost the entire motel was filled with sick hikers. This wasn’t heat exhaustion, or even heat stroke. This was norovirus. Basically, norovirus is to the thru-hiker community what the plague was to middle-ages Europe. It spreads quickly and efficiently through direct contact, and contaminated food, water, and surfaces. Our theory is that the first two hikers contracted it from somewhere in Tehachapi (possibly a hotel swimming pool) and made it to Robin Bird Spring before falling ill. At that point, it would have been easy to contaminate the trough that the spring flowed into, and most of us just scooped our water straight out of the trough. We eventually counted over 30 individual hikers who had to get off trail because of the sickness. It’s not uncommon for norovirus to sweep through “bubbles” of thru hikers on all the popular trails, especially the Appalachian Trail, where hostels and shelters frequently have to shut down to stop the virus from spreading. The extreme fatigue and dehydration that it manifests itself as is tough to manage anywhere, but is particularly dangerous out here in the desert. Unlike other illnesses along the trail, I’ve never heard of anyone being able to “push through” norovirus. It hits hard. The good thing, however, is that it’s a short-term illness. Usually the worst is over within 24 to 48 hours and most people feel mostly better in three to four days.
Our time in Lake Isabella was not a pleasant experience. Watching groups of hikers coming and going, sometimes in groups of three or four, and other time in larger groups of up to eight, we slowly began to realize the scale of what was happening. We stayed in town for two nights, and then a third. Anchorman eventually decided to stay for a fourth night. Sausage and I, however, were ready to get back on the trail. We had bleached everything we owned and couldn’t take another day in the motel, so after securing a ride back up to the pass from a local trail angel, we were on our way. As we rode up the west side of the pass, we discovered what the taxi driver was talking about. We were in a high-clearance pickup, but still only moving five to ten miles per hour. I wouldn’t even try this road in anything lower to the ground. I guess that was why Cloudripper’s wife had hauled us down the west side and circled all the way around. As we neared the top, clouds began to gather. I hadn’t seen rain since leaving Nashville several months before, but leave it to the high desert of the Mojave to dump approximately twenty large raindrops on us as we headed up the ridge. Before long, however, we had reached McIver Spring and the rainclouds had vanished.
The next morning, we headed on toward Walker Pass, where we had originally planned to get off-trail to go into Lake Isabella. The trail was relatively flat and somewhat shady with broad view of the Sierras, slightly closer but still in the distance. Descending to the campground at the pass, we took a lengthy lunch break and met up with many of the other hikers that we had seen at the motel. The events of the last week had mixed everyone up. We were now hiking among people we had never seen before, but most of us had one thing in common. We had all been sick in Lake Isabella. As we crossed the road at Walker Pass, we were surprised to find Anchorman. He had decided to not worry about the thirty or so miles between Bird Spring Pass and Walker Pass and had hitched a ride from town to Walker Pass to catch up with us. While Sausage and I had felt obligated to complete that section of trail, we understood why he was less inclined to do so. He has to return for law school at some point in July, so is not going to be able to complete the entire trail anyway. Because of that, he’s more interested in enjoying the overall experience and less interested in covering every mile of trail.
As the three of us headed up from the pass, we realized that we were now a group of three instead of four. Jackpot had been lucky enough to escape the norovirus and had pushed on. He was now nearly four days ahead of us and we doubted if we would catch him by the time we entered the Sierra. He was still embedded with the remnants of the large bubble of hikers we had been hiking among before we had to get off trail, the ones that had somehow escaped the illness. That was good. We knew that he had been looking forward to sticking with a good group of people through the dangerous passes of the Sierra. We had always assumed that he would be with us, but we were happy that he had escaped the days of misery that we had endured. Now we had a scout to feed us information about the trail ahead.
The trail switched back and forth up the mountain for several thousand feet before it finally leveled out and began to skirt the edge of the range, first looping around the western flank and then crossing a low saddle to the eastern side, overlooking the northern Mojave. To the north and west, rainclouds gathered. Several drops of rain fell, but straddling the line between the dry desert and the rugged Southern Sierra Nevada, it dissipated quickly. For the first time, the trail seemed truly mountainous as it skirted vertical slopes and large scree fields. While Tehachapi Pass is technically the geographical southern boundary of the Sierra, the large swath of desert between Tehachapi and Kennedy Meadows results in the general consensus that the Sierra section of the PCT doesn’t begin until Kennedy Meadows. For now, we were in that strange boundary area, not really in the desert anymore, but also not really to the Sierra yet. I was just glad to be out of the low desert from several days ago.
We paused for a break at a panoramic overlook, and as we tried to get moving again, Anchorman’s calf suddenly locked up. He couldn’t put any weight on it. Crap. First, noro, then he had to stay in town by himself for an extra day, then he comes out here and suddenly can’t walk. That’s got to be real good for his morale. After some struggling, he discovered that he could still hoist himself down the trail with his trekking poles and insisted on heading north. The only problem was that there was no water and no flat places to camp for at least five more miles. We agreed that we didn’t all need to wait for him, so Sausage went on ahead and I stayed back to make sure he made it ok.
Those five miles took us over four hours to cover. When we finally arrived at the spring and campsite, a couple hours after dark, we found over a dozen tents already set up. There was no room. Normally calm and rational, I could see the beginning of slight panic creeping into Anchorman’s eyes. I knew he was hurting, bad, but there was nothing I could do to help but stay with him. I had offered to take his pack, but thru hikers by their very nature are stubborn and he had refused. I would have done the same. We collected water and kept walking. After about an hour, we finally found a semi-flat patch of open ground. It wasn’t as flat as we normally preferred, and it took some creativity to fit both our tents, but we made it work. By this time, it was nearly midnight. I was exhausted. Anchorman was hurt and exhausted. I was worried about the next day. What if he couldn’t walk any further? Had I encouraged him to keep pushing when I should have insisted that he return to Walker Pass?
Somehow, we awoke the next morning and he claimed that he felt nothing wrong anywhere in his leg. The pain had vanished. I was glad, I knew yesterday had been rough for him. Leaving camp, we passed through what would end up being the last patch of desert in Southern California. Struggling up the climb, I cussed at each and every Joshua tree that I passed. It wasn’t the tree itself that I disliked, it was what it represented: barren stretches of brutally hot exposure, roasting under the undeterred, burning rays of the sun with no relief from the swirling heat, no relief from the stiff wind, and no water to be found. Climbing up, passing by the last Joshua Trees of the trail, the final stretch of the Mojave, the desert began to transition into low, scrubby trees. Grasses appeared and the trail crossed several small creeks within a mile. There was even a muddy patch or too. In the distance, snow-capped peaks loomed larger and larger. Later in the day, the trail climbed a ridge, crossed over a saddle, and circled a large valley. At the far side of the valley, a rocky outcropping jutted out toward the east. Peering over the edge, I looked down into the desert below. That would be my last view of the Mojave, in all its brutal glory. It had been a long, hard fight, but we had beat it, for good. As I write this, I don’t think you could pay me enough to go back and hike through the Mojave again. I hope I do eventually return though, because it truly is a beautiful land.
Approaching camp, the landscape leveled out and transitioned back to the open, coniferous forests that I had come to love. I was listening to music as I hiked, and was so happy that I found myself practicing air-guitar with my trekking poles as I made my way down the trail to the campground. We camped in a forest service campground, and I had falsely assumed there would be a water spigot or at least a creek nearby. There was no spigot or creek to be found, and I had been stubborn enough not to collect water at the final creek about two miles back, so I found myself collecting water from a dripping pipe, just down the hill from camp. By the time I finished dinner, I had calculated that it took eighteen and a half minutes to fill my two-liter water bag from that pipe. Excitement was beginning to build among the hikers. Tomorrow, we would reach Kennedy Meadows, the “official” beginning of the Sierra, the most famous section of the PCT. Anchorman and I planned to push hard and arrive in time for dinner tomorrow, but Sausage had decided to camp just outside Kennedy Meadows and arrive for breakfast the following morning.
The next day passed quickly, as we climbed up and over the last arid ridge before the Sierra. Descending into the valley on the other side, the landscape changed drastically. Grasses covered the valley floor, carved by the flowing South Fork Kern River. Groves of pines covered vast areas of land. Granite domes and peaks jutted up from the landscape. The land seemed healthier and more hospitable. Much of the area seemed more like a sub-alpine meadow rather than semi-arid desert. As we walked alongside the river, it occurred to me that this was the largest flowing body of water along the entire trail up to this point. Crickets and frogs sang from the tall grasses along the water. The towering ridges and peaks of the Sierra were closing in around us, giving us just a small taste of what was to come. The temperature was still warm, but there was a light breeze, along with shade from the pine groves. I stopped for a brief lunch under the shade of a towering pine but didn’t stay long. Real food was calling my name. Finally reaching Sherman Pass Road, Anchorman and I realized that we had been subconsciously hoping that someone would be waiting to pick us up and drive us several miles to Grumpy Bear’s Retreat. There was no one. In the ten minutes that we stood by the road, only a single car drove past, so we decided to start walking.
About a mile down the road, we reached the Kennedy Meadows General Store. The café was now closed, (it’s only open for lunch) but I was able to buy a Gatorade and we made ourselves at home with some other hikers on the front porch. Word on the porch was that a shuttle from Grumpy’s was headed our way, so we kept a close eye on the parking lot. Eventually, a beat-up, early 90’s Ford Econoline cargo van came roaring up the road and into the parking lot, kicking up clouds of dust and scaring the various collection of dogs and cats around toward the back of the building. On the passenger side door was a small sticker that read: “Grumpy’s.” Eager for dinner, no less than ten hikers plus their gear piled into the back. There were no seats and no windows, just bare metal and a thick coat of grime from the 520,000 miles on the odometer. As we raced up the road towards food, the rear axle began to complain loudly. The driver responded by flooring it around the next turn in a manner that made us all trade worried glances. Finally, the van skidded to a stop in a gravel lot and the driver hopped out and disappeared. Stepping out of the van, we saw that we had arrived. Grumpy Bear’s Retreat was before us.
Grumpy’s is a fine establishment. As a general rule, we hikers gradually acclimate to lower and lower standards of cleanliness and structure as we make our way further north, but this place took it to a new level. Just opening the front door was a shock. Picture about sixty hikers in various stages of inebriation, intermixed with about a dozen rough-looking locals all packed into about eight hundred square feet of space with music cranking so loud that you could feel it in your gut. About half of our group of new arrivals dove right in, but the rest of us needed some time to acclimate. Through talking with other hikers hanging around outside, we learned that there was lots of space for camping around back, so we decided to go check it out. The word that comes to mind is “junkyard.” Broken pieces of machinery, old appliances, several mobile homes and RVs in various stages of disintegration, a few sheds full to the ceiling of every piece of garbage imaginable, and a few broken-down utility trailers were spread throughout the back lot, several acres large, and in the midst of all that, you could camp wherever you wanted. There were already no less than fifty tents set up, but I was able to find a suitable site, sheltered in one direction by a small tree and in the other direction by a pile of old lumber. This was going to be interesting.
I may make it sound bad, but I truly am thankful for establishments like these. You can camp for free as long as you want (some people had been there for at least a week). They have not two but three outdoor showers with hot water (sometimes). There is a free washing machine that anyone can use (there is a line for drying). They will receive and hold packages for hikers for no cost (if they can find them). Loitering of every variety is allowed anywhere on the property (you would be amazed at the places where we have been asked to leave). They even have Wi-Fi for a small daily fee since there is no cell service. Basically, they offer everything a hiker needs, and absolutely nothing that you don’t – just enough motivation to suck you in, all while you spend outrageous amounts of money on food. For those who drank, the monetary consequences were even larger. I spoke to one hiker at some point who had spent over a thousand dollars since he had arrived. To be fair, I think he’d been there for quite some time, but it definitely sucks you in if you’re not careful. Anchorman and I finally built up enough courage to make our way back inside and proceeded to annihilate several burgers. As we ate and as the evening passed, the music got louder, and the crowd got rowdier.
And then they cut the generator off. Apparently, as we learned, the entire complex runs off of the massive diesel generator around back. So, at nine-o-clock (that’s a late night for hikers), they suddenly cut the music off and hollered out that the lights were going out in five minutes. Sure enough, several minutes later the lights went out and everyone was ushered out of the building. The only light that remained was a single small, dim lightbulb in the bathroom out back, a place that we tried to avoid at all costs. Luckily, our chosen tent site was a reasonable distance away from the crowd that partied for the remainder of the night, and sleep came easy as a cool wind howled through the valley.
The following morning, we were in line for breakfast nearly an hour before opening time – that was a good thing. By the time they opened the doors, there were roughly fifty hungry hikers wrapped around the building. There are two options for breakfast: the Hiker Breakfast or the breakfast burrito. The Hiker Breakfast consists of eggs, sausage, potatoes and all-you-can-eat pancakes, so, as the name would suggest, that is the breakfast of choice for most ravenous hikers. It should really be described as “all-you-can-eat pancake,” as they brought out pancakes (a single one for each meal) that were larger than the plates they were set on. They are still, however, all-you-can-eat, so you better believe that I slammed the first one down and requested a second. By the time they finally brought it out, though, they were transitioning the kitchen for lunch… there’s always a catch!
The rest of the day was spent resupplying next-door at Triple Crown Outfitters (run by Jackie McDonnell aka “Yogi” and Matt Signore, both triple crowners and hiking legends with over 45,000 miles of combined hiking experience). It seemed more like a social visit than a chore, as they spent as much time telling stories as we did actually buying stuff. We stood around inside the tiny store, which is inside a shipping container (but somehow still has absolutely everything you could ever need), for over an hour just listening to Jackie and Matt’s stories.
After talking with them and other hikers, we eventually came to the decision to stay in Kennedy Meadows for another day. A late-season winter storm was coming through, and higher elevations were forecasted to get wacked with sub-zero temperatures and snow. A few brave souls decided to go for it and pushed on. Many others decided to play it safe and hitched into a larger town for several days. Our plan was to wait until late tomorrow afternoon to leave and then take the first few days pretty slow, camping at low elevations to avoid the cold as much as possible. The good thing was that since so many people left to get a hotel in town, the environment was now much calmer than it had been when we had arrived. We spent the rest of the day eating and watched as the storm clouds rolled across the mountains. By the next morning, the temperature in the valley had dropped from the seventies when we arrived, to the forties. We knew that it would only get colder. From here, we had several thousand feet of elevation gain up into the mountains. We were slightly apprehensive, but excited to enter the heart of the highest mountain range in the continental United States.
