Miles hiked: 22.15
I wanted to try and catch up on some sleep after yesterday's 3:30 wake up, so today I didn't get going until the first mosquito started buzzing around my ear some time in the five o'clock hour. I had 5 miles down to the next water, and the most notable things during that walk were that I saw another Scott's Oriole, this time in contiguous pinyon forest, and also saw a Brown-headed Cowbird. It was a beautiful morning, with the early sun lighting just the rim of rocky outcrop ridges. It is the sort of simple beauty that on its own might not draw much attention, might not make the cover of Outdoor Photographer, but which as part of the whole morning seems like the most beautiful scene.
Where the trail crossed the creek it was totally dry, but only 20 meters upstream it was a burbling little affair amongst thick willows with a knee deep pool for me to stand in while I mad my water. The place was thick with Black-headed Grosbeaks. I borrowed the syringe thingy to back-flush my water filter from a hiker I just met, named Dragon Claw. Proper etiquette seems to be to not ask about where trail names come from on first encounter. I hope this one isn't because of anything scary or dangerous, because I'm camped next to Dragon Claw tonight. The back flushing really improved the flow through my filter, and made me realize that the water bottle lid with a hole in it that I've been using (and that I was so proud of inventing/fabricating) doesn't actually do a very good flushing job.
I also saw Mac and Cheese again at the water, and then met St Croix, Lost and Found (this is just one person, but would be a great couple's name), and Smiles. Before I knew it I had gabbed away about 2 hours (yup, I'm so talkative), and now the morning was well on its way to being damn hot.
I trudged up through more pinyon and J. Pine, really an interesting combination, and was sweating like, well, use your favorite audience-appropriate saying here. No wind was making it into the forest and the air was heavy all around me. It was somewhere around 90, and I was hating the fact that I'd spent so much of he cool morning not hiking. Oh well.
I was also hiking slow, trying to go easy on my shin muscle twang and also trying to keep a pace and stride that didn't make my new blisters much worse. Can't believe I'm having blister issues now after almost 700 miles!
I was almost but not quite ready for a break when I passed out of the forest and into a burned area with a pokey little shrub growing everywhere. "No problem", I thought, "there will probably be some more shade just around the next bend." 4 hot, foot-painful, and grump-inducing miles later I finally found a bit of shade over a flattish bit of old road. I spread out my nap pad, peeled off my shoes, had a quick snack, put my feet up on my pack, and was quickly asleep.
After a bit more snacking and some good stretching, which I've been neglecting the last few days, I was walking again around 3 or 4. (I didn't do a very good job of remembering what time anything happened today) A little nap is great for improving any poor mood, and I was having a much better time now, even though the trail was still wrapping in and out of countless little gullies through more of the hot exposed burned area and it was now downhill which seems to make all my parts hurt. I was now descending down a little canyon toward the Kern River. Down in the bottom of this canyon was a thin band of green willows, and a couple Kestrels were flying around and calling a bunch. There were some little open pit mines from who knows what era scattered around with the colorful guts of the earth strewn around their entrances. On and on I went and the Kern River Valley came more and more in to view. I was headed down into a part of the valley called the Rockhouse Basin, where the canyon widens into a broad valley with granite domes and spires and hills on the west side and the crumbly, colorful shaley hills to the east that I was coming down out of. Out in the basin was the narrow green strip of the river, with that straight, purposeful course of a river that's still close to the bedrock and not meandering through a sediment-filled valley. Big rounded hunks of granite bulged up out of the coarse sand of the gradually sloping basin on either side of the green riparian strip, amongst scattered shrubs and a few burned out pinyons. It was beautiful but still hot, still near 90 at 6 in the evening. My feet felt a little like I was walking on hot sandpaper, and I had to stop in the shade of some pinyons to put them up on my pack for a quick rest.
The trail traced upriver, following the boundary where basin transitions to hills for 4 miles before the canyon narrows and the river and trail both are pinched together by 2 ridges coming together from either side and closing off the basin. What a sound to here the running water and Song Sparrows and Yellow Warblers! Reaching the Kern River and then Kennedy Meadows just a few miles beyond is the symbolic end to the desert and beginning of the Sierra for PCT hikers. After slowly walking along the river and saying hi to a few hikers who were already camped, I found a spot for myself and again stood in the water filtering a couple liters. After making my water I peeled off my clothes and sat down in a slow pool about waist deep, letting the cool water soak back into my desertified body. I had the last of my granola for dinner and chatted with Dargon Claw as a few Common Nighthawks swooped around high overhead making that buzzy sound of theirs. Tomorrow morning, Kennedy Meadows!
Birds:
Bewick's Wren
Western Scrub-jay
Oak Titmouse
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Scott's Oriole
Black-throated Gray Warbler
Brown-headed Cowbird
Mourning Dove
California Towhee
Spotted Towhee
Black-headed Grosbeak
Western Wood-pewee
Gnatcatcher
House Finch
Northern Flicker
Lazuli Bunting
Stellar's Jay
Rock Wren
Lark Sparrow
American Kestrel
Sage Sparrow
Song Sparrow
American Robin
Yellow Warbler
Common Nighthawk
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