6/27/2023
Section: Milepost 597.5 to 617.2
Distance: 20.72 Miles
Moving Time: 08:22 hrs
Elevation Gain: 2,799 ft
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Last post for a while - going into the Sierra. See you in 2-3 weeks! Lots of new material at that time!
The hundo’s are really going by fast now! At 20+ mile days, that seems to happen. Today was much better - think the extra sleep helped and not dong a 34 mile day the day before was also probably a positive change. Today’s stage travels north for the first half of the stage before turning east for the second half. The trail starts in BLM land, then transitions into the Sequoia National forest for a bit - which is super exciting - before then crossing back into BLM land. Water was plentiful for the first half of the day but then got scarce after turning east.
We woke at around 5 and were going by 6, again aided by the lack of tent deconstruction. We descended a short distance to the bottom of the pass and then climbed back up the other side looking for Izzy and Push-pop without much luck. The trail wound around the west side of Weldon Peak and descended a short distance. We were back in the high desert forest and very happy to have big trees all around us, though, I am pretty sure none of them were actually Sequoia’s.
The trail crossed through an easement and a road where someone had set-up a giant billboard with the 10 commandments on it so… thanks for that… and then, soon after, we came to the 600 mile sign written in pinecones. We took a picture and continued on. At mie 602, after skipping through some more easements, we came to the border of Sequoia National Forest and entered. The trail continued and a few miles on we came across the first of many water opportunities - Robin Bird Spring where we shed our backpacks and took a break to refill water. After a 20 minute break we headed on up the trail.
The trail elevation was steady and perfectly groomed so we sped along north for some time. At various points we checked FarOut for water upcoming or data on campsites. On many of these features we were elated to see very imaginative commentary from Sloppy Joe who is the same Joe we traveled with during week 2 on the trip. It turns out that we are only about 4 days behind him and I am hoping we get to catch-up in the Sierra, but his commentary is absolute gold and he is a prolific commentator on FarOut.
At mile 610 the trail turns east and we stopped at Landers Camp Ground which was a fabulous spot with plenty of shade. We found Push-pop and Izzy getting packed up to leave and talked to them for a while before filling our own water bags. It sounded like they did not have the best luck finding a site after ours last night and had bivvy’d to get out of the wind. After we filled our water we packed up and carried on.
Not far out of Landers the scenery began to change…back to the desert. I had really hoped that we would get to keep the trees but it very much descends back into desert. We hiked on and at one point Amanda surprised a rattlesnake who sped off, rattling the whole time. Like a champ though, she continued out in front as the trail began to wind down around some ridges. As we wound down we heard some voices below us. “Damn, how are they keeping up that conversation going uphill so fast,” Amand asked me. The answer made itself apparent as 2 women came up the trail on horses with a third pack horse between them. We went off to the side and said hello and asked them how their day was. They smiled and said “Better now, but we had to work on getting these guys around some blowdown down below for almost an hour.” We told them sorry about that and that the rest of the trail up to Landers was in better shape before carrying on. Another 20 minutes brought us to the blow down they had talked about and - yea - I have no idea how they got the horses around it.
We descended for another 90 minutes, eventually reaching Kelso road where a huge water stash had been left. We found a group of 4, including the girl who had been left behind at Hikertown, reunited and staked out in some spots by the trail. Amanda and I deliberated on going on further for a while but decided to eat dinner first before deciding. We had some ramen and fought off red ants for about 45 minutes before deciding to wake up early the next morning instead of pushing on now. We found another tent site down the way and set-up our tent there, seeing more red ant evidence. I did my yoga and talked to the group of 4 about the UFO they had also seen leaving Hiker Town before Amanda and I turned in for the night
