It was so cold last night that neither Bunny or I were willing to get up to go pee in the middle of the night. Instead, we just lay awake complaining until I rolled over on to Bunny which caused her to pee in her sleeping bag. I started laughing so hard that I peed mine as well. Now we have to carry soaked bags into town today and find a laundromat with big machines to wash them out. Just when we thought our packs were getting lighter because we’ve eaten all the food, they instead increase from the urine weight. Welcome to our life on the trail. To top it all off, today is April Fools Day. I never peed my bag. Bunny…
It was right at freezing and it did make for miserable sleeping. We were at 6700’ so that played a part. We did get up early and were packed up in record time this morning. No one was around to witness it since Wolf left about 7:30 and Ivy left around 7:45. We hit the trail at 7:58…our best start in sometime. (I do miss Bear and Sassy who made us feel better about being slow.)
Not long after we got on the trail, we noticed someone hiking about 1/2 mile behind us. My first inclination was to think “damn, there’s other people out here. The trail is going to get crowded and suck now.” We’ve had the trail to ourselves for the last couple of weeks and I’ve liked it. It’s all about to change.
By the time Bunny decided she needed a pee break, I had accepted the fact that there were going to be other hikers out here. I was actually surprised he hadn’t caught up with us yet. We sat down on the trail and had a snack waiting for him to catch up. We were about to quit waiting and start hiking again when we heard someone say “Bunny Tracks and What’s His Name, I’ve been trying to catch up with you for a couple of days.”
We were confused. I wasn’t 100% certain who this was, but I thought it might be Bucky. We hadn’t seed him for about 4 weeks. I said “we saw you behind us and were talking about you yesterday. I was going to check your YouTube channel and see where you were at.” This opened him up to a full conversation. As soon as he started talking, I knew it wasn’t Bucky because he never talked this much. I was too embarrassed to admit I’d screwed up and just kept the conversation going. I eventually got his name as Bruce Almighty and figured out he knew our names from the trail registers and from Bunny writing our names in all the snow patches (eventual “leave no trace” graffiti).
Bruce had tried to make it into Idyllwild and had failed. He jumped ahead with a couple other guys to Acton just like we had. He has been a couple days behind us and closing the gap until he finally caught up with us today. It’s amazing, even with a case of mistaken identity, it felt like we had know each other for a long time. Trail life just brings everyone together.
In all, we had taken a 45 minute break and we needed to make up some time. There is a bus that runs into Ridgecrest at 1:20. With our early start time, we thought we’d be there no later than 12:30. Now we had to make up the difference. I kicked it into high gear and started down the trail. Surprisingly, Bunny kept pace right behind me. We covered 3 miles in about 50 minutes—our fastest pace ever. We were on track to make it to the pass before noon, even with our big break.
We did meet another sobo hiker and stopped to talk with him for a bit. I asked his name but he only had a real name and no trail name (which I won’t reveal for privacy reasons as will shortly be seen why). He said he was on his way to the meadows and we wished him luck. I walked about 20 steps before stopping and yelling back “which meadows” thinking he was meaning McIvers Cabin and Meadows. He said Kennedy. I was afraid of this. The poor guy had climbed 1100’ and walked 3 miles in the wrong direction. I felt bad, but I had to stop him from going further in the wrong direction. He dropped his pack to check his map and looked a bit dejected, but he’s young, strong, and not a thru-hiker, so he’ll be fine.
We made it to the pass just as an extended cab pickup truck pulled away from the shoulder. I was betting Wolf and Ivy had gotten here so early that they decided to hitch in rather than wait for the bus. Bunny told me to chill, they were around. We walked all the way to the road looking for a note but there wasn’t one. Bunny turned on the phone and we had a text. They had gotten a ride at 11:53. It was now 11:58. We had just missed them.
I was thinking it was going to be a long wait. There was no traffic at all and the bus was almost an hour and a half out. I told Bunny we needed to walk back to the top of the Pass so any cars coming would have time to see us and pull over. As we were walking back, 3 cars came in a group, but none of them even acted slightly interested in slowing down. Dead road again. I saw another car coming and dejectedly put up my thumb. Fourth car and success!
John offered us a ride all the way to our hotel. He lives around Lake Isabella on the other side of the pass but goes to Ridgecrest to shop rather than drive down to Bakersfield. He regularly picks up hikers as he’s driving back and forth. John is originally from Ohio but has lived in CA since about 1990. He’s semi-retired and wanted to get out of LA. He chose Lake Isabella because it’s nice but not popular with the LA throngs because if they come that far, they usually continue on to the Sierras.
Ivy had reserved a room for us, so we just went to the front desk and gave them our charge card number and he gave us a key. The place is a block off the main drag and is an old style motel. The rooms have been recently remodeled and have microwaves, refrigerators, and big screen TVs so we’re set. As is first priority whenever we get into a town, we dropped our packs and headed to the closest buffet, which just happened to be Thai.
The truck we saw pull away from the pass did not have Ivy and Wolf in it. They had gotten a ride down the pass to the junction where the driver was going the opposite direction of Ridgecrest. Even when it comes to hitchhiking, they are twice as good as us. We only got one ride into town where they had two. That’s why we were only about 10 minutes behind them getting to the hotel.
The owner of the hotel is originally from NE India. He offered to do our laundry for us once all the rooms were cleaned. That means we have tomorrow to get a couple days of groceries and figure out how we’re going to get back to Paradise Cafe. Kevin did text us and say he’s going to be at Walker Pass in two days. I thought he’d take more time to recover, but he’s young and doesn’t like to left home alone.
EFG
The latest release from Bunny Track productions: