Day 38
Start: Pine Canyon Rd.
Finish: LA Aqueduct
Daily Mileage: 18.4
PCT Mile: 529.3
The portion of the Mojave Desert that we would be crossing was now front and center, taking up the view any way you looked. The trail eventually gave up on the hills and made a bee line for the road crossing the desert, and I shortly arrived at Hikertown.
Hikertown was an interesting setup with a look like a miniature old west town you would see in the movies. I had expected something run down looking, but it all looked fresh and well maintained.
The Spicy Bandits were there to greet me. Just when it seems like I won’t see them for a while we keep bumping into each other which is always a good thing. I’ve been leapfrogging with that group of 7 since Julian the first week in the trail.
I was planning on more hiking today, but it would start the official stretch across the Mojave, and we were going to wait until later for that. It is somewhat traditional to do the desert walk overnight when it is cooler, though with a strong wind blowing today, that was perhaps a moot point. Everyone gathering at Hikertown was sticking with tradition though, and groups were planning to leave between 3 and 5pm to start across.
In the mean time, it was time to pack in some food as always. We caught a ride down to a deli and I ordered 2 big burritos and one cold sandwich for the road. Not really anything in the way of fresh food there though, unfortunately. I killed the burritos, and we headed back to Hikertown. I got a new pair of slightly used shoes in the mail, as 500 miles is as much as trail runners should do, though they still looked in great condition except for the worn tread over the past 38 days.
There were probably close to 20 hikers preparing to head out. Marta at Hikertown cooked up some delicious burgers and burritos, and we readied to hit the trail at 5.
I left with Cookie Monster, Jana, Lanyard, Lou, and Indy, and we made our way through a brief farm field before we were dumped out on the famous or infamous LA aqueduct. The first part was a road along an open aqueduct I think used for irrigation. In the first half mile we saw 2 rattlers, though it turns out those were the only of the night.
We quickly turned down a different portion of the aquaduct which was a 12 foot in diameter partially buried riveted steel pipe. It looked like the trail went down a road that ran right next to the pipe, but we walked straight on the pipe since that’s tradition. The pipe was arrow straight and appeared to still, be in use more than 100 years after it was built. Walking on the conical rivets was slightly annoying, but it did not outweigh the novelty for me of walking continuously down the pipe. In the end I walked 2.7 miles straight down the pipe without touching the ground. The whole experience was amazing to me as a mechanical engineer, to appreciate the construction at a time when mules were used to lay the pipe.
The pipe dove underground when it approached another leg of the aqueduct. This section of the aqueduct was also different in that it was a channel enclosed completely in a concrete box. We could only see the top of the box which was also an old engineering feet to me. We walked this concrete aqueduct for several miles and there was not a single expansion joint or anything, it was just a continuous channel. I wonder how that was engineered being so long and straight and not subject to expansion or contraction.
At 9pm we reached a junction where the other hikers we were hiking around had gathered for a dark, silent dinner. I killed my sandwich I packed out and Cookie Monster, Jana, and I decided to camp at that spot in the shelter of a low bridge over the aqueduct. We laid down our mats and cowboy camped directly on the aqueduct.
Many stars came out despite the lights on the horizon. I saw several shooting stars, and we even saw what we think was a rocket launch high in the sky. It was very windy, so the shelter of the bridge helped as we drifted off.
This section of trail seems to have a dreaded perception to it, but I quite liked hiking along the aqueduct. It was an interesting way to cross the flat Mojave Desert, though perhaps that is just the engineer in me.
