Day 50

17 miles of the LA Aqueduct 


I slept decently last night with the AC on the whole time. However, it was loud.
To my surprise once I fell asleep I was out for the night. 


Jess and I tried to sleep for as long as we could. For me I was awake by 7:30 though sadly. 


The hosts of hiker town offered us cinnamons and coffee for breakfast so I ate 2 and brought one to Jess who was just waking up around 8:30.


After some socializing with the other hikers I went back to the trailer for the AC and stayed there for the rest of the day before it was time to prepare for our night hike of the LA Aqueduct.


Around 2pm I decided to try to sleep until 5:30pm so I can have some rest before hiking from 7:30pm on tonight. 


I got about an hour or so of sleep before I woke up and started to get myself ready for the night ahead. 


I managed to get everything packed and ready to go by 6 so all that was left to do was camel up so I wouldn’t have to take too much water for the trek. 


At 7:30pm we were ready with glow sticks, music, and good vibes. 
Off we go, high ho high ho! 


We started off the hike with the golden hour sun as it was setting behind the mountains on our left. It was so beautiful. Our shadows were over 10 feet tall while we walked. 


We saw many bunnies playing and hopping around as dusk set in.


After about 4 miles we reached the pipe of the aqueduct. 
At this point Jess’s hip was bothering her so she popped 4 vitamin I’s (ibuprofen) like a psycho maniac and we continued on. 
We took some time taking each other’s pretty sunset photos and silhouette photos and then continued on into the night. 


The flat walking on the pipe was a little painful for our feet and hips after a while so we changed to the dirt road walk and hiked that from about 6 miles on. 


The problem for me was I did the hike mainly without my trekking poles and that was a mistake because it caused my hips to hurt a lot more then usual sooner in my mileage. Yikes. Lesson learned. Flat walking I still need my poles.


By night fall our glow sticks were out to party and our music was blasting to get us through. 
The moonlight was so beautiful and bright we didn’t even need our headlamps for this hike. The moonlight guided our footing.


I saw Joshua trees for the first time under the moonlight and stars. Beautiful. Took lots of photos of them.


Saw our first scorpion.. we kinda chased it with one phone recording and the other with the flashlight on to take good videos and photos of it… he was probably pissed off and terrified. Honestly so were we… scared I mean haha. 


Night hiking is so much fun. 
However, it is quite exhausting. We rested about every 2 miles and during some rest I almost was falling asleep and had to keep myself awake. 


By the time we arrived to our camp site it was 3:30 in the morning. We needed our headlamps to set up Jess’s tent (both of us slept in hers because the wind was too much at the wind farms where we were for mine to get set up properly in the dark) 


We were sleeping by about 3:45-4am and set your alarms for our nap by around 5:30-6am. Sad little nap haha. Pick up to get to town was between 6-6:30am so that’s why only a short nap. We got a hotel for the night in tehachapi with a pool so I’m excited for tomorrow to sleep well in a nice big bed and AC. 


Honestly, this night hike has been one of my most memorable experiences of the trail so far and I’m so glad I was able to share this experience with my new friend Jess. 
She’s a rad human.