500 Miles

When you have hiked 500 miles, they call you a ‘thru-hiker’. It means that you have completed the part where most people drop out, and have a good chance to complete the whole hike.

It also means that you have developed a routine that works. For us, it means that we wake up at 4.30 AM and have packed tent and backpacks and are back on the trail at 5.30 AM in the twilight before sunrise. In the middle of the day, we hide where we can find a little shade and cook hot food, and around 6 PM we find a flat place for our tent. And before 8 PM we are in our sleeping bags.

We are in bear country now, so the official campsites have solid metal ‘bear boxes’ you can store your food in. But for the most part we just camp on a flat place, and so we need to cram all our food into our bear-safe bag and hoist it up a tree.

Tomorrow will be a little different. The trail follows the L. A. Aquaduct through an extra hot corner of the Mojave desert. This part is traditionally done at night, so we’ll start at midnight with headlamps.

Sometimes the route gets a little boring – as when we had to walk some miles on the road because the trail was closed to protect the habitat of the yellow-legged mountain frog (no kidding!). But for the most part, the nature is absolutely amazing.

And sometimes you experience ‘Trail Magic’. That is when friendly Americans set up on a random spot on the trail simply to do something good for hikers. We’ve got freshly made hot breakfast on that account twice already. At home I would probably not eat a cheeseburger for breakfast, but here it is just what you need 😃