La Rose (historical)

The one with the surprise at lunch, Christmas toes and two tumbles.

📍 Location: Tehachapi to MM 583

🥾 I actually walked: 17 miles
💰 Money: No money spent
⛑️ Health: My feet are now taped up. With only 136 miles to go I am not giving up now!! End of the day I’m feeling good. My achillies are still a bit sore, but it’s manageable. The tape worked well.

☀️ Weather: Overcast in the morning but hitting late 20’s in the afternoon.

🍲 Food: I stuffed myself silly on the Hotel breakfast with eggs, sausages, waffles and coffee. Lunch was hot noodles with bacon bits, dinner was dehydrated chicken fried rice with vegetables. I ate gummies, nature valley bars, sweets and trail mix in between. Hiker hunger is real!

💤 Sleep: I’ve slept well in my king sized hotel room bed for the last two nights. I’m now back in a tent for the next 5 days!!

😃 People update: Disco is staying an extra day in Tehachapi. He is fast so will catch us up. It was also good to spend lunch with Amber & Harry, Kodak & Flamingo.

⚙️ Gear update - I changed my bidet to a Vango fuel bottle with a spout. It works a dream and now I don’t have water spilling out everywhere.

THE LONG WINDED VERSION:-

🏨 I’ve spent two nights in Tehachapi. Yesterday I was not very sociable and spent all afternoon and evening just in my hotel room resting, stretching and having a long bath. I caught up with Matt & Rachel on FaceTime which is always good for the moral. I miss them both (and the dogs) terribly, but not long to go now.

🍀 My pack is now the heaviest it’s ever been with six days of food and 4 litres of water. My feet are taped up and I feel good to go! I’m walking this last section with Bloom. Disco is slack packing a small section today and walking back to Tehachapi. Wish us luck!

🚗 730 am - A lovely trail angel called Fran collects us from the hotel. She’s playing classical music and tells us all about her family. Her niece lives in Switzerland so she’s chatting away with Disco Daddy about places that she has visited in his home country.

🥾 8 am - Fran drops me and Bloom off at the trail head and then takes Disco to a different section. And we’re off. The first section of this trail is walking in parallel to the busy interstate which is noisy. We have barbed wire on our left and trucks on our right. This part is not pretty I’m sort of looking forward to the mountains. I have a feeling that this may be where they recorded the start of the trail for Cheryl Strayed (from the film Wild), but I may be completely wrong.

🏔️ 830 am - The highway is soon a spec in the distance and we are heading up into the mountains. Looking at the elevation profile, it’s going to be a climbing sort of day!

🌸 1046 am - We reached the 5 mile mark and we are over 6000 feet. There are bright orange Mariposa lilies everywhere. It’s beautiful, like a flood of orange carpet all over the side of the mountain. The wind has died down now and the Sun is shining. It’s hot! Have I mentioned that I don’t like walking in the heat? 😂

🌳 11.12 am - We stop for a 10 minute break under a Joshua Tree. It’s good to have some shade.

🏔️ Blimey, this is trudging today. It’s a slog as we climb 6300ft into the desert mountains. The sand is getting in my shoes and I can feel the pain in my heels starting to scream under the strain of the incline. “Stop moaning, Jukebox” I say to myself. Then I start singing “these are a few of my favourite things”. I sing loud and it works! Gotta love Julie Andrew’s!

Eventually, we have some reprieve as the trail turns on to a dirt road and we start heading down the mountain. We agree to stop at the tent site at the bottom of this hill for lunch.

👋 1.30pm - Omg! Harry, Amber (The Royals), Kodak and Flamingo are here as well. Hugs all around! They camped last night and it was very windy. We chat at length and it’s good to catch up. We may see them again later at the water cache.

🦶 “Has anyone else got numb toes?I ask, as I try rubbing life back into mine. Harry tells me that he has had numb toes for a while now and Flamingo has also suffered from numb toes for about two weeks. “Apparently it’s called Christmas toes”, Flamingo explained. “After a thru-hike, you don’t get feeling back i your toes until after Christmas”. In all my research for this trip I’ve never heard of Christmas toes!

🥾 3 pm - After a nice long lunch, Bloom and I are off again.

🤕 Note to self, turn cooker off before trying to put it away! (I burnt my thumb and finger!).

🪨 5.10pm - We are now walking on very slippery gravelly sand with cliff edges to our left. We are negotiating rocks and big stones and the pace is very slow. As I clamber down one section my right foot slips from under me and I find myself flat on my rear end. Luckily, no damage that I can see. Bloom helps me up and we continue on at an even slower but more stable pace!

6pm - It’s still in the late 20’s and baking 🥵. I look at the app and we’ve only done 16 miles so far. We still have just over 4 miles to go. We find a tree for anothe quick break before carrying on. Im ignoring the pain on my feet and I’m now hitching up my rucksack every ten minutes as it keeps slipping down over my hips.

6.20 pm - We are now hiking down the mountain which is so much better on my feet. The pace has picked up and so has our chatter. It’s good to talk. I then hear a noise followed by a little scream. As I turn around, Bloom is on the floor and is in a lot of pain. I snap open her rucksack so that she can climb out of it and sit on the side. Her foot had caught a dead tree spike and she had gone over. It had tore her shoe and she’s also has a bad cut on her knee. We clean up the wound and patch her up. We agree to pitch before the next water source as we have enough to get us through the night and we can’t risk any more accidents today. We are both exhausted.

🏕️ 6.40 pm - Lots of people have passed us so we are expecting the camp area near the spring to be busy. We find a spot at mile marker 583, Golden Oaks Spring. TourGuide is here and also Pickles and Steve. Blooms leg is bleeding heavily and we really need to stop. It’s sheltered well by the wind and we have a water pipe to filter water from.

A challenging day with the inclines, but a good 17 miler in the bank. I’m sleeping next door to Steve so I hope he isn’t a snorer.

Thanks for listening to my rambles.

See you tomorrow. Night night

Signing off.

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