May 25

578-603

The story of today is our long water carry, with a dash of continued wind.

We walk through another wind farm with spectacularly enormous wind turbines. The whooshing of the blades is audible from quite a distance.

There are 5000 wind turbines operated in the Tehachapi wind resource area. They produce 1.3 terawatt hours of electricity(1,300million kwh) enough for 500,000 residential homes. So each 100 foot tall turbine creates enough power for 100 homes.

5 miles into the day we get to a little piped spring. It is 20 miles to our next water, so we carry our maximum capacity of water 3 liters each. Ideally we would want to have 1 liter for every 4 miles of hiking. A bit of poor planning has led to us not buying another bottle in town, so we will have to make do on this dry stretch.Our best water rationing strategies are to walk slow enough where we do not sweat very much, and climb slow enough where we can breathe out of our noses to keep our mouths closed. We also guzzle a liter of water and refill our bottles so we can “carry” a liter in our stomach. Our route snakes us through the Tehachapi mountains, continuing to follow a massive wind farm. To combat the wind we both spend much of the day zoning out and listening to podcasts and audiobooks.In the early evening we pass the 600 mile mark.

25 mile days feel easy now. We make it to the next water source, another pipes spring, and then find the closest campsite and set up camp. We have climbed up into bear country for the first time this trail, so we take care with our food smells.