Kristan gave us a ride out at 8am and back to the trailhead. She was professional and on time.

Since last night (both last night and this morning) a competing trail angel was trying to poach her rides. Shouting over the fence talking to hikers. Offering to buy them coffee. I told him we had a ride and he told us he’d be there to pick us up anyway. Dude. No.

We got hiking at a decent time. Hoping to avoid the heat. Forgetting we’d be on the other side of the highway (without trash cans) I had a can of cold coffee that I finished almost immediately.

We immediately met Galdalf, Story and .. (Galdalf wife).

We got going and enjoyed the shade for the first 15 minutes until we got into reality and into the sun. Again by like 930am it was 35 deg C. Ridiculous.

Story stopped to warn is about a snake rattling away in the bushes. It was telling everyone to back off but no conflicts. We gave it space and went by.

It was one of those hot and exposed days. We stopped at every shade spot we could.

Another few hikers that were before us the day before got into Agua Dulce and slack packed down to Acton. They must have decided to bring trail magic along. I was gifted a Dr Pepper. We drank that at our first break.

Secret gets candy from everyone. A hiker we knew from Nitsy’s gave him pop rocks in Acton so he had some of those and even tried them with a sip of Dr Pepper (only a bit. Don’t want him to have much caffeine). Made his day.

Natasha is a genius and bought a tub of mandarin oranges in syrup. That was amazing in the heat.

We stopped at the rat cave. No rat in sight but lots of shade and rat poop on the ledges that you wouldn’t touch anyways. We waited there for a couple hours to wait out the heat.

Once we got going we just kept going. The tunnel was amazing. Then we got there and we realized we could do more. So we went through Vasquez Rocks.

Which. Wow. I’m so happy we got to see that. Everyone was happy and Natasha nerded out. We deviated from the PCT to take the trail through the “famous rocks”, AKA the Star Trek film site.

Then we were basically in town so we ate dinner and went to Serenity OASIS for the night.

Lots of people we had seen already were all waiting out the heat and also trying to time their arrival to the Sierras. Honestly the heat today wasn’t impossible. It was hot but in my experience not dangerous if you have water (I was out in this heat often as a child and our kids just went through it safely and in good moods). But I understand people not wanting to hike in it. Tomorrow will be hotter. We decided over dinner to zero and leave late Sunday (which will also be hot) as a nearo to avoid the heat.