Pacific Crest Trail - Day 36

Start: Mile 314.3 - Highway 173
End: Mile 329.5 - Silverwood Lakes Campground

I can fix him.

Alan gives thousands of hikers a ride from the trailhead at the end of Highway 173 to the Joshua Inn and back each year. He has lived in Hesperia since 1971 when his father moved there to help build the Mojave Forks Dam as an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers. He built all of the hiker infrastructure at the Joshua Inn, but hasn’t hiked the trail himself.

1971 was 54 years ago, and given my current very transient, very lightweight life, 54 years in one place feels very … static … yet Alan has found a way to have people from all over the world come to him, and finds meaning in helping hikers to a refuge in the desert, while also taking in and finding homes for animals too often abandoned at the trailhead. He’s one of the good ones, and exactly the type of man who refreshes one’s faith in humanity. Cheers to you, Alan, and thank you for the lift!

These two old assholes were shooting birds just off the trailhead. I waved at them to let them know of our presence on the trail immediately after taking the first picture and they continued to walk and shoot forward in our direction as we proceeded forward. It’s simple to understand when you’re in the percussive cone of a shotgun blast. Fuck you, you lazy, wildlife killing less than 100 meters from your trucks old bastards. Pathetic.

This stretch was apparently a part of a network of Mustard Seed Trails where travel routes were marked by mustard seeds strewn by Spanish explorers (read: colonial assholes who couldn’t navigate).

Windy AF.

Cedar Springs Dam. Creates Silverwood “Lake”.

Just a normal picture of a normal sight you‘d come across normally.

Inland Empire bullshit includes pipes 12’ in diameter and voting Republican despite (because of?) your entire existence being funded by federal and state water projects trillions of dollars in the red.

Thankful that the sign pointed away from the strip cordoned off on each side by barbed wire topped chain link. It’s 2025 in America, you never know, you know?

Worst trail yet.

The Mojave Forks Dam from yesterday was built for “flood control” which is a hydrological term for the Army Corps of Engineers built a dam upstream of here.

You love to see routine maintenance deferred on major infrastructure projects.

Basically Cabo.

Silverwood ”Lake” is a reservoir primarily fed by the California Aqueduct and is the highest elevation reservoir in the world’s largest system of reservoirs, pumps, channels, and other miscellaneous projects to bring water to irrigate crops and fill pools in one of the most arid areas on the entire planet: Southern California.

Definitely not cult vibes from this chapel on the mountain-side.