Pacific Crest Trail - Day 57

Start: 572.9 - Backcountry campsite
End: 594.1 - Backcountry campsite

We woke up in a wet windy cloud. Gandalf / Wind Buddy ran down to check on the injured hiker at dawn to find her comfortable and game to push on to a more protected campsite a bit lower in elevation to weather the rest of the storm.

A few miles on the skies were clearing up.

Massive views to the North and East.

You can find every color in the desert.

Imperial shuttle delivering Darth Mojave over the ridge.

Our water source for the day. The 95 miles between Tehachapi and Walker Pass have the longest stretches between water sources which are either trickling springs like this or water caches at road crossings supported by heroic locals.

Hostile architecture - wildlife edition.

While renewable energy sources like windmills are unequivocally better for the environment than burning fossil fuel, they aren’t some magical externality free solution. At this point, we’ve essentially walked 70+ miles through a wind farm - the Tehachapi area has ~4,200 windmills - apparently the third largest installation on Earth.

These windmills at the top of this ridge are well past my threshold for cost/benefit. Seeing beautiful untouched wilderness marred by roads and the leveling of mountaintops for six incremental windmills is ridiculous. Where’s the line? Should we cap every mountain with windmills like we dammed every single river in the western United States instead of addressing our ridiculous consumption habits? Maybe we level and cap every peak and ridge save one or two view and audiosheds from the spinning blades and dull drone of turbine based power generation just to really rub it in for the next generations.

Missing from these photos: a dull steady whirr from the gigantic turbines behind.

The trail led to some hazy evening views towards Bakersfield and smells of smoke. Not exactly a comforting sensory experience without cell service, but at least we’re past 80+ miles of listening to the drone of windmill turbines.