[pct-l] Trail conditions: Tehachapi Pass to Landers Meadow

[David Hough reading PCT-L]

Time period is 14-17 May 2017.    I hiked southbound but will describe
northbound.

Water:

Golden Oaks Spring is fine, but I wish there was a less hazardous way
to get over the barbed wire barrier.    Fortunately my procreative days
are past.     The water is flowing into the plastic jug faster than
I could pump it out.

Robin Bird Spring is in great shape.

>From Jawbone Canyon Rd RD0602 to Piute Mtn Rd RD0608 
there's much more water than I saw in 2004 or 2016.     
Cottonwood Creek, its unnamed tributary, and
Landers Creek are all running well.    But draw from Landers Creek
upstream from Piute Mtn Rd; the water gets a bit funkier near Landers Mdw.

Trees:

In the trail from Sweet Ridge RD0579B to Piute Mtn Rd RD0608, there is
generally about one tree down per mile, in the 6-12" range with 8" median,
easily and already bypassed by equestrians without dangerous or erosive
bypasses.    The evidence was lying on the trail.     That general statement
is modified as follows:

At RD0575 there is a tree across the trail right behind the BLM style.
I assume it's there a symbolic block to dirt bikers, who however can simply
follow the equestrian trail around it.

>From RD0601 to RD0602, there are at least a dozen trees down.

Around 603 there is an 18" tree with a bypass.

Around 603.5 the trail becomes one with a tributary of Cottonwood Creek,
normally dry.    There is a pile of deadfall there including at least 
three trees, one up to 18".    I did not see an equestrian bypass.
The latest deadfall may have been after the latest stock.
The night before the winds in Mojave were even worse than usual.
There were whitecaps on the motel swimming pools.

Campsites:

Young bucks can easily haul up from Tehachapi Pass to Golden Oaks Spring
in one day.     But some of us may need to stop at a dry campsite
along the way.

There are a couple of nice flat sheltered dry campsites worth mentioning,
not listed by Half Mile.
"Sheltered" is the key word here.     Find a flat spot behind a juniper
for instant relief, and be glad you don't have to hike through juniper 
thickets cross country.

RD0575 has a nice campsite immediately downhill from the trail/road junction.

The "road" MK10 - an abandoned jeep trail now used by dirt bikes mostly -
goes steeply and rockily down from RD0575
and then steeply and rockily up to RD0579B.    At the exact bottom at 5300'
there is a very nice large camping area.    
You can't miss it in either direction
because, besides being the bottom, there are "Speed Limit 15 MPH Camping Area"
signs posted.     I don't see how even a dirt bike could get much over
15 MPH on that road.

Schaffer mentions another flat area a bit further north
at 5400' with a huge grey pine.
Don't do it - the wind is furious and the shelter poor.

Roads:

This is the most important part for short-section-hikers and dayhikers.

The official status at 
http://roads.kerndsa.com/road-status-closures
is half-right.

Piute Mountain Road is passable from Kelso Valley Rd to Jawbone Mtn Rd,
which is as far as I needed, even for a Toyota Yaris or a Cooper Mini.
There's one minor mudhole and some minor sandy spots.
The official status is quite wrong.

Jawbone Canyon Rd is completely passable from Hwy 14 to Kelso Valley Rd.
I didn't investigate the Geringer Grade (direct route up to PCT) because
it looked so uninviting last year.     From the Piute Mtn Rd to the PCT
crossing at RD0602, the official status is exactly right: there are major
mudholes, and the first (northernmost) is worst.     Not passable for
ordinary passenger cars - wait for the mud to dry and the road to be graded.
No problem in e.g. an AWD SUV with moderate clearance such as a
Toyota Highlander.    Those mudholes are deep.

Travelog:

I'd nominate 566-569 as the worst three miles of the PCT, at least southbound.
Both times I was exhausted and facing debilitating afternoon headwinds.
Maybe it's better for northbounders starting in the morning.
But for me, I'd rather do the road walk to Seiad Valley or Soledad Canyon.
Any other nominations?

I encountered about 50 northbound through-hikers over these four days.
They had interested answers to the question "so what are you going to
do when you get to Kennedy Meadows a month early for a normal year?"
One from the PNW was already carrying his snowshoes.
Another, closer to my age, commented that somebody was planning an
alternate route below the High Sierra this year.

Time to reconsider the Theodore Solomons Trail?    Even that one probably
has sketchy stream crossings this year.     Yosemite Valley was on serious
flood watch a couple of weeks ago during a hot spell, and another is setting
up for this weekend.

Good luck to all of them.     If I were ever going to do a through-hike,
I should have joined the class of 1977 (check out the 1974 edition to see
what they were up against in this area -  I think it was roads all the way 
from Angeles NF to somewhere north of Weldon.)     
But I wanted to go to work to pay off my student debt.     
So now I do what I can in bits and pieces.

David Hough
http://pcnst.oakapple.net/bits/resources.html