Day 37, May 24: Mile 518 to 542

• Start: Hikertown - 517.6

• End: Tylerhorse Canyon - 541.5

• Miles: 23.9

• Ascent: 2776 | Descent: 1099

The infamous aqueduct walk! I woke up at 1am and left Hikertown at 1:45 to avoid the sun in the completely exposed section. It was spooky hiking at night by myself and I sort of regretted not leaving with the rest of the big group the previous night, but had to keep pressing on. I listened to a civil engineering podcast about the LA aqueduct that was interesting. The stars were bright overhead but I was focusing on the light of my headlamp and just keeping moving.

After a few hours of hiking, the sun started to peek over the horizon- hooray! But also it meant it was going to get hot soon, boo. After stopping for a bit to eat breakfast and coordinate packages with my sister, I continued on and found Squirrel Daddy packing up his camp. We hiked together to a water cache by a bridge that provided some nice shade. It was only 8am but already hot so I decided to stay under the bridge until evening. Squirrel Daddy stayed as well, and there were a number of other hikers taking respite including some German brothers Sunday Stroll and Will, Sugar Bear, Goose and her 11 year old son Sonic, Gummy Bear and Choo Choo.

The shade of the bridge kept shifting so we started sitting under one side of the bridge and kept leapfrogging over each other to reach the other end of shade as the hours passed by. We all chatted, snacked, napped, and Squirrel Daddy and I played tic tac toe in the dirt.

We finally hiked out at 5pm and crossed under the first of many wind turbines. Squirrel Daddy, the German brothers and I hiked out together but soon they all pulled ahead. I caught up to SD at Tylerhorse Canyon where I was planning to camp. He stayed to eat dinner and then continued hiking on as I finished setting up my camp. I ended up breaking two of my tent stakes in the hard ground, bummer. But I had couscous for dinner that was delicious, especially with some ghee that I packed out, and I fell asleep to sound of frogs croaking in the stream nearby.