Thousands attempt to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail each year.
"It's an assault on your body. It's so intense, you get up in the morning, very early and straight away you're eating so much food," Casey Clifton from Australia said.
The trip takes about four months of non-stop hiking, camping and refueling.
Not very many make it and some hikers get hurt. Thursday morning a man who was on the PCT near Tehachapi had a medical emergency and used his cell phone to get help.
He had an app that sent emergency services his GPS location, and a Kern County Fire crew took off in their helicopter to rescue him. He was transported to a local hospital, where he is recovering.
"I would really like to know who it was and if I met him on the trail. It makes me concerned about all of the other people I met and if they are fine or good and how they are," hiker Sabrina Pfotenhiuer said.
Hikers say this stretch of desert near Tehachapi is particularly grueling. "There's a stretch that's coming up that's supposedly 40, 45 miles without water which is, it's so hot out here, it's like painful," hiker Cait Young said.
Young said their group hiked through three days of sleet and snow during the month and a half they've hiked to get to Tehachapi.
"We heard a mountain lion in our camp, maybe 200, 300 feet away from us," Young said hikers face lots of dangerous situations.
Every hiker 23 ABC spoke with said all the risks are worth it, saying the experience itself and the kind people they meet are incredible.
"It's the best experience I can imagine," Pfotenhiuer said. Pfotenhiuer is from Germany and said this is her first time visiting America.
"The kindness and generosity we've come across, like even coming across a water cache in the middle of the desert, like that is the greatest most humbling [thing]," Young said.
