April 24. Day 6.

Pioneer Mail Trail Head to about PCT mile 72.6

Miles hiked: 20.

Today had a fair dose of type 2 fun scattered throughout. My prediction that it wouldn't really rain too much overnight proved to be quite wrong indeed. It rained all night, and continued to be a bit nasty all day.

Let's start at the beginning: I woke around 4 to find that my backpack (which goes under my feet at night), a corner of my ground cloth and sleeping pad, and the foot of my sleeping bag were sticking out from under the edge of my tent, as a result of me slipping down the slight slope I was camped on. So those things were all a bit wet. It also appeared that I now have a slow leak in my pad. I rearranged everything back under the tent, dried things off a bit with my little square of pack towel, and blew my pad back up. I didn't get much more sleep though, because there was also a fair bit of condensation inside the tent since I'd pitched it with the windward edge on the ground to keep the wind out, and every time the wind hit the walls, a fine sprinkle would rain down on my face.

I decided to get moving a bit after 5, making coffee from bed, munching on a bit of jerkey, getting my on-trail breakfast (3 bars) ready, and slowly packing my stuff. My packing was a bit slow as I figured out which order to do things in to keep the most stuff as dry as possible. I stayed under the tent until the very end, and it was the last thing to be packed. I shook as much moisture off it as I could, then stuffed it in the outside pocket of my pack.

I said hi to Sprout who was also just getting out of bed, filtered another two liters from the nice faucet right next to the pile of silly water jugs, then got walking. Boy was it chilly! It was about 45 degrees, and the wind was steady 30-40 mph and gusting to at least 50 in certain places. There was cloud all around and I was getting sprayed by sideways mist. I didn't realize quite how bad it was when I was packing up, so I only had my light running shorts, hiking shirt, rain jacket, and wool neck muff up around my ears. Pretty quickly I realized this wasn't quite enough, so I stopped in the lee of a big rock face and put on my new wool boxers, which gave a bit more warmth to the most sensitive areas. I had to put some Antarctica skills to work to prevent various pieces of gear from blowing away.

Felling much more insulated, I continued on. According to the map the trail was still tracing the scarp of the mountain that I walked along most of yesterday, but I couldn't tell because visibility was only about 100 meters. After an hour or so the light mist turned to actual rain, and I think the wind speed bumped up 5 or so mph. At times like these I believe it's important to at least pretend you're having fun, even if you really have no right to be. In this spirit I let out a hoot and shouted "now we're really living!"

There were several Townsend's Warblers up here in the scrub and storm, being blown around like bits of candy wrapper. I would have sent them in the direction of the nearest copse of trees if I had any idea which direction that was. I also looked up just in time to see my first American Kestrel of the trip go shooting by on the wind.

It took me about 3.3 hours to go the first 10 miles, which was my fastest bit of walking so far on this trip. I'm not sure if my pace was much faster than previous days, but owing to the wind and cold I was stopping less to look at birds and take pictures of flowers. I had brunch at this 10 mile point, sitting in the lee of a bush with my down jacket around my legs and the umbrella open in front with the handle stuck between my legs. Brunch was granola with powdered mild and peanut butter, and a second cup of coffee, this time cold

Brunch under bush.

After this the trail got serious about going down hill. Today was going to be the first day with a lot of downhill, and I dropped it in to low range 4-heel drive (feet and trekking poles) to go slowly and play nice with my knees. 30 or so minutes later I was a mile farther along, about 1000 feet lower, and the temperature was about 15 degrees warmer, but it was still pretty windy. I had dropped down out of the cloud into a big, rugged, remote, classically Western landscape. There were even gun shots about a mile away. The map shows a bunch of mines in the area, so the most likely explanation was that two neighbor miners were having a shoutout over one of the claims. Either that or there was a stage coach holdup in progress.

Beaver tail cactus.

I think this one's a type of prickly pear.

Not in my nature app. This one only showed up once I got down lower and drier.

Hedgehog cactus??

The trail side-hilled around a ridge then dropped into a lower and drier landscape. There were a couple new cactus species, and there was more bare dirt between the shrubs.

I can't get enough of these Yucca.

I made it to the next water source (Rodriguez Spur tank, mile 68.4) and met Ox and Plow (guess which one is slowing the other down). I spent about 1.5 hours there, eating, drinking, and chatting with most of the people I hiked or camped with yesterday as they arrived. This source is a cement tank which I guess is periodically filled by someone. People can either get water from a pipe downhill of the tank, or scoop water out of a hole in the top. Ox said he saw several headlamps, a water bottle, and a couple other unidentifiable objects in the tank when he was getting water from the top. There isn't reliable water on trail for another 33 miles, so I left this tank with 6 liters, which with the food I still have made my pack the heaviest it's been so far, probably about 33 pounds.

I hiked another 4 or so miles before wandering off trail and finding a flat and cactus-free spot to camp. It is still pretty windy and cloudy, but isn't really raining too much anymore. I set up my little camp, eat my little pot of mashed potatoes, write in my little journal, then drift off for a little sleep. I am in a big place.

There goes the trail, gradually on down this hillside.

Cold rain in the desert. Go figure.

Birds:

TOWA

OCWA

WESJ

CATH

SPTO 

BCSP

WREN

HOWR

CALT

AMKE

CORA