Miles hiked: 17.5
Last night started out very dewey, and since I was sleeping without the tent up I had heavy condensation all over my sleeping bag not long after laying it out and getting in. I toweled the bag off as much as I could and draped the tent over me. However, at about 4:30 a tremendous east wind picked up suddenly, and I quickly put all my "heavy" stuff over my light stuff to keep everything under control. The next couple of hours were a bit chaotic. Peoples' tents where blowing down left and right, dust and leaves were blowing inside my sleeping bag and everything else, an empty 5 gallon water jug tumbled right by me, and a lawn chair was headed my way before it got tangled up in a faucet. All anyone could do was get as much of their stuff under control as they could, count on the fence downwind of us to catch everything else, and hunker down to wait it out. Eventually things calmed down around 7:30 and people could wander around and collect their missing items.
Starting at 8, everyone cycled back through the community center for breakfast of eggs, sausage and pancakes. I tried to figure out my phone/photo issue, but the computers in the center didn't like my wireless flash drive to be plugged in to them and I didn't get anything figured out. Towards the end of breakfast some of the volunteers started shuttling hikers back and forth to the post office to pick up resupply boxes. I got mine and repacked my pack, and was on the trail around 11.
It would have been good to be a bit more efficient with my morning chores, because it soon became apparent that the weather had shifted back to what we all expected of the desert. The trail headed out from Warner Springs across an open field with more Lark Sparrows, then went in to a grove of amazing valley live oaks. Some of these trees were huge, and the microclimate in this grove was substantially cooler than out in the open. We crossed hwy 79 again, then zigzagged up a canyon with more oaks and some very nice sycamores, and it had running water! I filtered 2.5 liters at the last stream crossing before the trail left the canyon. It was 12 miles to the next water. Now the trail began climbing up through chemise and manzanita, traversing up a southwest-facing slope that was exposed and hot. This climb seemed to go on forever, with countless false passes where it looked like we were nearing the top, but in fact had much more to go. It wasn't terribly hot, somewhere in the upper 80s I think, but after the last few cool days none of us were quite ready for this climb in the heat of the day. There was thankfully a slight breeze here and there, but in other places it was still and stuffy. It took me about 4 hours to do this climb, including a break in the shade which really helped this creature of the fog belt.
Eventually the trail leveled and traversed around the top of a big, bowl-shaped drainage full of big pink granite boulders and a few scattered pines amongst the scrub. Black-headed Grossbeaks were surprisingly abundant out in this dry scrub.
Eventually around 6 I got to the next water source at Trail Angel Mike's place. I don't know much about this place, but it is just a single house way out in the scrub on a hillside. There are water tanks which hikers can fill their bottles from, and apparently people can camp in the back yard too. I was feeling like I needed some alone time, so after getting my water I walked just another few hundred yards and found a flat spot between some short chemise. It was really nice to just sit and clean my feet and watch the sun's last light and listen to California Thrashers and Wrentits singing. I also got to enjoy a bit of scotch some other hikers have me; someone put a whole bottle in their resupply box!
Birds:
Barn Owl (BNOW)
Horned Lark (HOLA)
American Crow (AMCR)
European Starling (EUST)
Acorn Woodpecker (ACWO)
Western Scrub-jay (WESJ)
Oak Titmouse (OATI)
Western Bluebird (WEBL)
Lesser Goldfinch (LEGO)
Bushtit (BUSH)
Northern Flicker (NOFL)
Bewick's Wren (BEWR)
Pacific-slope Flycatcher (PSFL)
California Towhee (CALT)
California Thrasher (CATH)
House Wren (HOWR)
Black-headed Grosbeak (BHGR)
Spotted Towhee (SPTO)
Ash-throated Flycatcher (ATFL)
Black-chinned Sparrow (BCSP)
Orange-crowned Warbler (OCWA)
Western Wood Pewee (WEWP)
No comments:
Post a Comment