Miles hiked 25.5.
Woke and stretched and made my cold instant coffee with lots of milk and packed and set out through lovely Jeffrey Pine forest. It was the coldest morning I've had in a while, 45, and I was underdressed in just my shorts and hiking shirt. With my recent leg issues I'm reluctant to just "walk faster 'till you warm up", especially first thing in the morning when muscles are stiff. At any rate, my slow morning pace warmed me up in good time and I was loving the hiking. It really felt like the lower elevations of the Sierra, with the pines and granite boulders poking up in groups through the pine needle duff and the trail tread made of that coarse white sand. The sun slanted in through the trees, lighting occasional sage bushes on the otherwise bare forest floor.
I passed Landers Meadow, a sloping swale with sage along the edge and sedges and grass running down the gully. This was beautiful in the early light, the sage backlit and the trees casting long parallel shadows across the opening. Shortly after that was the spring at the Landers Meadow Guard Station. I was there alone for a bit, listening to strange Western Tanager songs, before Roadrunner showed up. She'd worked herself up into a bit of a frenzy over the heat and comic dry stretch, and to counteract this I had to mellow way out with the result that I somehow took over 1.5 hours to filter 6 liters of water and eat breakfast. She really has the Fear of the Sun in her; she just started on May 20, so has covered in ink about 22 days of hiking what's taken me about 40 days.
Through the morning's hike I had started to let myself believe that I was passed the low dry country, that I was already up into the gradual climb into the Sierra. But of course I was wrong. Soon after the spring the trail entered a burn area, then created the edge of a broad, deep canyon and began a slow descent back down into the shrubs and Joshua tree and hot sand. The trail made a long countouring descent several miles to the east, dropping only enough elevation to cut across the head of the canyon where here is a little pass leading out into he real desert. This was spectacular country, with steep crumbling peaks of granite and big valleys with little hamlets nestled away. This is definitely an area I'd like to come back sometime and explore. Somewhere along that descent, in he spirit of making every day memorable, I sat down for a rest on a bunch of red ants, and didn't really realized just what what was going on until they were all over my backpack and had started to bite me now and then.
At he bottom, there was a big water cache with attic gallon jugs strewn all around and a few hikers snacking and topping off their bottles. There are 2 apparently reliable caches along this 27 mile dry stretch, but I was planning not to use them to try and finish up the desert without using any water caches. I crossed the head of he valley and started up the other side, but by now it was in be low 90s which is about max. for me, particularly since I needed to conserve what was left of the 6 liters I'd brought from Landers Meadow. I took shelter in the meager shade of a Joshua tree and waited for a couple hours.
When I eventually continued on up through the broad slope and then over across the tops of a few steep side canyons, the weather was a bit nicer for hiking and the views to the west were spectacular. I have no idea what mountains I was looking at, but I was a bit blown away. They weren't particularly big, but they were steep and rugged and something about the way the light was shining made them so beautiful. At one point I rounded a bend and all of a sudden there were a bunch of Pinyon Jays noisily flying between their namesake trees.
The remaining 10 miles of be day followed along the eastern-most ridge of these mountains. Down to the east I could see semi trucks rolling up and down what must be Interstate 395, and beyond were endless rust colored hills and low mountains. Big puffy clouds provided welcome shade for most of the afternoon, and I stopped a few more times to stretch and take my shoes off to let my feet cool, all the while gawking at the incredible views.
It took right until dark to reach my intended camp spot, just before the last climb up to the next natural water source. I wanted to save that climb for be cool of the morning. The sunset was spectacular, glowing on he eastern hills and casting a growing shadow of the ridge I was on out over the valley to the east.
As I set up camp and ate some dinner granola and other snacks, the Milky Way came out to play and the last of the fighter jets that had been making thunderous circles overhead all day went home for bed. My slightly abused feet were too hot to keep inside my sleeping bag, so for awhile I drifted in and out of sleep with just my upper body covered. The warm desert wind gently rustled through the Joshua tree I was sleeping under, and it was the end of a wonderful day.
Birds:
Mountain Chickadee
Oregon Junco
Mourning Dove
Western Wood-pewee
Stellar's Jay
White-breasted Nuthatch
Band-tailed Pigeon
Green-tailed Towhee
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Western Tanager
House Finch
Western Scrub-jay
Western Bluebird
Spotted Towhee
Bushtit
Rock Wren
Black-throated Gray Warbler?
Hammond's Flycatcher?
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Black-throated Sparrow- food carry
Common Raven
Bewick's Wren
Pinyon Jay
Mourning Dove
Cactus Wren
Western Meadowlark
Loggerhead Shrike
California Thrasher
No comments:
Post a Comment