Mon. August 15     Miles today: 23.8     Total so far: 1,634.2        Sierras Section G

It was one cold, sodden morning that greeted the early dawn light!  Bill and I waited till the rain stopped at 5:30 am before getting up and dressed in cold, wet clothes and shoes.  Not fun!  The sky was still dark gray and threatening, so all we could do was pack up and head out, hoping to dry things later.  The ground was muddy and sloppy from all the rain, and we had to hike more than two miles before we could find a wide, flat, reasonably dry rock where we could sit down and eat some breakfast.  All the trees were dripping, and all the plants looked “mushed” by the heavy rain. 

A couple more miles brought us to Chimney Creek Campground, where we’d planned to get water.  But a sign at the entrance warned that the water had “higher than acceptable levels of uranium”.  We didn’t care–we only needed a few liters.  But oh no–all the campground faucets wee turned off!  We were discussing this in dismay, not liking the prospect of having to filter a lot of creek water, when a man camped nearby called out a friendly greeting.  He offered us bottled water, AND oh-by-the-way, he’d just made coffee–would we like some?  And “how ’bout that light show last night!!??”  So thanks to real trail angel Joe from Fremont, CA, we enjoyed fresh hot coffee and got water enough for many more miles.  Not only our stomachs were warmed, but our hearts also!

Now it ws a long, long uphill in front of us, beginning with the climb to Fox Mill Spring, where we got the rest of the water we needed.  Then it was several more hours of climbing as the PCT regained the crest.  But damage from last night’s violent storm was everywhere along the way.  The more of it we saw, the more grateful we were to the Lord for watching over us, even though we did get wet!  Overhead, we got lots of “audio entertainment’ from fighter jets above the clouds.  We couldn’t see them, but we sure could hear them!  (I think they were out of China Lake Naval Air base). 

We began to get some awesomer and awesomer mountain views, and at lunch, instead of a 45-60 minute break, we took two whole hours to spread our wet gear out to dry along the trail.  It wasn’t very sunny, so our sleeping bags were still very damp even after two hours.  But we didn’t want to wait any longer, so we just draped them over ourselves and wore them like shawls for several more hours of hiking, till they were nice and dry again.  Finally we were able to go DOWNhill toward the Domelands Wilderness, but many miles (12.8, to be exact) of PCT now went through a bad fire area from July of 2000.  The weedy plants that have regrown since the fire overhang the trail and sometimes made it hard to get through. 

Looking north, we were excited to see what really looked like Sierras in the distance, but looking around us, we were saddened by the now-barren, burned, rocky hillsides, which were once home to thriving pinyon pines.  The pines will probably never regrow, and the hillsides will probably stay barren forever, like the once-forested mountains in Nevada, where the pines were cut down for Comstock mines, and have never regrown.  Finally we reached the valley where the Kern River flows, and hiked till 7:30 pm before stopping to make a VERY firmly secured campsite in case we got a repeat of last night.  Lightning and thunder off in the distance gave us all the encouragement we needed as we TIED rather than staked down the tarp!

Then, as I was writing some notes by the light of my headlamp, a scorpion came strolling on to our groundcloth only a foot from my hand!  He was a cute little guy, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a scorpion “in the wild”, so I had a good look at him (Bill did, too) before shooing him away.  Once I turned out the headlamp and lay down, I was relieved to notice that the thunder and lightning were moving AWAY.  Bill and I were both totally tired out, and slept well!

Sun. August 14    Miles today: 22.5    Total so far: 1,610.4     Sierras Section G     Walker Pass

It was very warm and quiet at 5:00 am in our camp just above Walker Pass.  Not even a bird was chirping in the predawn glow!  It didn’t take us long to get up ‘n at it, knowing that we had a lot of tough hiking ahead today, and water would be a problem–no more water caches.  But the scenery was looking much more “Sierra-ish”, which was very exciting. 

Right off the bat, we had to go around a couple of mountains, and all I can say is, the trailbuilders must have used a LOT of dynamite!  At one point they left a sort of “gateway” of rock right on the trail.  The mountains here seem to be parly granitic and partly volcanic.  Thee are many long, jagged ridges of rock as well as individual “mini-mountains”, one of which reminded me of Amon Hen in “Lord of the Rings.” 

Eventually we reached the Owens Peak saddle and began hiking steeply downhill toward Joshua Tree Spring, where water was supposed to be available, about 1/4 mile off the PCT.  The valley below the trail was very pretty–you could just make out what looked like a couple of ranches.  The downhill trail was very pulverized by horses, which was great for soft, comfortable, fast downhilling, but boy, did our legs get dirty!!  Then came a pleasant surprise–just before the turnoff to the spring, a “seasonal creek” was still running nicely!  Hooray!  We could get our water there instead of trekking to the spring! 

But man, it is a tedious business, pumping enough water through the filter for TWO people!  It took Bill 45 minutes to complete that task, since we knew we had a long, hot climb ahead of us and figured on carrying plenty of water–our “full load capacity”, which meant our packs were now awfully heavy.  Sigh.  An hour later, we stopped in the shade and I cooked dinner, while we both drank plenty of lemonade.  Our next stop (if it was running) would be Spanish Needle Creek. 

Sure enough, the trail began to climb in earnest, back up to the crest.  It was a hot afternoon, but as we puffed and panted up the hill, we enjoyed the views and scenery, which were totally great.  At one point, we heard a strange rumbling sound behind us.  It sounded like galloping horses, but that would be really weird–how could a bunch of horses go galloping up a steep, rocky trail?  Then we saw it–a two foot diameter boulder was loose and rolling down the mountainside!  It went “galloping” across the PCT a bit behind us.  Wow!  Glad we weren’t in its way!

Now we were motivated to hike on to Spanish Needle Creek.  Would it be running, or not?  Well, it was!  The creek turned out to be green, grassy and willowy and had plenty of water.  We filtered and drank a whole liter each of nice, cold creek water, with added Emergen-C powder.  Then we refilled our water bottles, knowing it was over 10 miles to the next water.   We loved the nice cool water, but it was really frustrating to have to spend so much time filtering when we would rather be hiking. 

After that, it was up, up, up till 5:30 pm!  But the view from the top was awesome!  We ate supper there and enjoyed the sight of distant Owens Valley and thunderclouds on the horizon, far off in Nevada.  Then came some more miles of up and down and contouring before we set up camp in what looked like a DRY saddle between two DRY valleys.  Off came the packs, and we started our evening routine of smoothing out the spot for the ground cloth, and setting up the tarp.  But rats!  We were soon atacked by such hordes of mosquitoes as we had not seen since Oregon.  So on with the raingear and headnets, up went the net tent under the tarp, and soon we were safe from the whining hordes.  The only bummer was, we’d planned to take “dundo baths” to rinse off all the trail dirt before going to bed, and we’d brought extra water for that purpose.  The mosquitoes made a bath impossible.  All we could do was wipe ourselves off as best we could, inside the net tent.

While we were busy dealing with the mosquitoes on the ground,  overhead there were some ominous developments in the sky.   Early this morning, there were lots of pretty cirrus clouds, and all day long they’d been gradually thickening up. By now, though, they looked very  dark and ominous.  Bill and I eyed the sky and wondered what it meant–rain tonight, maybe?  As we burrowed into our sleeping bags, the wind was coming up a bit, and there were flashes of lightning way off to the east.  When I did the “mileage math” for today,  the fact that so much time filtering cut the mileage by quite a bit was compensated for by realizing we’d passed the 1,600 mile mark!  That means our “miles-left-to-go” number is now only THREE digits long, not four!

The wind continued to grow stronger.  We could hear it howling in the treetops, accompanied by thunder and lightning that was obviously getting nearer and nearer, till it was right on top of us.  What followed, I can hardly find words to describe.  It was FIVE HOURS of the wildest, most terrifying storm we had ever seen in our entire lives.  Lightning was striking all around us (not ON us, thanks be to God!), and  the wind became so violent that it snapped the tops off nearby trees and ripped our tarp stakes right up out of the ground.  All this was accompanied by what I can only describe as TORRENTIAL rain.  Brave Bill went out TWICE into the howling storm to try to secure the tarp, which had collapsed on top of us, and was no longer protecting us from the rain.  All we could do was huddle under it, getting wetter and wetter.  I held the camera and our valuables close to me, hoping to keep them dry, and we prayed like crazy.  Needless to say, we got NO sleep.  The lightning “show” continued unabated till around 2:00 am, and heavy rain continued all night.  To those who say, “A down sleeping bag won’t keep you warm if gets wet”, I now say “Phooey!”  My down sleeping bag was soaked, and it still did its job.  Bill and I huddled together and stayed awake for the whole rest of the night.  We were now THANKING God for His protection in that incredible storm!