PCT 2014: Reflections on the Desert

Before we started the PCT, the desert was the section of trail that worried me the most. Snowy mountains sounded scary (the Sierra), and nonstop rain sounded miserable (Washington), but the 700 miles of desert loomed in my thoughts. Having grown up in the Midwest, and not even visiting a desert until I was 21, I had little reference for what “desert” meant. 

First, I had Tucson, where the dry heat that sucked all the humidity out of the air— Tucson, with a dusty ditch where the “river” was supposed to be, and where it was so dry that the cacti were dying. Second, I had the high desert of Arizona and Wyoming, where the ground was gray and the sky was gray and there wasn’t a living thing to be seen for miles around. I didn’t know if I could endure any version of this for 700 miles.

Fortunately for me, the first 700 miles of trail was nothing like that, as you have seen. It’s not like it defied all stereotypes— it was often barren, hot, and windy, marked only with stumpy bushes and groves of Joshua Trees. But in the midst of that, I saw the beauty of the desert in a new way. It showed itself in the windswept cirrus clouds, the speckled sandy hills, the wheeling crows whose feathers shown silver in the sun, in the scrub jays perched in the clusters of white yucca flowers, the little black beetles who stood with their butts in the air so moisture would condense on them and run down to their mouths, in the slender lizards of all shapes and sizes that darted and skittered out of the way. It showed itself in the way that the sky, creamy blue, looked closer and more solid than the pale sand-colored cliffs. It showed itself in the tiny trickling springs, always visited by songbirds, that appeared out of the folds of the barren mountain, in the manzanita bushes, tangled and red-barked and shiny-leafed, and the giant pine trees growing at high elevation, filtering the desert sun into cool white light.

In the desert, we also met the most trail angels, people whose generosity we could never hope to pay back. My memories of the desert are interspersed with water caches, couches and chairs, clean laundry, soft beds, and good food. I gained a whole new perspective on the people of California that I never could have gained otherwise. The small towns along the way were friendly and trusting and tight-knit. One hiker cynically remarked, “All the foreign people hiking the trail think that this is what America is like, but it isn’t!” I couldn’t disagree more. All the big cities and distrust and unfriendly people aren’t somehow “real America,” while the small-town citizens who pick up dirty hitchhikers and let them do laundry at their house are “fake.” America is still a wonderful place full of people who would give you the shirt off their backs, and I feel proud that the  Americans and out-of-country hikers on the trail alike were able to experience a culture of trust and community that we all thought was long gone. 

In short, the desert was one of my favorite sections of the trail. When I look back at our photos, I remember the sweat and the stress and the thirst, but above all, I remember how beautiful it was. Our 40 days in the desert were often difficult, but they were one of the most incredible parts of the trail.

PCT 2014, Day 39 and 40: The Last Days in the Desert

(I just got back from vacation! We hiked, camped, stayed with family and friends, and generally had a fantastic time running around Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana. I'll tell you about some of the hikes we did later.)

DAY 39

June 2nd, Monday

670ish to a 690-something

It was a day of more desert, but we knew that if we booked some miles today, we’d be within easy striking distance of Kennedy Meadows the next morning. We passed the spring where we’d refilled the night before, and continued on. The desert felt monotonous, even with trees occasionally breaking things up. Zach and I stopped at a road that led to a campground, and followed the road half a mile in search of water. We found none, but did find an outhouse, which was always a welcome surprise. We cooked our food on a picnic table, trying to shield it from the wind.

We met a curly-headed guy and his sweet blonde-haired girlfriend there. I think their names were Phil and Ashley. We also met an older German couple who were driving into remote campgrounds and day-hiking as much of the PCT as they could.

Back at the road, we discovered a cooler full of beer. Zach drank some and said it wasn’t very good, but it was better than water (Zach hates water). There was a nice shaded pool of water there (which we had managed to overlook on our way in), and I soaked my feet and was able to do sock laundry.

I told Zach, "Look drunk."

I was in a sour mood, but we continued plodding along. Near the end of the day, we entered a vast burned area. I figured that we were almost done with burn areas (HAHAHAHA! I was so naive). But with the setting sun and the cool air and the burnt blueness of the sky, I began to feel a bit better. Zach and I sailed through the miles as we wove through the deep shoulders of the burned mountains.

At last, we decided to camp. We scoped out some places, trying in vain to get out of the wind. At last, we set up our tent in the lee of a squat pine tree. We didn’t want to battle the wind to cook, so we just cut up summer sausage and ate it plain.

We knew that by this time, we were in bear country (though they weren’t likely to be hanging out in the burned woods). Still, it was probably a really bad idea to eat summer sausage in our tent!

Despite the trials of the day, I felt excitement and peace as we bedded down for the night. Tomorrow we would get to Kennedy Meadows. The end of the desert. The beginning of the Sierra. Tomorrow, we would be done with the first leg of the trail.

That night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and the Milky Way was so bright, I could see it through the mesh of our tent.

DAY 40

June 3rd, Tuesday

That morning we continued walking through the burn area, which seemed less friendly in the sharp morning light. The trail taunted us, skirting the very edge of the live forest while still keeping us among the blackened, shadeless trees. I felt hot and grumpy again.

At last, the trail delved into the cool shade of living conifers, and soon we were walking beside an honest-to-goodness creek. Not a trickling spring, not a pipe sticking out of a block of rock, but a creek that wound, deep blue, among banks covered in willow and vines. Despite our determination to get to Kennedy Meadows, we paused at this, the Kern River, and soaked our feet. It was cold and refreshing.

Before long, we continued on. We got to the road, dusty but paved, and turned to the right. A sign welcomed us to Kennedy Meadows and told us to drive slow. It was a tiny mountain town, where every trailer and shed was run on a generator or solar energy. We walked along the road and saw, perched on a nearby hill, the infamous unofficial beginning of the Sierra, the Kennedy Meadows General Store. It was a ramshackle building of dark wood with an expansive back deck stuffed to the gills with hikers. 

“Hikers!” someone shouted, and everyone clapped us in, cheering for us, making us feel like stars. We waved our trekking poles in the air and gave victory woo-hoo!s.

We had made it to Kennedy Meadows— and, by extension, the most difficult, terrifying, and character-building part of the trail: the High Sierra.

~~~

PCT Weekly Photo: Vast fields

This is part of my PCT Weekly Photo series. To see the other photos in the collection, click here.

PCT Weekly Photo: Flat trail, steep hill

This is part of my PCT Weekly Photo series. To see the other photos in the collection, click here.

Vacation Time!

Dear readers,

This week, my husband is taking advantage of his vacation days (a completely novel idea to me, a self-employed person who was raised by self-employed parents— “You mean your employer will pay you to take a vacation?!”). As such, I’m taking a break from blogging this week. Expect my next entry (which talks about our last two days in the desert) on the 30th. Until then!

~The Mandolin

PCT 2014, Day 38: Pancakes, Mosquitoes, and Uranium in the Water

DAY 38

June 1st, Sunday

651.3 to 670ish

We woke up early the next morning, but we didn’t get an early start. Yogi was up again, fixing another batch of pancakes— and this time there was real butter for spreading on them. Zach and I ate pancakes and wondered how we were ever going to leave with such good food and good conversation to keep us in the vortex. All the other hikers were pretty quiet that morning, most of them severely hung over, and blinking as if the light hurt their eyes. One of them had four neat little puncture wounds on his cheek where he had face-planted into a fork. Still, everyone chatted over breakfast, trying to think up any excuse to stay just a bit longer.

It took us two hours to scrape together our things, and finally, with heavy feet, we set out for the trail. The Walker Pass trail magic dwindled to a little blue pavilion in the distance. Then, with a sigh, we left it behind. It was the last official trail magic we got for a long time.

We crossed the highway— there was no need to hitchhike to any town now!— and climbed up a mountain out of Walker Pass. At the crest of the hill, we found that we had cell phone reception and called home. While I was on the phone, I got bit on the shin by an ant. It hurt as bad as a wasp sting! Over the next week or so, it swelled up and left a huge red spot on my leg, making me worry if it had gotten infected. After that, I started stuffing the legs of my pants into my socks all the time.

It was a huge plunge down the other side of the mountain, winding toward a valley, almost a crevice, filled with deciduous trees. We were looking for a spring, called Joshua Tree Spring, which was reported to have uranium in the water. I was hoping for a warning sign so I could take a dramatic photo.

There were no warning signs, just a clear spring being piped into a trough. Tracks sat next to it, sitting cross-legged with his legs tucked up under his kilt. We also saw Prospector and Chop Chop, who we hadn’t seen since the Saufleys. We all chatted for a while, swapping stories about Tehachapi (everyone had great stories from that friendly town, although no one could top ours). 

Zach and I filled our water bottles, and I washed our socks. Washing socks is arduous, especially when you can’t do it in the trough. I just had to fill a water bottle and shake the water over the socks to clean them out. It didn’t work very well— instead of dry and dirty, they were now wet and dirty. Once again I thought of the Sierra, and dreamed of free-flowing water sources where I didn’t have to worry about hikers after us who’d be dipping water out of the trough.

One quarter done!

After a while, we went back to the trail, climbing out of the valley and winding along mountains, dipping in and out of deciduous-laden nooks, sometimes with trickles of water, sometimes not. We headed up one last climb— according to Tracks’s PCT app, there were a few campsites at the top of the hill. Chop Chop cheered us on as they passed.

When we reached the top of the hill, we found a spring, as promised— but it was stuck in a fold of the mountain, with not a flat spot in sight. We had passed the campsites about a mile back, all the way down the hill.

Zach scouted backward down the trail and I started filtering water from the stream, suddenly noticing a little creature that hadn’t bothered us much since the start of the trail: mosquitoes. I swatted them away, sweaty and tired. As I was filtered, Paja walked up, still determinedly wearing flip-flops. “Leftovers!” he called out warmly. He was in a pinch for a campsite, too, but he could fit into a smaller space.

Zach returned, saying that he’d found a possible spot a few tenths of a mile back. Grumpy and sweaty and swatting away mosquitoes, I followed him. We scrambled down a hill to a sandy slope. It was all we had without backtracking a full mile. We got out our head nets, and I set up the tent while Zach cooked chicken and pasta. This area looked like bear country to me, but we still ate inside our tent, watching the hungry mosquitoes poking their proboscises through the mesh. 

The slope we were camped on was awful. It felt like we were sliding off our pads all night long, and getting out took considerable force of will. While organizing our gear, I tipped over backward, crashing onto Zach’s leg, which caused him to cry out in pain and me to have a minor breakdown. “Everything is just so hard!” I sobbed. I thought about my normal life, with a stovetop for cooking, and a table for eating at. A bed I didn’t have to set up every night and tear down every morning. A washer and dryer for dirty socks. And not having to worry about bears. It was so easy, so simple. If someone had extolled the beautiful simplicity of the trail at that moment, I’m pretty sure I would’ve socked them.

Feeling grumpy (and also feeling guilty for feeling grumpy after having such awesome trail magic), Zach and I laid down on our sloped bed and tried, with limited success, to sleep.

~~~

PCT 2014, Day 37: The Desperate Thirst Is Quenched in the Most Awesome Way Possible

Shutter and Zach

DAY 37

May 31st, Saturday

637 to 651.3

We made no effort to wake up early the next day, and when we did finally stir, the sun was already up and filtering through the trees. It was hard to believe that the same sun that had shriveled us to raisins the previous day could look so soft and white and harmless drifting between the pine boughs.

Zach volunteered to make the two-mile round trip, down the side of the mountain, to get to the seep for water, and I had no objection. I relaxed in the tent. I intended to journal, but got too caught up in just lying down. I felt utterly exhausted, as if my body had burned twice the normal amount of calories the previous day. 

It seemed very late in the day by the time Zach returned with a load of water bottles, and we returned to the trail. I was still feeling a bit anxious about water, but Zach reassured me that if nothing else, we could hitchhike into town at the next highway, Walker’s Pass. And there was supposed to be a water source there anyway. 

We soon left the forest behind. Walking through the barren hills, which looked so much like the brush-spotted hills we had been seeing for the past 640 miles, it was hard to believe that we’d be out of the desert in about three days— mile 702, at Kennedy Meadows, was the unofficial beginning of the Sierra. In my mind, the Sierra was a luscious Garden of Eden, flowing with unending rills of clear mountain water, where everything was green, and we’d never have to worry about water again. I wondered how the real Sierra would measure up.

It was early afternoon, and we had walked about fourteen miles. We could see Highway 178 ahead of us, a thin ribbon of gray with tiny cars and trucks running along it. I began to feel better, seeing that it would probably not be too hard to hitch.

The trail leveled out, winding along little sandy knolls. To our left, we saw the Walker Pass Campground. It had a couple picnic benches, an outhouse, and some day trippers set up with an RV and some pavilions. As usual, the sight of happy car-campers made me both happy and a little jealous.

And then, to our left, nailed to a pole, we saw the frisbee.

It was a blue plastic frisbee, with a pink ribbon of crepe paper nailed to it. Scrawled on it in Sharpie were the words, “Hiker Trash Wanted!”

We came up short, blinking in the dusty, blinding sun. We stared at the RV and the pavilions, realizing that it wasn’t day trippers, but trail angels. We hesitated, then barreled toward it.

We were within several yards when one of the occupants of the pavilion sighted us and yelled, “Hikers! Clap them in!”

Everyone else— about six or seven hikers— began clapping in rhythm. At the same time, a little kid, about seven, with a massive tangled mop of red curls, ran over to us. He dropped an ice-cold can of soda into each of our hands, along with a button with his picture that said, “Bear Bait gave me a cold drink at Walker Pass.”

I stared at my root beer, and Zach stared at his Mountain Dew Throwback. We felt like we had been dropped into a mirage. What trick of the desert was this?!

Blue Butterfly and Zach

We practically collapsed into comfortable camp chairs, which were arranged in a circle around a cooler. A woman, tall and serious-faced with a long brown ponytail, asked if we wanted pancakes. We stumbled out a, “Yes, please,” and she began frying them over a gas stove on a folding table. The table next to her was piled high with pancake mix, a quart of syrup, berry preserves, and a half-gallon tub of margarine. 

In addition to the table, the pavilions sheltered several camp chairs and a massive cache of water. Little lanterns hung from the pavilion. A fierce wind whipped us, sometimes pulling the tent flaps loose.

It was hard to catch everyone’s names, we were in such shock. We saw several people we knew: Shutter (looking much better-hydrated than last time we’d seen him), Sad Fish, Anchor, Banjo, two Israeli guys we’d met earlier, Tracks, and Blue Butterfly. An older man, leathered by the sun, introduced himself as a trail angel named Coppertone (he stopped along the trail to make root beer floats, although we never got to take advantage of this). Jackalope, a woman with a serious but friendly face, was obviously in charge of logistics. And the brown-haired woman cooking pancakes? That was Yogi. As in, the person-who-wrote-the-semiofficial-PCT-handbook Yogi. I felt like I was being served pancakes by a celebrity!

We sat down and ate pancakes. Zach introduced Shutter to the idea of heaping massive amounts of butter (well, in this case, margarine), on his food. As we ate a first and a second helping, Matt and Sam walked up (by this time we weren’t even surprised to see them— we always knew our paths would cross!), as well as Pesky, ManBearPig and his brother Shamiko Rassmisson, a girl my age named Coyote, and a guy named Sideshow with his girlfriend Shuffle.

We chatted about anything and everything: journals, gear, AT hikes, what we thought the Sierra would be like, “trail groupies,” injuries, and everything in between. It was so wonderful to just relax and sit in a chair and chat with people who were going through the same things we were— one last resting spot before we tackled the most difficult section of trail.

Sideshow (with russet hair, brown clothes, intense eyes, and a thin mustache) told a story about the “assassination game.” It was something that the Saufleys had started: everyone drew someone else’s name on a clothespin. It was your goal to try to “assassinate” the person by pinning the clothespin to them while they weren’t looking— preferably while they were sleeping. Once you did that, you got their clothespins, and another person to assassinate. Unfortunately, Sideshow had drawn Angry Bird’s name, and Angry Bird took the game very seriously, setting booby traps around his tent, or leaving his gear in one place and sleeping in a tree to avoid detection. I’m pretty sure that Sideshow never succeeded in his assassination. 

For supper, Yogi fixed a massive amount of burritos. By that time, there were about twenty hikers there, and we all lined up to get food. The burritos, stuffed with beans and rice and lettuce and tomatoes and sour cream, were divine. Afterwards, Yogi set out a massive plate of brownies.

After dinner was over, some people screwed up their resolve and headed out. Matt and Sam said, “I’m sure we’ll see you soon,” and they left with some others. The rest of us hung around a bit. Finally, Zach and I decided we were going to head out.

Just as we lifted our packs to our shoulders, a jeep pulled up, and a couple stepped out with five Little Caesar’s pizzas and several six-packs of beer. Zach and I dropped our packs in despair, laughing. We were caught! 

We spent the next hour chilling some more, eating pizza and brownies. Zach drank a beer even though he doesn’t like beer (although he began to develop a taste for it at that point). 

When the sun sank below the horizon, Zach and I found a nice little camp spot in the free campground, and set up our tent. It was far enough away from the pavilion that we had some privacy, and we laid side by side and read together. Apparently a wild party raged at the pavilion until four in the morning, but we slept right through, our hearts and stomachs happy and full.

~~~

PCT 2014, Day 36: The Desperate Thirst Continues

DAY 36

May 30th, Friday

616ish to 637

I woke up with a gasp, feeling the residual panic of my waterless dream. Then I remembered that we did, in fact, have water, and I took a few precious gulps. Zach and I were up early, but not early enough: the sun was already blazing at eye level, pouring merciless dry heat into the barren lands.

We used some of our water to make oatmeal (a bad idea, in retrospect), and then packed up and took to the dusty trail again. The trail delved from the rolling hills into a winding path between pretty steep mountains. At a steep canyon, we paused at a side trail. Zach checked the GPS, and said that this was the turn-off for the three-mile detour to the only reliable water source for miles around, Willow Springs.

We had talked to other people about their water plans, and most of them said that they were just going to go straight to the next cache— it was 120 gallons, and according to the water report from the day before, it was nearly full. But Zach and I didn’t want to rely on a cache— and besides, as most PCT hikers will tell you, it’s bad form to rely on a cache for resupply. You should try to leave it for the people who really, really need it.

So, Zach and I left the trail and began walking down a narrow path into a canyon. At this point, I was so dry that I felt dizzy. My senses felt on edge, but everything looked far away. The trail got narrower and narrower, and then we came to a little cliff, and realized that we were going to have to scramble down cliffs and boulders for the final mile.

“It’s fun!” Zach kept saying. “Like Elephant Rocks, or City Museum!” I just cried a little and freaked out. He took off his backpack and swung down the cliff (it was only about seven feet). Then I handed him down the backpacks, and tried to scramble down myself. I was sweating like crazy. Zach forced me to drink some of our water, but in the back of my head I kept thinking, “What if the spring is dry? Or what if we can’t find it?”

I remember little about the scramble down the boulders. I was so exhausted and hot and sweaty and dehydrated that it all seems like a nasty dream. But at last, we found ourselves on a jeep road on a plain, and Zach was reading our map’s directions and trying to figure out where, in this desolate landscape, there was a spring. We saw a cattle trough nearby and ducked under some barbed wire to get to it.

It was dry.

If I had been by myself, I might have panicked. But Zach said, “I don’t think this is it. Let’s look around.”

We swept the area, trying to see anything that resembled one of the pipe springs that we had seen before. After half a minute of searching (and feeling panic rise in my chest), I looked up a hill and saw, peeking above the crown, the top of a deciduous tree.

“There!” I shouted, and we raced up the sandy hill. At the top was a barbed-wire fence encircling a grove of willows and a pond— a true oasis.

The owner of the pond had left one part of the fence wired without barbs, allowing hikers to step over and enter the cool shade of the willows. This little oasis, barely fifteen feet across, was teeming with life. Birds perched in the cattails, singing to one another. The pond’s clear water was skimmed by iridescent dragonflies and swarming with cute black tadpoles. A yellow tube piped the spring water into the pond, creating a little “faucet” where we could gather clear water. We filtered and drank and filtered and drank and filtered and drank some more.

I immediately felt better. My body was happy again, and here was water, and everything was okay. We cooked a meal, lounged around, and drank as much water as we pleased. 

However, despite the wonderful coolness (and humidity in the air, and shade) of the pond, Zach and I knew that we wanted to press on. There was a huge dry stretch coming up, and we wanted to cover as much of it as we could today.

We filled all our water bottles to capacity, a total of nine liters for the two of us. We figured this would be enough to get us to Walker Pass, which was 31 miles away, if we were extremely careful and did no cooking. There was a spring in between there, only 17 miles away, but the water report said it was a “seep” (you had to dig a hole and wait for water to seep in), and the report hadn’t been updated in two weeks. It was with more than a little trepidation that we left our oasis, bottles and bodies full of water, to head into the desert again.

The trail back to the PCT was easy: a straight shot on a jeep road. It cut straight up the hill, an avenue of powdery dust between banks of scrub. Joshua Trees loomed up in patches on either side, still looking like gigantic Poodle Dog Bushes to me.

The climb up the hill was long and hot and hard, and I found myself lost in a determined sense to keep going. Eyes blinded by the light, body soaked with sweat, limbs sore but robotically jerking along. The heat, despite its dryness, pressed in like a suffocating blanket around us.

We finally rejoined the PCT, and found a picnic table and an informational sign about a rare desert tortoise. Feeling dizzy, I laid down in the shade of the table and propped my feet on the bench, trying to drain some of the blood from my feet. The sand was hot, but at least the sun was blocked from my eyes. 

After a snack and a drink of water, we both felt revived, and continued on the trail. Now that we were out of the valley, there was a nice breeze— not exactly cool, but not hot either. It made the sun and the heat bearable.

As we passed through a grove of Joshua Trees, Zach said, “You know, these look like Dr. Seuss trees.”

“You’re right,” I said, looking at them in a new way. “They do!” If he hadn’t said that, I’m pretty sure I would have hated Joshua Trees forever.

In the grove, we ran into two people. The first was Blue Butterfly, a woman in her sixties, with wind-tossed silver hair and a smile with many lines that reminded me of my grandmother, Nonni. She was sitting out the heat of the day, and lugging an extra gallon jug of water.

The other one was Shutter, a broad-shouldered, bearded man we had met earlier. Right now, his face was beet-red, and he was lying in the shade with his shirt unbuttoned, sweat dripping from every pore. “How’s it going?” we asked.

“I’m waiting until dark to hike out,” he said, taking a sip of water.

“Do you have enough water?”

He assured us he did, but he was going to conserve it for his night-hike. Zach and I were feeling pretty good at this point, if a little thirsty, so we wished him luck and continued on.

From Willow Springs to the next cache was a seven mile trek, up and down mountains, winding between hills, and finally zigzagging down a set of switchbacks. Zach and I carefully monitored our water, but my hopes were high for this cache, since it was 120 gallons just yesterday. We were hoping to have enough water to cook a meal and drink a little extra.

As we zigzagged down the hill toward the base, we tried to catch a glimpse of the cache. Soon we saw a pile of gallon jugs under a clump of Joshua Trees. We saw nearly a dozen hikers lounging in the shade of the deciduous trees nearby, as well as people who appeared to be filling their water bottles from the jugs. Our hopes high, we walked the last quarter mile, ending up under the trees.

“How’s the cache?” we asked the nearest hiker.

The hiker shook his head gravely. “Dry.”

We stared at him in shock, then glanced over at a couple of women who were filling their bottles. “So what are they doing?”

“Getting the last few drops. The girls are completely out of water.”

1,000 kilometers!

We stared over at them, and saw it was true. The girls returned to the shade of the trees, having gathered half a liter. “That’s it,” one said. “That’s all.”

I stared at the massive pile of milk jugs, which had been full just yesterday. I felt a little angry. Not that I deserved the water, necessarily— but I was angry that everyone had been so inconsiderate as to skip Willow Springs and refill there. With every hiker taking three to four liters, the cache had run dry in a day.

There was still possible water ahead: Yellow Jacket Spring in five miles. But at this point, nobody could bet that a seep, updated two weeks ago, still had any water.

Zach and I decided we might as well sit in the shade and cool off, at any rate. We counted seven hikers who had skipped Willow Springs who now had to backtrack to get water there— seven miles one way. Part of me said that they deserved it for skipping the springs, but mostly I felt really sorry for them. That was almost a day’s worth of walking, lost. The ones who had to return said they would warn anyone they met along the way, and leave a sign at the entrance to the Willow Springs detour.

Blue Butterfly showed up, still lugging her gallon of water. She gave the two girls enough water to help them make it back to Willow Springs, and gave the rest to an insane section-hiker who was trying to make it to Walker Pass by tonight.

Zach and I ate packets of tuna, wrapped in tortillas. The tuna was packed in water, which quenched my dry mouth, if only for a moment. We had very little food left that didn’t require rehydration. I wished that we had packed ourselves twenty packages of tuna.

After about an hour, Zach and I realized that we had to get a move on it or we wouldn’t reach our destination— Yellow Jacket Springs— before dark. We got our things together and set out, crossing the jeep road, passing the dry cache, and winding through a valley before starting a massive set of switchbacks up a mountain. We had only three liters left— to split between the two of us, possibly for another 21 miles.

Despite the cool of day creeping over us, that was the driest time of my life. I felt really anxious about our water supply, and wanted to save it for tomorrow, during the heat of the day. I took tiny sips from the Camelbak, and kept a bandana over my parched mouth to hold in the moisture of my breath. But that would often get too hot and I had to pull it down to get some fresh air.

The sips of water I took on that grueling climb were the best water that I have ever tasted in my life. I don’t think water will ever taste that good again.

I was terrified that we were going to have to travel in this awful, dehydrated state for another 21 miles. But God began reassuring me. He had taken care of us before— heck, think of where we were two days ago— and he could take care of us now.

Still, “If anyone offered me a cold Sprite right now,” I said, “I would pay them a hundred bucks.”

At last, Zach and I found ourselves on top of a mountain, with the sky turning into a pastel rainbow of sunset on our left. With the coolness came a slight abatement to the thirst, although I still felt dry and shriveled.

We considered taking a campsite on top of the mountain near Blue Butterfly, but decided instead to push on to the spring. We had to find out whether it had water or not. I was not hopeful, but a tiny glimmer of possibility kept my tired and shaky limbs moving.

We plunged down the other side of the mountain, which was wooded with thick conifers. The sunset sunk into darkness at an alarming rate, and we used our headlamps to keep track of the trail, trying to make sure that we didn’t miss the exit for the trail to Yellow Jacket Springs. GPS helped with this.

As we turned a corner, fumbling in the complete darkness, we saw a headlamp ahead, coming toward us. It was Sizzler, a middle-aged guy we’d met before. “This is the junction for Yellow Jacket Springs,” he said. “I went down today and checked the water— there’s plenty!”

Those were the best words I’d ever heard in my life. We thanked him profusely and set up our tent nearby. Water. There was water. Knowing that we could get some in the morning, we chugged a full liter, and made some oatmeal, and chugged some more.

That night, we slept under a tapestry of stars. I don’t remember any dreams.

~~~