The long rest seemed to help rejuvenate my Bunny. We had a relaxing morning and still managed to made it out of camp by 8:15.
The trail is finally ours. We didn’t see anyone all day. What we did see was smoke encroaching from the north. Our last view of Whitney was through a smoke haze.
The last couple of days we’ve seen some equipment failures: me breaking a pole and our tent zippers giving out. Today was filled with Easy failures. Something was poking me in my heel, but I couldn’t find anything in my shoe or sock. I think it might be a tendon acting up. I was also having back spasms and a sour stomach all day. It must be the heat because I do all the cooking on trail and that’s been outstanding.
Warren Doyle says to use only 1 pole when hiking. If you use 2, you’re doing it wrong. After following his “rule” for a couple of days, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is not the trail genius he claims to be. I’m pretty sure the single pole is the source of my back problems. I’ll never use carbon fiber poles again on long trip. Weight doesn’t matter on poles unless you have to carry it. We’re not of the status of Redford & Nolte only pretending to hike, so carrying poles for them was fine.
I normally don’t mind trail gas, but today’s was quite uncomfortable. Bunny gave me green tictacs and told me they were gas x—absolutely no help. Now I’m wondering if I have: a twisted intestine, a blocked intestine, a hernia, a twisted testicle, or testicular cancer. I never worried about these things until Bunny got me into AARP as a legacy member (I wasn’t old enough at the time). I need to quit looking at WebMD when Bunny won’t offer any suggestions.
F-16s, or whatever the current model of fighter plane is in use, buzzed overhead a lot today. We’re not to far from the China Lake where the Navy does weapons research and development. The pilots must take great pleasure out of strafing hikers. Instead of kills, they count soils. “I got 6 hikers to soil themselves today!” They were flying under 40’ above the trees. It was impossible to get a camera out in time to catch them.
Death Canyon, what a beautiful name for a camping spot! We are exactly 29 miles due west of Death Valley…coincidence? Once we crossed a dry creek bed that was allegedly our water source, we dropped packs and I went in search of something other than the stagnant mud I saw. Huckleberry had told me it was a ways off trail to find water. I found a side trail and walked, and walked, and walked. I finally found a horse camp area but no water. However, there was some green grass, not just brown, in the area. I finally found a dribble between a couple of rocks. Not the best source, but any water is great in circumstances like these. I retrieved Bunny and my gear.
As soon as we set up camp, I headed to the rocks to begin the long process of collecting and filtering water. I had to pre-filter the water with a bandana because of all the floating particles. The mosquitos also recognized these as the only source around, so they kept me company while I worked. By the time I’d filtered and filled all of our water containers, I began to get really scared.
When we had headed down Death Canyon, the sky was clear and smoke free. As I was finishing up the water, ash fell out of the sky onto me and the water bottles. Visibility was well under 50’. Bunny was scrambling up the rock wall to try to get above the smoke to see if we could see flames. We thought for sure we had been overtaken by a fire.
No flames were visible, so we headed back to camp to send an InReach message to Bear to have him check inciweb (active fire website) for us. We waited over an hour but got no response. Bunny checked Guthook and told me all the National Forests in California were closed again. I looked at the note, in my panic, and saw the date was last year. We had no choice but to carry on.
I made supper and by the time we finished, the smoke had blown out of the valley…clear blue skies again. We climbed the rock wall again to verify no fires were near. We were clear, but we were both on edge. I want to finish the PCT, but I don’t want to die in the process. It’s going to be a night of little sleep since we’re both spooked.
EFG