Desert Trip 2022: Day 2
Saturday, November 5th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
In this transitional season, I’d brought both my warm-weather sleeping bag and my super-insulated down bag, but with the (slightly incorrect) weather forecast in mind, planned to use only the warm-weather bag – a very cheap synthetic bag which is probably only good to the mid-40s.
On that first night I started out with only t-shirt and skivvies inside the bag, but had to pull on thermal bottoms sometime before dawn. Still, it was a deep, full night’s sleep.
But wind had come up before dawn, and when the sun reached my bed and I finally crawled out, it was blowing hard. First order of business was to boil water for coffee, but in the gale-force wind across camp I had to box my stove in to retain the heat, and it still took over a half hour to get it to boil.
The wind was so strong I had to lean into it to cross the campsite, and my back pain returned so that I was forced to walk bent over at the waist, anyway. Then I discovered the wind had blown the solar shower off the hood of the vehicle, and after only one shower, it had burst a seam landing on the rocky ground. I’d lost over a half gallon of precious water. I tried duct-taping it, but it still leaked. I filled it anyway and laid it in the sun upside down so it wouldn’t leak while I was out hiking.
I mentioned the other day that I had no agenda for this trip, but that wasn’t strictly true. I’d brought all the artifacts I’ve collected in past decades, up on the plateau at the “puberty site” below the statue, with the intent of repatriating them. Today I planned to hike up there, return the potsherds and tool flakes, and spend the night – my first backpack in 7 years.
For the past few years, I’d been hiking with about 25 pounds in my Swiss Army surplus rucksack, but for backpacking I would carry at least 10 pounds more, and when I pulled it over my shoulders, that extra weight felt like it would destroy me. I realize that serious mountaineers carry up to 65 pounds, which is simply inconceivable.
The day’s plan seemed crazy from the get-go, and it was only my typical bullheadedness that got me started. My back felt like it was being sliced in half at the waist, and I knew that one wrong move carrying that heavy pack would paralyze me. The pack felt so heavy that I didn’t think I could make it to the base of the plateau, let alone climb that perilous 500′ slope beside the dry waterfall. And the wind – one of our typical desert winds that blows steadily in one direction at 30-50 knots, in this case out of the northeast, and can last for up to 3 days. Assuming it didn’t blow me off the mountain or into a cactus or yucca, how could I possibly sleep up there, where it would be even worse?
Feeling about 100 years old, trudging up the dry, loose sand of the big wash, I forgot to stretch – something I’ve learned to do near the start of any serious hike, to reduce pain and protect my joints. Hiking near home, I’d forgotten how most desert hikes involve long, arduous walks in sand. On the plus side, the long, winding wash that drains the plateau is beautiful, with spectacular rock formations in the bends. And the bright yellow rabbitbrush added some color to this otherwise fairly drab season.
Now for the part I’d been dreading: the 500′ vertical climb to the plateau.
I’ve done this climb at least a dozen times since the early 90s – both solo and with friends, including a couple who haven’t been in very good shape. The last time I’d been up there was in April 2016, by myself. I’ve always considered it a dangerous climb – very steep, requiring many short bouldering moves and traverses of loose rock at the angle of repose, including sizable boulders that appear stable but tip or slide when you put weight on them. And plenty of yucca blades or cactus spines to impale yourself on if you make a single mistake.
But today, despite all that past experience, it truly terrified me. I felt there was a serious chance I’d be injured or even die trying to reach that plateau. I knew I had to try, but I was scared to death.
With a little reflection, I realized the several traumas and close calls in the past few years had undermined my confidence. On the surface, I was in really good shape, doing hikes up to 20 miles in a day, at 2 or 3 times the altitude and with far more elevation gain than I would face here. But those hikes were mostly on trails. I was out of practice for hiking in the desert.
If I did make it, how would I get back down alive? That scared me even more – downclimbing is always more dangerous.
I’d long forgotten the best route, so I just went slowly and stopped frequently. At that rate, after almost an hour, I finally made it up past the giant thumb rock, safely, to the little saddle where you drop over into the dry waterfall itself, and that accomplishment restored some of my confidence.
The next, and most spectacular, stretch involves using some simple bouldering moves to get past the smooth and sometimes slick exposed granite faces of the dry waterfall. I love this part because it’s all rock.
The plateau, which I’ve always considered the heart of the entire mountain range, is a rugged, rolling basin partly enclosed by steep boulder slopes at its eastern head and southern rim, and traversed by a winding streambed that drains from east to west. This area hosts most of the pinyon pine in the range, from the rim down to the wash itself.
It’s obviously favored ram habitat. Shortly beyond the rim I came upon the third ram skeleton I’ve found up here, and after that, some more recent lion scat.
This is one of the wettest parts of the mountains – there’s a sheep drinker with two large water tanks at the head of the plateau, and I’ve found water in the stream more often than not. But underscoring what a dry year this has been, the only evidence I found of water was a patch of damp sand below a discontinuity in the rock, midway up the streambed.
Near the head of the canyon there’s a raised bench or ledge a hundred feet above the south bank of the streambed, marked by a dramatic boulder pile. On that ledge is the most important prehistoric site I’ve found on the west side of the mountains – a truly magical place, the western counterpart of the sacred site on the east side. My sometime friend, the Mojave Preserve archaeologist, said it was most certainly used in girls’ puberty ceremonies. It consists of a large overhanging boulder, with a smaller boulder forming a sort of table under the overhang, and “cupules”, little bowls, ground into the stone tabletop, which he said were used to mix face paint.
The ground for a large area around shows evidence of ancient campfires and is littered with potsherds and the occasional stone tool flake. But in general, it’s a modest site, and raises a whole string of questions. There were no villages or permanent camps in these mountains – the nearest would’ve been on the river, almost 50 miles east, requiring very long treks between water sources. And the historical tribes familiar for these ceremonies were based almost twice as far away, to the west. It’s hard to imagine a small group of teenage girls, accompanied only by one or more older women, carrying pottery jars and other gear many days across the desert and up that dangerous climb, to perform a ritual in this extremely remote, often dry place.
The steady, gale-force wind was still scouring my campsite on the ledge. No chance of a fire tonight – I even scouted between the many big boulders for a calmer location, but the wind was penetrating everywhere.
But with that heavy pack off my shoulders, my energy returned. I did a short hike up the slope toward the statue – I’d been that way a few times, but couldn’t remember my previous route. Not that it matters much – every route involves climbing over, under, or around huge boulders all the way up.
I made it about halfway and realized I didn’t have enough time to go farther. But everything up there – the elegant pines, the house-sized, white granite boulders, the view across the open desert – is beautiful. And in the brief dusk after sunset, I climbed back down to the streambed and made it most of the way up to the sheep drinker at its head, maintained by the Bighorn Society.
With no fire, I had a cold dinner – the same nuts and jerky I’d had for lunch. I’d only brought four liters of water for the overnight, and in this cooler weather, with the wind, had saved two of those for the next day’s return hike.
One problem with backpacking solo is that there’s nothing to do after sunset, especially if you can’t build a fire. There you are, between 6 and 7 pm, with nothing to do but go to bed early! I had a lot of time for reflection, and decided it was time to relax my standards and adopt some modern, lightweight gear – replacing my heavy old canvas and leather pack with something ergonomic, and my cheap sleeping bag with something more efficient.
So I went to bed at about 7 pm, with my feet to the wind so it couldn’t blow sand into my bag. As before, I stripped down before getting in, and was warm at first. But with the wind roaring like a freight train, that didn’t last.
About an hour later, I added my thermal top – essentially a sweater. And an hour after that, with the wind still raging, my legs got too cold and I pulled on my thermal bottoms.
Still another hour later, my legs got cold again. That wind just sucks away whatever heat your body can generate – I’ve even gotten cold inside my down bag, which is good to well below zero. So I crawled out into the frigid night and pulled on my heavy canvas hiking pants, and got back into the bag.
That still wasn’t enough. After another hour, I donned my thermal cap, and an hour later than that, still awake, I got up again to struggle into my storm shell jacket, pulling the hood completely over my head before getting back in the bag. I can’t remember wearing a jacket to bed before, but may well have sometime in the dim past!
Soon it was midnight, I’d been lying awake for five hours, the wind was still raging, and my feet were cold. The only piece of clothing I had left was a spare pair of wool socks, which I managed to fish out of my pack and pull on over my heavy hiking socks, without leaving my bag.
But only a half hour later, I was cold again, with another six hours of increasingly colder night ahead of me. How could I survive? I’d been in this position before, and once, far too cold to lie still, had spent an entire night pacing back and forth, wrapped in a heavy coat, to keep my heat up.
So I tried the only remaining trick – I got up once again in the dark, and folded my plastic tarp over the sleeping bag, so that the open side was downwind. I had no way of holding it closed, but I had a couple of bungee cords that I used to anchor the side and corner of the tarp to my pack.
Amazingly, this finally worked, and I fell asleep almost immediately after.
Thank you for repatriating those artifacts, you endured your quest and suffered the elements. You are forgiven and may Creator Bless you the rest of your life.
Thank you, Max! Such an honest post!!!
I loved it and I felt your discomfort!
The pictures are beautiful!!
Lawford
Max-
The red flower looks like Epilobium canum- California fuchsia.
Ken
Thanks Ken, that sounds right and brings back memories. That flower was one thing that drew me to that place – I saw them from a helicopter ride with sheep scientists, and looked them up in a guidebook after my first hike there.