Desert Trip 2022: Day 5
Sunday, November 6th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
Again, I found myself lying in bed after dawn, waiting for the sun to rise above the eastern ridge and warm me up. Meanwhile, I watched the mosquitos desperately trying to reach me through the screen. I got to know them individually, and finally, the most active one suddenly appeared inside! It had apparently found a gap under the screen’s edge. Now I had to get up.
As forecast earlier in the week, clouds had appeared before dawn, but they cleared as I had breakfast and got ready for the next adventure. After hiking northeast on the first day, and east on the second and third, today I would go southeast. First, up to Blockhead – the monolith on the southeastern ridge – and hopefully, if I had time, past it to the head of the canyon with the spring. It’s an area that shows on the map as a jumbled plateau punctuated by a maze of boulders and outcrops, leading farther south to Mesquite Canyon, which I explored a few years ago.
The approach crosses the bajada of the basin and the combined wash that drains the plateau and the spring in the northeast corner. After a little over a mile of bajada, you join the wash that drains the high southern end of the bajada, and eventually hit the old road into the southern gulch, which climbs through a low pass and drops into the big wash that drains the southeastern ridge.
My first objective was the old mesquite tree and its spring. It’s tucked away back in a canyon that winds tortuously between cliffs and fanciful outcrops of ancient granite. I knew there was tamarisk in this canyon, but I was under no delusion of finding water in the spring, which usually has to be dug out of deep sand. And I wasn’t prepared for the state of the venerable tree.
At least it wasn’t completely dead. New growth had emerged from its lower trunk, and I figured it would take a lot more than the current drought to kill a tree with such deep roots. But it was still pretty sobering. The water sources in this range all seemed to be dry – where was the wildlife getting its water?
I realized it had been gradually getting warmer, day to day, throughout my stay. My shirt was unbuttoned all the way down and I had to add sunscreen to my chest.
I climbed up the ledges behind the dry spring and continued up the narrower canyon winding south across the basin below Blockhead, until I reached a bend where I thought I should leave the wash and traverse the slope above. This was a new approach for me – I’d come over from farther west in the past. And on the traverse, I began to be pursued bees. They never actually stung me, but I vowed to take the opposite side on the way back.
Cresting the ridge below Blockhead is another of those magic moments, because you’re suddenly above the Lost World. But since the days were so short now, and I always wanted to get back to camp to shower before the sun set behind the peak and plunged everything into shadow, I realized I didn’t have time to continue to the head of the next canyon. All I could do was gaze longingly at the route above me.
I did have time to climb past Blockhead and check out the continuation of the ridge westward, where again I found natural campsites, level protected places along the crest. And I got even more spectacular views.
I was bee-free on the descent down the opposite side of the drainage, and the hike back across the basin was beautiful in the low light of late afternoon. But I still didn’t make it to camp before shade descended, and had yet another chilly shower.
This was the first night when mosquitos joined me for dinner. The moon was up later, approaching half. And I began to notice more satellites, which really annoyed me. Yes – I’m using them for my GPS messenger, and the images you see on these route maps. But I’m not embracing them happily. They’re a scourge on our night skies.
I thought about the tamarisk I’d seen so far, in three widely separated drainages. Our gulch actually seems to be the worst place in the range – at least here on the west side. The plateau is also bad, but not so much. Here in the desert, after more than a century, tamarisk remains confined to short stretches of drainage, as opposed to along perennial streams elsewhere in the Southwest. And in the drainages where people haven’t tried to “eradicate” it, it seems to have established an equilibrium with native plants, which often thrive in proximity.
Because it’s a wild plant, it’s smarter than you – if you fight it, it comes back stronger. In a place like this, the lesson may be: Don’t fight it!
Since the moon was still up after dinner, I took one of my moonlight walks up the gulch. Moonlight walks have been such a big part of my desert experience! Coming back, I heard a piercing ringing from the north bank, then an answering sound from the south. Crickets? It was really loud.
I thought about the old mesquite, and my favorite willow up on the plateau. Trees here overgrow in wet periods, then die back almost to the ground in a long drought, finally resprouting from their lower trunks. That seems to be a pattern of the desert.
I’m naturally tense, but dinner, beer, and a walk finally relaxed me. Back at camp I continued to study the sky. I saw a red star above Orion and wondered if it could be Mars. Through the binoculars, the Pleiades were so beautiful, and a dense area of the Milky Way below Cassiopeia. In bed, bracing my elbows, I could finally see three moons of Jupiter. Two more meteorites before I fell asleep, and of course the damn satellites.
I suspect a Spotted Towhee. The Mesquite wasn’t looking much better two years ago when I last saw it. Were there still coyote bones near it?. Great write ups and wish I were there now. Just hope to be in half as good as shape as you are next time I make it out there! Best, David
Thanks David! I didn’t see any bones – they always seem to disappear somehow.