Into the Tempest
12/5 — Day 11 — 20 mi / 32km
As we shuffled about in the dark laying out our groundsheet and sleeping pad, Grace was bitten on the leg. We realised there were quite a few ants around. Grace was distressed, but there wasn’t anywhere else to camp and the spot was too narrow to set up our tent. “Goodbye,” Grace said, “I expect I’ll be eaten alive.” She was buried in her sleeping quilt. In the light of my head torch I could see dozens of ants crawling about. “Goodbye, Grace,” I said solemnly.
Grace miraculously survived the ants and it was a little awkward after such a moving farewell to go about the business of the morning together. The quicksilver globule of the moon had wobbled and shone in the night, and the wind had whooshed impressively overhead. Meaning, we were tired, and made a slower start.
As we climbed the view to the east opened up: the Coachella Valley, broad and arid and inhospitable. Palm Springs lay spread like a rash down its length, bracketed at one end by a swath of white grey water called the Salton Sea. There were some incriminatingly green golf courses that had no business being there, and, in the centre of the city, a splash of neon blue water which we assumed were the springs themselves.
We made our way along and up the long, knuckly ridge, debuting our new ‘Dirty Girl’ gaiters. Grace’s were a splotchy purple and orange design called “Trail Rash” which was increasingly prevalent among the hikers we were seeing out in the heat and the dust. Although, after the fiendish heat of the previous section, it was now, if anything, cold. The wind sluiced through the trees and the trees tossed and sprang against it.
Water was scarce. Topping up involved off trail slogs to access mountain springs. Grace and Cobbler (Tristan) went a mile off the ridge to get water from Cedar Springs while I tried to palliate my fatigue with a belated dose of caffeine. We set off again when they returned—11:30 and we’d only done a handful of miles: it was going to be a big day.
The PCT is graded for horses, generally not exceeding a 10-degree gradient, and we’d quickly become accustomed to being treated like horses—it turns out they get treated better than the average tramper in New Zealand, where trails jag steeply up and down without regard for cardiovascular tranquility. Which is to say that the long climb up San Jacinto, with its gradients well in excess of 10 degrees, felt unduly violent. Our legs were getting cut up by whitethorn and the deadfall made the going slow. Assemblies of burnt trees, black, twisted, lifeless, lent the area a gothic feel.
The wind, which had been our friend and ally during the heat, had turned upon us. Cobbler got a weather report: 60 mi / 100km gusts were expected while we navigated the highest and most exposed section of our trip so far. We reflected on how narrow the bandwidth of tolerable experience is, how susceptible conditions are to becoming “too” something: too hot, too cold, too windy.
It was too windy though, no question. We approached a saddle fortified by compact towers of granite against which the cavalry of the wind rushed and crashed. We scrambled across, clutching our hats and catching our balance with our poles. We’d gained several thousand feet and the ridge had become increasingly craggy and inhospitable, the trees having a go at life in unlikely places. “Ridiculous,” Cobbler said, “I’ve failed to grow houseplants before.”
The land below grew dim; we were racing darkness to our campsite. We passed an older guy in a precarious spot: he looked worried. We began seeing more snow. We limped into a tolerable camp where we were sheltered among trees that looked unlikely to blow over.
We battened down the hatches with our head torches on, punching in all our tent stakes and reinforcing some with rocks. The wind rushed mightily through the trees and the trees thrashed their tops like kids headbanging at a punk rock gig. Inside our tent, the walls went jitter-snap with each gust, sails straining in the wind. It was already as cold as we’d had it all trip: we were up around 9,000 feet. Grace complained about her ice-block cold butt, which is somehow not only impervious to heat, but actually sucks all the warmth out of her sleeping bag. She calls it the ‘black hole’. I yelled over the thwacking the tent, “Can I include the black hole in the blog?” “Yes,” Grace said, “tell the people of my plight.”
“Tell the people of my plight”
13/5 — Day 12 — 18 mi / 29km
We awoke—having barely slept for the ranting of the wind—to weather so mild it almost seemed repentant. We’d seen evacuees in the night, the lights of head torches bobbing sadly past at 3am in the morning, people who’d had tent failures or feared for their safety in exposed sites.
As we ascended through a forest of stout, scaly Jeffery Pines, the islands of snow expanded into archipelagos. We dropped our packs 15 minutes below the summit and, like the self-respecting mountaineers we are, ate copious quantities of junk food.
Chilly!
The sun finally broke through the cloud to pour the syrup of its warmth over the mountain. We leaned on our poles to clack slowly up to the peak where the mountain itself neatly divided the view. To the west of the range clouds piled up like sea foam on a steep shore and everything was moist and forested. To the east, it was dry, cloudless and dusty. Palm Springs and the surrounding ranges look like they live in the rain shadow of San Jacinto, which, with its prominence and immense sweep, catches all the moisture coming off the Pacific.
To the north, through pale brown mountains lay our path. But first we needed to get off the peak, which was as significant an undertaking as getting up it. It stood 10,834 feet high and it was a cool 9000 feet descent to the Coachella Valley below.
We descended through pine forest furnished with granite blouses flashing a mineral glint in the sun, through icicled streams and campsites with cute names like ‘Owl Hootch’—it felt very much like the Sierra. We lunched and fell asleep beside the track before rallying and continuing down. The massed cloud poured over the ridge in places and the heaped towers of boulders looked like the half-tumbled edifices of some vanished civilisation. We camped at 6000 feet, knackered from lack of sleep and the rigours of the day.
“Lying down feels criminally good.”
Cobbler’s Delight
14/5 — Day 13 — 13 mi / 20km
In the little screwtop ice cream tubs we use to cold-soak our breakfast, I assembled our morning meal: oats, chia seeds, shredded coconut, granola and milk powder. For some reason, we had two bags of milk powder—it was our last day before we resupplied in town, so I just threw it all in, shook it up, and let it hydrate while Grace and I walked an hour down hill.
It was 5:30am. When the valleys are folded in shadow and slanting light shapes the ridges out of morning, and when the misty breath of the morning softens the contours of the land and the land itself is innocent of heat, the desert seems an earthly paradise. Come midday, however, and those same hills are leathery and wrinkled and dusty, like the desiccated bronze bodies of inveterate sun-tanners in their older years.
We stopped to eat on a knoll, starving—we had just barely enough food, and needed to get ourselves to the I-10 on the strength of this breakfast. Grace had a large spoonful and made a yuck face. I was like, cmon. I’d recently lost my spoon so I borrowed Grace’s to try it myself. Our oats tasted like garlic, which isn’t usually the dominant flavour in porridge. “I think that extra bag of milk powder may have been dehydrated hummus,” I confessed. Grace, ordinarily quite complimentary of my cooking, called it a “culinary catastrophe.” I tried to cheer her up. “What’s bad for us is good for the blog,” I said, “the readers enjoy themselves in proportion to how much we suffer.”
Cobbler was going hungry too, saving himself for In and Out burger. He’d been talking about it with a fervid intensity for almost a week, and it exerted a magnetic pull that drew him down the hill faster than Grace and I could follow.
As we descended switchbacks the valley rose up to meet us: wind farms were footed in mist and a complex of solar panels sheened in the morning sun. The drone of traffic emanated from the I-10. Across the valley the White water River carved a clean curve out of the opposing range. We hit the 200 mile mark and, not long after, saw a rattle snake in its hole on the trail doing earthworks: it was hurriedly pushing dirt into the entry of its hole to close it up. All the animals in the desert—gophers, lizards, snakes, mice—seem to make their homes in the sand, hiding their bodies from the birds circling slowly above.
Finally, with knees protesting, we made it to the bottom. Tristan had soaked his sun hoodie under the faucet. “Almost stepped on a danger noodle back there,” he said, “thing didn’t even rattle!” We crossed the valley to an underpass on the I-10, the smell of burnt rubber reaching us from a mile away. In the echoing space under the overpass, the ghostly wail of traffic sounded like the rush of souls into Hades.
Our friend Cecilia picked us up and, with her customary efficiency and forethought, whisked us into Palm Springs for a big feed at In and Out. We hurtled down the highway, passing huge signs for ‘Carpet Empire’ featuring a bald man with an imperial squint. Cecilia peppered us with questions and dispensed advice, “How much water are you carrying?” “Grace, you need to get a new shirt. You need two shirts.”
Grace, as usual, was grubby to an exemplary degree and looked, in the immaculate atmosphere of the In and Out, like a stray dog. Tristan ordered 2 doubles, two singles, two chips and a shake, totalling about 3200 calories. He ate with the sort of ecstatic fervour normally reserved for cultic rituals, drained the last of his shake, and said “I regret nothing.”
POV: you’re about to consume 3200 calories in 15 minutes at In ‘n’ Out
We headed to Walmart to resupply for the next section. Nowhere is the maximalist philosophy of American consumerism more vivid: everything is there, and there are a hundred versions of every product—40 brands of instant coffee each with a dozen flavours—and products you never imagined, like sausages wrapped in pancakes on a stick, and cheap. It was terrible, and it was exactly what we wanted. At checkout, a woman with a trolley full of coke told the clerk, “Take him into your heart, and you’re saved! It’s that easy, honey.”
Cecilia dropped us off at our accomodation in Whitewater and we said farewell: she was off to Europe in a couple weeks on her own adventures. We were staying in a family home where a Mum lived with her son, a hairless cat and, for several months of each year, a transient cast of the filthiest and most disreputable people in the land. The house itself was clean and shiny with faux-gold fixtures and art everywhere. By the visitor book, under a bronze crucifix, there were leaflets for the Palm Springs Gay Men’s Choir.
There were some private rooms and a garage that slept 8 people on the floor. Our room had a jar full of earplugs and a fake fireplace, a large desert print with Joshua trees, and a little poster of a llama with Lana del Rey’s face standing impassively in a meadow. “That’s weird,” I said. “Llama del Rey,” Grace said.
We had a long shower, piping hot. The water ran black-brown for a full five minutes, the residue of San Jacinto escaping down the drain.
Our host spent much of the day out and about, but said she didn’t worry about anyone stealing anything. “Hikers don’t seem to want to carry extra stuff anyway,” she said. Her son was about 12 and precocious and he had a bowlcut combined with a mullet. He knew a lot about the Air Force, for whom his Mum once worked, and he spent the evening making paper planes and witticisms.
Hasta Luego, San Jacinto
15/5 —Day 14 — 9mi / 14km
In the morning, I chatted with the kid: “you going to school today?” “Nah,” he said. “I gotta go to the doctor. Damn Feds gonna ask me a bunch of questions. They think I’m autistic.” They returned in the afternoon. Kristin said, “Well, they officially gave the diagnosis. It’s a bit of a relief honestly. It’ll help at school, with resources and stuff.” The boy in question burst out of the garage, where he had been counselling an injured and discouraged hiker. “Listen, man, I’m telling you, you gotta do what’s good for your body.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “guy needs to stop pushing himself so hard.”
Grace, Tristan and I headed reluctantly out of the beneficent zone of air conditioning into the heat, talking our way up into the valley until we were chased by hunger and the sun into the paltry shade of a creosote. We ate a pecan pie that we’d purchased for 84 cents at Walmart and continued on over a narrow saddle. A new vista: a wide, steep band of sedimentary rock kicked up above the White Water valley. Behind us, we could still see San Jacinto dominating the skyline, broad shouldered and somehow, despite his loftiness, recumbent, like a giant sitting in an armchair.
The prowess of the red-dressed laundress
We wended through the complicated terrain, covered in dry brown grass tricked out with skinny bouquets of yellow flowers. The trail skirted a narrow gorge choked with green and over the shoulders of the surrounding ranges could be seen the pale visage of further hills half-erased by distance and dust-haze. As evening dimmed the intensity of the sun, the floor of the White Water Valley came into view, bedded in ash-grey rock and divided by a thin ribbon of water. This was allegedly the biggest river crossing in Southern California. It was about three feet wide and just over ankle deep.
A most fearsome torrent
Not long after, we arrived at a kind of oasis at the White Water preserve which featured smart wooden buildings and boulders artfully engraved with quotes. Grace and I dipped our feet in the ankle-deep river and made dinner. I whittled a new spoon out of a stick.
As we were licking our plates clean, Katie walked in and threw up her hands like, “here I am, bitches.” We gave her a hug and got the full debrief over dinner in the dark, after Braddock and Gina and some new friends of theirs arrived. They’d been annihilated by the heat. Katie had passed out in a tiny patch of shade and been woken up by day hikers. “Sweetie, are you ok?” The next night they’d ‘slept’ on a thirty degree angle in the gale. Katie had hit her head on an overhanging branch and thought she was concussed. We said, “when you were with two doctors and a hiking guide, you never had any problems, Katie!” “Hey, hey,” Braddock protested, “I’m technically a doctor too.”
I declined Wooden Spoon and Whittler as trail names. I’m not defined by my spoon.
The Big Mish
16/5 — Day 15 — 22mi / 35km
We were walking at 5:15. Grace and Tristan saw a spoon on the table where we’d eaten with the others the night before. “Should we steal it for Carter?” They laughed, and continued on.
We walked several gorgeous, silent miles. Certain types of gold mining involve running water over a series of depressions and feeding it buckets of auriferous gravel. Because gold is heavier than regular rock, it accumulates in the depressions. Something like that happens in the mornings, with light streaming over the ranges. Only the most precious photons go tumbling into the valleys, which are rich in light even when it seems dim. By midday, the light is plentiful and vulgar as money.
At 8am we clambered over a little saddle and into the ever-loving breast of the sun. Looking out the valley you could see a series of ridges, eight in total, layered and fading and silhouetted, with the tops dark and light seemingly rising from within the valleys. Grace and I stopped for brekkie. She couldn’t find her spoon. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Damn.”
We made it to the start of Mission Creek in good time. Since a major flooding event wiped out the trail a couple of years ago, it had enjoyed a fearsome reputation. We knew it’d involve a lot of climbing, some six thousand feet over 12 miles. Tristan soaked his shirt in the river before we got underway: “It’s like wearing an air conditioning unit!”
Heading up the river bed—PCT in 4WD mode—we took in the crazy metamorphic swirl of quartz and the neat curving rows of young cottonwoods beside the river, which stood at its edge like a thin crowd at a parade. It was our first time keeping the company of water in the desert: we’d come across creeks, of course, but we’d never followed one for a whole day.
4WD mode!
We made better progress than expected, stopping for lunch having already walked 14 miles. We ate and read and napped and when we went to step back on trail, we saw a rattlesnake uncoil itself from a few feet away make its smooth sliding way across the sand. It’s head was curved back to watch us as it snaked its body to safety, its little black tongue tasting the air.
We continued, following the creek, slowly gaining elevation. Eventually, we clambered up on an ‘island’ of intact trail, some 4 or 5m above the new riverbed in the washed out section: an awful lot had been swept away. The debris was still visible everywhere, with enormous trucks scattered about like a pile of kindling busted up by a storm.
In the evening we left the creek and reconnected with the trail proper, making several steep ascents to finish the day. We were shagged. At one point, when Grace heard there was still a mile to go, she cried a little.
At camp, we had an experimental dinner involving some powders we found in a box of unwanted foodstuffs. Tristan kindly lent Grace his spoon. After dinner, I looked everywhere for my gaiters until Grace said, “you aren’t still wearing them, are you?” I lifted my pants above the ankle. “Oh.” It had been a long day, and we were promised a cold night. Grace boiled a hot chocolate and put it in a little Nalgene bottle to bring into her sleeping quilt: a makeshift hot water bottle and pre-sleep treat combined. Once the Nalgene had vanquished the black hole, we drank the contents and fell asleep among the quiet, dark, watchful pines.
Cowboy camping in style / quasi ritualistic pine cone arrangement
“Hospitality and Enchantment”
17/5 — Day 16 — 25mi / 40km
The trees in the desert give each other plenty of room, as if they need to tax more soil for water, and undergrowth is scanty. The effect—so different than in New Zealand where trees and bushes and climbing plants crowd the forest in a riot of growth—is of some place quiet and orderly, like a Greek temple with its neat, upright columns and solemn air.
We followed a ridge overlooking the now distant Palm Springs, which was covered in whipped up dust, and a high plateau whose forested slopes slowly dwindled downwards. It was easy walking, and we made good time, realising as the day progressed that we could do the whole 25 miles and be in Big Bear that very night. We quickened our pace as the wind whipped up, disregarding complaining joints. The Mojave swung into view as we rounded a corner with a few miles to go: a big, flat hot place, rust red and shadeless, punctured by outcrops of rock. “That looks like real desert,” Grace said. “That looks like night hiking,” Cobbler said.
In Cobbler’s audiobook, the Sam and Frodo were at the end of their endurance as they crawled through Mordor to Mount Doom. We stumbled along in a state of comparable exhaustion. Cobbler pulled out his earbuds, “I can’t carry the ring Mr Frodo, but I can carry you!”
Just shy of the highway 18, we found rocks in the arranged in the path: 10%. It was hard to fathom walking what we’d walked from the border another 9 times, but that didn’t need thinking over. Cloud swirled across the ridge and fine particles of rain swarmed on the arctic wind and the wind cut through our clothes and we were cold and relieved to see the highway and even more relieved to pile into the car of a young man with a big tattoo in cursive on his arm that said Patience.
10%! Someone left beers at the highway but we were too cold to drink them.
20 minutes later, we were in cloud-clogged Big Bear: you couldn’t see across the street. We stood in the reception of the Robin Hood Resort where a sign on the wall boasted of the stars who’d stayed—John Wayne, Lassie the dog—and, in the stairway up to our room, “Hospitality and Enchantment.” Our room was dingy but palatial and all ours and we collapsed into its comforts the way a child collapses into her mother’s arms at the end of a long day. It had been a long day. As had the day prior. And there were more long days to come, many more. As we lay covered in dirt on the king-size bed we could almost see them: wide, bright days, days full of dust and water and every kind of weather, full of fortune and misfortune both, a whole parade of days marching arm and arm up the continent, all the way to Canada.
