Friday December 8, 37.8km/23.5mi

Turtle Mountains Wilderness (506.6/1580ft) to Stepladder Mountains Wilderness (526.8/1440ft) (CA) +2.5mi Whipple-Turtle shortcut, +0.8 quail guzzler

After watching the sky turn a glorious orange, I started hiking down the dirt road by headlamp.

I hiked by headlamp for maybe five minutes before it became unnecessary.

I stopped for a quick snack break after an hour, and TopShelf caught up. We hiked in Gary wash for the next hour, as the temperatures gradually warmed up.

Yup, we were going to be hiking up and over those mountains!

There were some fascinating rock formations around here.

Eventually the wash faded away, and we scrambled up a steep-ish rocky slope for a few minutes to a pass. It was super windy up there!

It was very cold in the wind, so we didn’t stay for more than a minute. I got a photo of our descent valley, and got moving.

Some of the really clever parts of this route are how its creator has found animal trails to use. We followed a sheep trail for 10 minutes, to where the terrain was more mellow.

Our descent ridge with the turtle mountains behind it.

We descended the ridge quickly, to get out of the gusty wind. When we reached our intended gully, it was noticeably steeper and slow-going.

We carefully and slowly picked our way down the rocky gully, which I thought was tons of fun, it reminded me of the Hayduke. I saw my shadow on terrain that was far below me, showing how steep it was!

Eventually the gully became a flat wash, and we found a spot to have lunch that was protected from the wind. And it has views of some of the Turtle Mountains that we had just hiked thru.

We hiked another hour, and arrived at a trailhead, which was funny because I can’t picture anyone driving here. It was so remote!

There was another short series of dirt roads, a nice way to spend the afternoon while my lunch digested.

And at the end of the roadwalk was a surprise…a picnic table and a shade shelter!

We took an unplanned break there, since neither of us can ever pass up a good picnic table! Afterwards, we had the pleasure of hiking on a beautiful singletrack trail, the first actual human-made trail I had seen in a very long time.

It was sunny and warm, with beautiful views and easy hiking… doesn’t get better than that.

The trail ended, and we made our way down into a wash, which we followed for an hour.

Down in the wash, we were protected from the wind, so it was nice and warm. The time flew by and pretty soon we were on a dirt road, our final segment for the day.

We hiked a couple of miles and setup camp near the road, then went down a side-route to get water. It was another quail guzzler, they seem to be the only types of water sources in this California section.

After getting back to our campsite, we got warm in our tents and made dinner.