Friday December 22 2023

Yucca Valley CA, to Kanab UT, to Las Vegas NV (Driving)

After finishing the hike, we rented a car and drove back to Kanab, UT, where I had parked my car a few months ago. We spent the night in Kanab, at a nice hotel at a ridiculously cheap rate, and then drove both vehicles (the rental plus my van) to Las Vegas. Vegas, baby! (The Antithesis of wilderness solitude). Then, we

WTH Summary and Thoughts

Overall

Routing
It’s a fantastic route, full of amazing scenery and animals, but you definitely have to work to traverse the landscapes. Brett has put together a route that feels like it naturally moves through the terrain, linking reliable water sources while mostly keeping the hike away from crowds and civilization.

Water
I’d say about 95% of the water sources are manmade, either the big game guzzlers in Arizona, the quail guzzlers in California, or the water spigots. I can only recall a few natural water sources in the entire 800 mile route, namely the Bill Williams River and a couple of rocky pools/Tinajas. The quail guzzlers in California were usually easy to extract water from, using a removable concrete lid. But sometimes the water could only be accessed through a narrow slot (the entrance for the birds), which required taping a small gatorade bottle to the end of my hiking pole, and using that as a ladle to scoop out water. Most of the quail guzzlers also had really nice clear water, whereas a few of the big game guzzlers in Arizona had greenish water with algae, since they were exposed to sunlight. All of them filtered perfectly fine with my Sawyer filter, and I never had any problems. I never had any alkaline water or cow-tasting water.

Navigation
Navigation was usually straightforward, but also required a high level of attention to the GPS, as the route frequently changed between surface types – very faint old roads, actual roads, XC, washes, burro trails, and manmade trails. By the end of the hike, we became very adept at finding even the faintest glimmer of a trail or road across a creosote-covered landscape. Each of us had hiked hundreds of miles off-trail in the desert before, so we were very familiar with navigation in low desert topography. This should definitely not be someone’s first desert route!

Remoteness
The route felt quite remote, as the only times we saw other hikers (dayhikers) on this entire route was in Saguaro NP, and at the end in Joshua Tree NP. We would usually see some ATV riders about once a week as well, but generally saw no other humans except in the towns. Most days, we spent some time in a designated Wilderness, which meant that no motorized vehicles were allowed and we had it all to ourselves. That said, it was never actually too remote, as most days I was able to pick up a Verizon phone signal.

Camping
As for camping, it was actually pretty simple. The vast majority of the route is open to legal camping, with the only exceptions being in Saguaro NP, some sections of Joshua Tree NP, and anytime we were near a town. These spots are always clearly marked on the maps and in the databook, so it was easy to plan for this. Most of the terrain was camp-able, since the general pattern of the route is that it connects isolated mountain ranges by crossing wide desert lowlands. As long as we avoided these steepest parts of the mountain ranges, the terrain was usually flat enough to camp. And the vegetation is usually so sparse that it does not affect the camping situation either. In fact, there were a few windy nights when we were wishing for more vegetation, to serve as wind blocks. Sometimes the ground was a little hard, requiring pounding in the tent stakes with a rock, but I only broke two tent stakes over the entire 800 miles (which is pretty normal for me).

Daylight
Our biggest challenge was a factor that I hadn’t given much consideration to when we were planning this hike. Because we hiked this in November and December, there was very little daylight. We had about 10.5 hours of usable daylight every day, which meant we were hiking with headlamps for at least 30 minutes a day. We could’ve hiked fewer hours (and therefore fewer miles) each day, but then we would have to pack more days of food for each section, which was not something that either of us wanted to do. Most days we hiked about 21 or 22 miles, which I felt was a good compromise of forward progress while trying to minimize night-hiking. If I were to do this hike again, I would start earlier (mid-October and finish by the end of November), or start much later (February 1st and finish in mid-March). Almost every day we were setting up and breaking down camp in the dark, which started to wear on me a little. But it was amazing seeing every single sunrise and sunset every day!

Gear
In regards to gear, I carried my usual hiking kit, plus a chrome umbrella for the sun, and some extra water bladders (6L capacity). I also experimented with a new piece of gear, a small foldable 10-watt solar panel. It actually worked pretty well during midday, as long I had angled it squarely to the sun’s rays. I would verify the optimal angle by plugging my phone into the solar panel, and then using a phone app called “Ampere” to see the charging speed. During 30 minutes at lunch, my phone would usually gain about 25% battery. I also carried two Anker 10,000mAh batteries, though I hardly ever had to use the second battery. Another piece of gear that was surprisingly important was my USB wall charger. Every piece of hiking electronics I own (headlamp, inReach Mini, Anker Batteries, phone) charges using a USB-C cable, which is about 2x faster than the old USB-A cables. My new wall charger had dual USB-C ports, which greatly speeded up charging and decreased the amount of time I needed to spend in some of the towns. It was particularly helpful in Fenner and Amboy, which aren’t towns at all and have no motels/lodging, so you can only spend a few hours there. Lastly, I wish I had brought a pair of durable gaiters, especially for sections 6 and 7, which have a decent amount of XC thru sharp grass.

Weather
The weather was fantastic, I think we only had two days where it rained, and even then it was only for a couple of hours. I wore my rain coat and rain skirt once, and I only had to dry out my tent twice. The daytime temperatures were perfectly comfortable, when we started in early November it was in the upper 70s, and by the time we finished December 21st it was in the mid-60s. The nights were usually in the upper 40s, though we had a few pretty chilly nights in the upper 30s (mostly in Section 7 which is higher elevation). I was initially concerned about wind as this is a very open landscape, but it really only affected our camping situation maybe twice.

Permits
We got a permit to camp for two nights in Joshua Tree National Park, other than that there were no permits.

Alternates
There were a few short alternates on the route. In Section 1, we took the alternate to resupply at a Loves truck stop and get a shower. In section 4, we invented our own alternate to get to the town of Wenden quicker, it skipped a guzzler that we didn’t need and saved about 3 miles. In section 5, we took the Alamo Dam alternate to skip Ives Canyon, which we discovered was impassable. In section 6, we took part of the Whipple-Turtle shortcut to avoid a rocky wash. I wish we had hiked the entire shortcut, but this would require placing a water cache before the hike, since the shortcut skips a critical guzzler. In section 7, TopShelf took an alternate to get around a steep section of bighorn sheep trail. I hiked the steep trail and enjoyed it, but it’s not for everyone. Both routes took the same amount of time, about 1.5 hours. In section 8, we added the Yucca Valley alternate, which in my opinion should just be included in the main route. It added 19 miles, but they were easy miles on well-maintained trails and it was a very scenic section of Joshua Tree NP. And it ends in the town of Yucca Valley, which is bigger and has quite a few more services than 29 Palms.

Caches
We didn’t cache any water or food, and it worked out okay. Our biggest water carries were about 30 miles (3 times), and our biggest food carries were six days. If I were to hike this again, I would place a couple of caches: 1) a water cache in section 6 at the highway 95 crossing, to break up a potential 49-mile dry stretch (we got lucky and found a pothole of water, making it only a 30-mile dry stretch). This would also allow us to take the Whipple-Turtle shortcut, a much more enjoyable hiking route. 2) A food cache somewhere in section 7, maybe at KelBaker Road or the Hole-in-the-Wall campground. It would be nice to not carry six days of food.

Migrants
We saw plenty of evidence of migrants in sections 1 and 2, and even heard voices early one morning, but we never saw any people. We mostly saw discarded blankets, water bottles, cell phones, shoes, and other such things. As soon as we crossed north of interstate 8, we stopped seeing these.

Resupply
Brett has an extensive resupply guide. Most of the towns had a sma

Hitching
All trail towns are accessed by walking directly thru them, or hiking a spur trail. We chose to hitch to Wenden instead of hiking the 5 mile spur trail, and then we hitched to Salome (5 further miles on the same road). Of that series of 4 hitches, only the first one was easy, the rest were achieved by asking someone in the campground or the general store.

Trail Magic
Ha!

Animals
We saw bighorn sheep, burros, tortoises, snakes, lizards, deer, maybe elk, and jackrabbits.

WTH Connector – Romero Pass to Saguaro NP

I thought this section was fairly straightforward, because it’s mostly on the Tucson Urban bikeway, along with some singletrack trail and roads. There were some good camping spots within 3 to 4 miles of Romero pass, after that it’s in a urban environment. We hiked about 20 miles and then stayed in a motel, which set us up nicely to hike out the next afternoon and make it into wilderness again. There were a couple of water spigots along the route in this section, so staying hydrated was easy. Most of this section is in the suburb of Marana, which is very spread out and built for car traffic. The available hotel options were not near the grocery stores or Big5 outfitters, so we ended up taking an Uber a couple of times back and forth.

Section 1 – Saguaro NP to Arizona City
This section seems to ease you into the route, with plenty of straightforward roadwalking and singletrack trails. There was minimal XC, and those sections were usually short. Water sources seemed extremely plentiful, and I usually saw 2-3 guzzlers or cow troughs every day.

Section 2 – Arizona City to Buckeye
This section had a few more XC sections that required some attention, and we had fun with them. There was still plentiful water, and quite a bit of civilization as we had to follow along a canal after leaving Arizona City.

Section 3 – Buckeye to Tonopah