Saturday November 11, 34.1km/21.2mi
Near Indio Tank (25.0/2410ft) to Below Silver Bell Peak (46.2/2250ft) (AZ)
We departed camp together, since this is a short xc section, and routefinding is easier with two people. Within 10 minutes we arrived at a water source.
This one wasn’t listed on the map, and it looked pretty new, so I made a note on my GPS. The sky was becoming a deep pink color, and it was a warm morning.
After spending the last two weeks walking by thousands of Saguaro cacti, I thought I had seen every unusual shape. But this was a new one!
Pretty soon, the sun rose and the temperature warmed. It was a perfect morning for a stroll thru the desert. After a couple hours of hiking, we came to our first solar well for the day.
It had plenty of clear water, so we filled up, not knowing if the next source would be dry. We hiked along, and a mile later, there was another solar well.
And then we passed another, and another. In two hours of hiking, we passed 6 more solar wells. It was very strange, since these aren’t cheap or easy to build, and they don’t seem to serve any purpose. But it was nice to have lots of water options! We hiked by two little mountains called “dos titos”, what a ridiculous name.
Just after we stopped for lunch, we saw a procession of jeeps and ATVs in the middle of nowhere. They seemed to be in a hurry, and we waved to them as they drove by.
After lunch we started the long gradual climb up to the summit of Waterman Peak.
Eventually, the climb shifted from gradual to steep, on an old road blasted into the side of the mountain.
We took a long break at a guzzler halfway up the mountain, refilling our water bottles and enjoying the shade.
The water was very green, but I grabbed some anyway, in case the next source was dry. Afterwards, we hiked the little road until it ended, and then went xc up a rocky ridge of the mountain. It was so fun!
Within 20 minutes, we were on top of the peak. What great views to the east !
And to the north, there was a giant mine.
Near the summit, there was also a memorial to an air rescue pilot.
We spent the next hour hiking down the mountain, and soon arrived at a historic missile silo site.
It was built in the 1960s, and dismantled in 1987. Strange place! An hour later, we saw something even more strange, an abandoned boat in a wash.
Somebody had clearly intentionally abandoned the boat there, since they had scraped off all of the registration numbers. Jerks. We hiked onto our next water source which was guarded by two bulls. So I reached my hand through a hole in the fence, to get water out of the tank.
We continued on another couple of miles to a campsite along an old abandoned dirt road. Hiking west into the sunset was pretty spectacular.
As usual, we set up camp in the growing darkness and used our headlamps to do all of our camp chores.