Thursday December 7, 40.6km/25.2mi
West side of Whipple Mountain (476.0/1920ft) to Turtle Mountains Wilderness (498.5/1580ft) (CA) +2.7mi impromptu shortcut
After a tough day yesterday, today’s easy miles were greatly welcomed. We started off at 5:45am with a short section of xc hiking, with surprisingly sparse vegetation.
We crossed a wash, where I found an antler shed! I figured it’s from a mule deer, though I haven’t seen any recently.
We hiked over a low pass, where the sun finally greeted us. It’s so much warmer in the sunlight!
The rest of the morning was on flat and easy roads. Perfect!
It was relaxing to not have to constantly navigate, or figure out where to place my feet. And we had a decent view of the upcoming Turtle Mountains.
TopShelf was ahead of me all morning, and I think I see more wildlife when I’m alone. When two people are together, we tend to make more noise with talking, etc. This snake was sunning itself, and it wasn’t at all interested in moving.
I caught up to TopShelf and we stopped and had lunch. It was a really warm day, so we ate in the tiny shade of a creosote bush, ha! After lunch and some solar charging, we found an old tortoise shell. Poor guy.
There was an hour of walking in a wide wash, which was a little slow since it was loose gravel.
Finally we made it to a quail guzzler, our first water source in 30 miles! These are all over the desert of southern California to help thirsty birds, and are maintained by volunteers.
We filled all our water bottles, as the next water source is 32 miles away. We slowly hiked away, as our packs were now 4kg/8.8lbs heavier from the 4L of water we were now carrying. After crossing highway 95, we hiked up a wash and into the Turtle Mountains!
The wash was pretty terrible, with a weird combination of loose sand and boulders. It was often faster to hike right next to the wash, using it as a handrail. Eventually we tired of that game, and I devised a shortcut to a dirt road. It saved us 3 miles, and after an hour of night-hiking thru unexplored terrain, we landed at the dirt road and setup camp.