DWTH Day 53: We Took A Wrong Turn

Stats

👣 Miles: 18.53

📈 Elevation Gain: 2,064 ft

📉 Elevation Loss: 1,211 ft

Overall Weather: Sunny, Hot ➡️ Overcast, Hot

Daylight Savings Time

We’re all dreading it. It’s not as bad when hiking, but it still throws you off.

We awoke to our phones saying we were back on Arizona time (the better time) in California. It makes more sense to get up at 6 a.m. than 5 a.m. and go to bed at 9 p.m., not 8 p.m.

Honestly, Arizona knows what’s up in abolishing daylight savings time.

Either way, we changed our watches and tried to adjust.

Morning Miles

We’ve started trying to get our main miles hiked in the mornings to find shade more frequently in the afternoons.

To find a reasonable campsite last night, we hiked a bit off-route near a 4WD road. Looking at the map, 2 4WD tracks made a rectangle with the two washes of the route. We opted for the rocky 4WD tracks for less thinking first thing in the morning.

It was nice because that was the easiest part of the day.

Cross-Country Hiking and More Washes

The rest of the morning was spent cross-country hiking and following washes. Sometimes, a super faint two-track helped. However, if they disappear too frequently and there’s not an easy landmark to navigate toward, we often give up on them.

We’ve started seeing an increase in Costa’s Hummingbirds there. Besides them and a few others, we’ve noticed that wildlife has decreased in the Mojave. There are pockets near water sources, but they’re small.

However, what we have noticed is a drastic increase in small burrows, which I suspect are for kangaroo mice and other rodents.

We had two water sources today. 🙌 we stopped at both.

We Made a Wrong Turn

It was bound to happen at some point. Going through a zillion wash junctions, we picked the wrong one. 👎

We’re usually fairly on our navigation. However, the heat had turned up, there was no shade, we were tired, and we were ready to zone out and walk.

Then, I checked the map. We were .6 up the wrong wash. It was a shitty, rocky wash, too.

Of course, before we backtracked, we checked to see if we could rejoin the route at a different point. Nope.

Backtracking it is. Right into catclaw. My legs had just healed most of the catclaw scratches. They have now been re-bloodied.

Also, we hadn’t seen as many chollas until I was looking at the map and walking. I stepped on a rogue piece of one, and it went straight through the bottom of my sandal into my foot. I sat on a rock and picked it out before the damn thing could break on me and repeatedly stab me like before.

Back on Track: Washes and a Mini Ridge

The rest of the afternoon, we stumbled up and down rocky or sandy washes. It was broken up by a small ridge, which helped a bit.

We didn’t make any more wrong turns today.

The coolest thing we saw was a small skull. Karma found it tucked under a bush. It was definitely a fox skull, but a small one. It was in a decent but fairly decayed state.