Stats
👣 Miles: 16.42
📈 Elevation Gain: 2,835 ft
📉 Elevation Loss: 1,371 ft
Overall Weather: Partly Cloudy, Warm/Hot
Morning Miles
We’re both nearing the point of needing more rest than we’re giving ourselves. Oddly, we’re beyond the major desire to shower, although it’s still there.
Now, we’re just seeing our miles to a National Park permit, which is always frustrating. It’s incredibly difficult to switch from planning your camping areas by the amount of food you have/distance to water toward “this is where it’s legal to camp.”
Either way, our morning miles took us over a hill and down a ridge to a wash. We eventually came across our last guzzler water source of the hike. It had a lot of dead bees in it. I moved them aside with the bottom of the dirty bottle, and the water came out clear underneath and tasted fine.
We did a lot of wash hiking until we got to some 4WD roads. The wash basically was the border between BLM and National Park land.
The National Park made feeble attempts at trying to stop OHVs from crossing it. I think their best tactic was writing “National Parks: An American Idea” on it. That tells you who is disrespecting it.
Entering Joshua Tree National Park
In true route fashion, we entered the park by the utilities area and snuck in. We had a backcountry camping permit, so we weren’t worried.
Before we crossed the road with people, we sat down and ate the rest of our Triscuits. It’s one thing to look dirty and crazy, but when you add hunger to the list, it brings it over the top.
After hiking down a wash, we encountered a full-blown national park trail. It had metal signs with arrows and rock-lined a path through a subsequent wash as if you couldn’t see the cairns on either side.
I admit, it felt great! …for 1/3 of a mile.
We crossed two roads, and people in cars gawked at us in confusion as we walked straight off the road, not onto a trail. It was rather comical.
Our Last Water Cache
The first cache we buried was the last that we got to dig up.
We picked this spot pretty carefully two and a half months ago.
It was near some rock shade (highly covered desert shade) and out of the wash.
Magically, this cache was completely intact and still underground. Thus, our 3 gallons of water was *cold* at the hottest part of the day.
After that, we had a 22-mile water gap, so we cooked dinner for lunch. Neither of us wanted to carry extra for cooking tonight.
Our break was longer than most lunch breaks as we drank water, listened to a podcast, and loaded up our packs.
Scramble Washes
Of course, after we load our packs with 22 miles of water, I see a comment BT made about an upcoming scramble being reminiscent of Mahousic Notch. 😂
While I absolutely LOVED Mahousic Notch both times I’ve hiked it, I wasn’t super looking forward to something similar with that much water. At least we climbed most of the day, and the sun wasn’t as intense at the slightly higher elevation.
We got right to it and were immediately dodging catclaw. I sometimes wonder if BT purposely routes through catclaw at the beginning and end of his routes to weed out those who are not tough enough. 🤔
Between scrambles, we had sandy washes with catclaw.
One scramble in particular was fun. We probably could have gone a different way, but we ended up passing packs and climbing through a large boulder hole. We were thoroughly amused there.
Going to Our Designated Camping Zone
We continued through rocky, spikey, and sandy washes until we reached a barely-there old mining track.
We (mostly) followed it over a small pass and across a much better national park trail. After that trail, the mining path mostly went to shit.
Occasionally, small cairns appeared, but some were very misleading. Some cairns went the wrong way.
Eventually, we found it, more or less. Some of the cairns were comical, though. They were small piles of rocks, maybe 4 inches high. To be fair, there weren’t many rocks around in those areas.
The breeze had picked up, so we found a spot nestled into two larger creosotes. Luckily, there were a few rocks there, so we could add them to our tent stakes. Sometimes, the sandy ground just doesn’t hold stakes well.
We ate lunch for dinner, charged our devices for the next day, and went to bed.