Day 3 - The Unknown Hiker

Date: Sat April 20

Start Mile: 38.4

End Mile: 57.1

Total Mileage: 18.7 mi

The Highlights: cows, long water tank break, and the unknown hiker

Heads up, if the Day 2 blog doesn’t show up below this, you can read it here .

Today we were up early once again. During the night, several cows held a very noisy round table not too far from our tent, foiling much of our sleep.

When the alarm went off at 5:15a, the stars still hung high in the sky. The moon had been bright all night, but was now out of view. I snoozed a bit longer before the pull of getting miles in during the cool hours of morning won over and I began packing my things.

Today had a pretty favorable water schedule. We were fully topped off from the nearby tank. There was a water cache in about six and a half miles, a well reviewed water tank with good shade five miles after this, and then another water cache seven and half miles later.

Our plan was to top up at the first cache, take a long lunch/nap break at the water tank, and then camp at the final water cache. About a ~19ish mile day.

Setting off, the air was cool and the hiking was pretty easy, covering nice, mostly flat trail. The morning would continue like this, hiking us mostly through spindly spiky desert plants and low scrub.

We arrived at the first water cache around 7:30a, and I was happy to find that no rattle snakes were in attendance. On our first day, Tim had let us know that there was a resident rattlesnake that liked to linger in the cache three area, though hadn’t been seen yet this season. I was happy to not make the first sighting.

We took only a short break to refill our bottles and… ‘send some faxes’.  It was tempting to linger, but we wanted to get the next five miles to the water tank in before it got too hot.

The next five miles continued to be pretty chill, with only some easy undulations and some lingering morning breezes to keep us company. Despite our earlier stop at the water cache, we managed to squeak in 10 by 10 (10 miles by 10am), which is always a nice goal to hit.

Not too much further up a dirt road, we spotted our lunch break: a dull yellow water tank. My feet were feeling beat by the time we arrived, so I was all too happy to take a break.

And break we did. The water tank threw a nice large patch of shade, so we stretched out our foam pads for lunch and naps. The crazy thing is, while it’s baking in the sun, we end up needing to wear jackets in the shade if we’re there for awhile. I had my down coat on for nap time. Between lunch, naps, water filling/filtering, and general relaxation, we spent just under three hours at the tank.

While this was nice, it also meant we were hitting the trail again around 1:30p, the heat of the day. And it was HOT. Luckily there were still the occasional cool breezes to punctuate the otherwise beating sun and help to power us over the rocky undulations that the afternoon brought.

A little over three miles in, we took a short break under a shade tree along the trail before continuing on again. Each time we took a break, it was like I needed to relearn to walk again once it was time to hike. My first several steps were ginger as I eased my tender feet and ankle bones to the ground. It always seemed to take about a quarter of a mile to get back into the groove, and that groove was slowing as the afternoon wore on.

With about three miles to go, we hiked by Losa, who was taking his own break in the shade. I was starting to think we may not see anyone else today. We chatted with him a bit before continuing on. “See you at the water cache,” we said as we left him, the parting words for most conversations between hikers in the desert revolving around water sources.

By the last two miles, I had slowed considerably, willing myself not to look at my watch every minute, only to see that I’d barely covered any distance since the last tjme I looked. Listening to Smartless podcasts had powered me through much of the drudgery of the hot afternoon hike, but even this was no longer distracting me from how much my feet hurt. (Highly recommend the Smartless podcast, by the way, very entertaining).

At one point during the last three miles or so, I had seen a car along a highway in the not-too-far distance. The water cache box wasn’t far from the highway, so I’d thought, great - almost there.

It seems to be some trick of hiking that some things seem to get even further away as you hike toward them. An hour later and we still weren’t at that highway. Even after what I would consider several ‘false summits’ where I was sure the next rocky incline would lead us to the highway.

I did finally drag myself into the water cache, probably a quarter mile behind Shawn. (And, spoiler alert, we still have not reached that highway).

Not too long after we arrived, Losa stopped through. We chatted again as he topped off his water and then continued on, planning to get in at least a few more miles.

Later in the evening, we were surprised to see another hiker approach. It was the unknown man in the group photo at the southern terminus. By the end of day one, we had met and spoken to everyone in the group except this one guy, who we had not seen since leaving the border.

Since he planned to camp here as well, we all ate our dinners together (mashed potatoes with bacon bits for me, in case you were wondering). Our previously unknown company was Monkey Man. He was from Michigan and had hiked both the AT and the PCT. It was nice to have another hiker to chat with for a bit. And he was chatty.

By hiker midnight (sunset) we were all tucked into our sleeping bags. The moon is big and bright once again, though not quite full yet so we have some more bright nights yet to come.