Day 6: San Felipe Hills to Barrel Spring, 16.6 miles
Day 7: Barrel Spring to Warner Springs, 8 miles
Hikers are warned to leave the Rodriguez fire tank with as much water as they can carry and/or a backup plan, because the next certain water source lies at Barrel Springs, nearly 33 hot hot hot miles away, over the floor of the Anza-Borrego desert and the steep, extremely exposed terrain of the San Felipe Hills. And did I mention the part about the heat? It's hot out there. Two trail-angel maintained water caches stand amid this gauntlet, at miles 77 (Scissors Crossing) and 91 (Third Gate). Caches (here and everywhere) are an absolute boon--the number of successful thru-hikes has increased greatly since they appeared--but one must remember that they might be empty, or the trail angels might have something better to do with their time on a particular week. The caches make our lives safer and happier, but they cannot be relied upon. So we try to plan carefully.
The morning of day 5, nearly everyone in camp rolled out as quick as they could, hoping to cover the 9 miles of desert between the fire tank and Scissors Crossing (the highway sheltering the first cache) early. Most had decided either to hitch back to the Kick-Off at Lake Morena or to detour to Julian, a 12 mile ride from the crossing. I was one of the latter--no sense hiking through the worst heat of the day, and we'd all heard the rumor of a free slice of pie for hikers at Mom's Pies.
The goddam desert was already cooking (at least to my poor polar blood) by ten o'clock, when I arrived at Scissors Crossing. A group of us amassed at the monument there; seems that the locals know enough about us that a scruffy-looking bunch of vagrants can get a hitch pretty easily. This was my first time hitchhiking (lots of firsts these days). Before long Paul, Grady, and I rode to town in the straw-strewn back of a pickup truck driven by a woman named Patricia. Grady's a canny hitchhiker, so I took notes and hopefully retained the lesson. Arriving in a human settlement after five days on the trail made everything from soap to chairs feel like a minor miracle. I enjoyed my apple-cherry pie with cinnamon ice cream immensely--not just because it was excellent pie, though it was, and free!--but the ice cream was COLD, and the iced coffee was COLD, and the sandwich had cheese and lettuce and tomatoes and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Diesel-grade trail food I'd been eating all week. It was like a pat on the head, a sticker for good work.
Hikers kept arriving, and we loitered at Mom's Pies for rather longer than good manners might dictate. Feeling that we probably ought to move along, since we'd been among the first to arrive, Paul and I tanked up our water vessels, left the cafe to the lunch crowd, and found a shady piece of grass to sit in. By three we got antsy and found a ride back to the crossing with a very sweet, God-loving young woman whose gas gauge cheerfully read: 0 miles to empty. For the entire twelve miles of the ride. (Good thing it was nearly all downhill.) Walking the half mile from the crossing to the cache under the bridge, Paul and I were struck by the fact that it was still very, very hot. Unhealthily hot. Paul is maddeningly blase about some hardships, but no way was I going to try a climb with eight pounds of water in that heat--I'd pass out. We hunkered in the shade of the bridge and waited. Paul charged his phone and talked maps with a beer-bellied hiker named Jim. I made a start on the Miss Marple mystery I'd found at the Mt Laguna store. This isn't idleness, it's strategy.
By five-thirty the air had cooled marginally, and we decided to make a start. The San Felipes are all I imagine in a desert: hot, barren, covered in sharp points. The cacti were pretty spectacular, It's true--nearly all of them are bloming right now--some of the little round barrel cacti looked like they ought to glow in the dark, or dance under the full moon. My favorite were the ocotillo--so beautiful and WEIRD. But the landscape as a whole just looked--and felt--scorched. Here there be dragons. Wildfires had left their marks, and the relentless sun had cooked every hint of green to a brown husk. The trail tread was full of small stones, and seemed to wind around and around interminably, making no noticeable headway. It's not one of those pieces of trail that you look back on with fondness; just one that you pass through to get to other things. Paul and I hiked into the dark, by headlamp, trying to put in a few more miles while the air was cool, so saving ourselves the effort the next day. Eventually we paused in the narrow, flat gully between two hills, and--feeling acutely that I'd been awake since five--I said I was done.
Dry camps are a drag in the desert, I discovered that night. No cooking. No rinsing of socks. You eat whatever of your food looks least loathsome-- peanut butter with fig newtons, anyone?--resign yourself to discomfort, and wait for morning. The campsite wasn't big enough for our tarp tents--if I have a complaint about my delightfully commodious tent, it's the correlatingly large footprint--so we rolled them flat as groundsheets, unpacked sleeping bags on top, and "cowboy camped." Maybe under different circumstances this would have been a fun, but this time it was a disaster--little hopping beetles crawled all over and kept waking me up. I kept hearing chewing noises--probably rabbits--and imagining snakes and spiders. It was much too hot in my 20-degree sleeping bag, but I couldn't bring myself to lay on top of it because of the beetles. I stayed put and sweltered. And listened to the desert. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well.
We started moving again at first light. Paul and I don't really hike together--he hikes either right at my heels or half a mile in front, and we see each other at overlapping sock-change and snack breaks. That day I was dragging behind even more than usual. The heat grew oppressive before the sun was halfway into the sky--looking into the valley, I could see rippling heat waves. At one point we paused in the shrinking shadow of boulder, and Paul examined his watch with a laugh--ninety-three degrees at ten-thirty. In the shade. Thank god for the wind, or I might have melted altogether. The entire day passed in a haze of heat and tiredness, a kind of trial by fire. There was no need to hurry--nor shade anywhere, nor place to stop. I had plenty of water, all the time in the world, and a guarantee of good water and shade at Barrel Spring. I just had to get there. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's life on the PCT, I'm learning. I suppose there was always going to be a day--or days--when I would have to inure myself to the heat. I'm sure there will be many other tough marches.
We made it to Barrel Spring, of course; I've never been so happy to see a slimy green horse trough full of tadpoles and good cold WATER. Just as I stumbled into the blessed shelter of those oak trees a trail angel called Alphabet Soup delivered several cases of PBR and soda to the trough, so all the parches souls present scored a drink of some sort. Even more exciting: oranges! A bag of oranges hung over a fence post, real oranges with leaves still attaches that had clearly come from somebody's orchard. After a rest and a refill, Paul would have been ready to put in a few more miles, but for my part I rinsed the salt from as many of my clothes as I could and called it a day.
Day seven dawned, and after ten hours of sleep and a celebratory cup of instant coffee--a hiker box find--I felt like a million bucks again. Holy shit, guys, I hiked ONE HUNDRED MILES! A very short hike over low, dry cow pasture--compared to the previous day's death march, this felt like a morning jaunt through the park--took us to Warner Springs. On the way we passed (and climbed) the iconic Eagle Rock, which felt celebratory indeed.
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