Well.
I thought my blood soaked hike through the catclaw hells of Carrizo Gorge was about the most miserable day of hiking I had ever experienced. And it was.
Today was worse.
I woke to the sound every hiker dreads – raindrops on the tent in the morning. The latest forecast, now a couple days old, was for rain in the morning then clearing. Rather than go out and get wet, I dawdled inside the snug confines of my shelter for a couple of hours, thinking to wait it out.
Instead, the rain kept increasing. I finally faced up to reality (a hiker has to hike), packed my pack, and took down the tarp in a steady drizzle.
The drizzle lasted an hour and was well-contained by my chromedome umbrella, brought to block the merciless sun of the Mojave, but also adept as a rain stopper. A few transient breaks in the clouds allowed me to convince myself that fair weather was just ahead. No need to put on my poncho
Hiking is kind of like parenting. You tend to forget the terrible parts and remember the fun times. A good thing, too, or no one would have more than one kid and the human race would die out. So it is with hiking. You remember the rainbows and forget the rain.
So I thought it might be letting up but instead the real storm began. Drenching rain accompanied by 20-30 mph winds soon had me soaked. I finally put on my poncho, but it at this point it couldn’t keep me dry. It just slowed down the rate at which I got wet.
I plodded along, face down into the storm. Even though I had my poncho hood cinched tight, every time I looked up the wind drove the rain around my face until it was running down inside. I think a small spot on my back stayed dry, but that was all.
The storm pounded me for hours. There were of course no trees, no shelter of any kind, no letup. I was totally exposed, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Nothing for it but to walk. To keep walking and to hope that better weather and better times were headed my way.
What was going through my mind? My oldest daughter Hannah was a terribly colicky baby. She began crying the moment we came home from the hospital, and seemingly never stopped. After about a week of this, my nerves completely frayed, I called my mom hoping for some advice, some trick to get Hannah to stop with the damn squalling.
She paused for a minute to think and said she didn’t know how to make babies stop crying. But she knew that eventually they did. That everything about babies changed, and they changed pretty fast. It would pass. I just had to trust that things would get better and hold on until then.
So there was nothing to do but to walk and to hold on. I was wet and miserable and walking was the only thing keeping me from being cold as well. Dwelling on misery only compounds it so I thought about what makes me happy. And those two daughters of mine, the ones that had caused so much trouble and worry, they are now what makes me happy. I thought about how they would curl up in my lap as I read to them every night; how they would pounce on me for a game of Hop on Pop when I got home from work; how we’d shoot free throws for who did the dishes (Leah holds the record with 22 straight; she really hates dishes); how Hannah graduated first in her class at law school and how Leah just got straight A’s last semester at her law school. That’s a lot of happiness to think on.
My satellite beacon beeped with a message from brother Dave–a flash-flood warning had been issued for the eastern portions of JTNP, my precise location. Given the weather, that forecast was not exactly a surprise. Although I was in a wash, it was a big broad wash, appropriately named Big Wash. I wouldn’t be caught in a narrow canyon with no escape.
And I was fortunate that today’s route was simple. Much of the DT has directions like “follow the wash until it makes a bend to azimuth 40 degrees, then climb the third gully on the right until you get to the ridge where you follow it at azimuth 135 degrees for half a mile then descend down the gully on the left.”
That kind of route-finding would have been impossible today. I had my phone with a GPS track laid out on it, but hadn’t thought to bring a waterproof pouch to the desert, and couldn’t use it. I had paper maps, but they would have been destroyed by the wind and rain in about 30 seconds. Fortunately all I had to do was head slightly north of east for about 8 miles over a low divide and then slightly south of east. Visibility in the rain was about 200 yards.
The only way I could keep on track was to walk with a compass in my hand, constantly looking down at it. I found that if I put it away for a few minutes, I invariably went off track, always to my right. Even after I noticed this and tried to compensate, I still did it.
Navigating the storm
I ended up walking about 18 miles without a stop. Not for rest, not for food, and oddly enough, not even for water. My skin must be porous; although I drank nothing, I peed out what seemed like gallons of clear urine. My pack was weighed down with liters of water that I would never drink.
In the late afternoon I realized, somewhat to my surprise, that the wash was opening up and coming to its end. I could hear thunder ahead. I could see a bench up out of the wash to my right. Time to stop and put up my tarp.
It was still raining, but I was already soaked so that didn’t matter. The wind was a bigger problem. It took me nearly half an hour to get the tarp pitched and stabilized so I could–finally–crawl inside and be out of the storm. My long johns were still dry. My whisky was still clean. Life was beginning to look good again.
I warmed up soon enough. The sky seemed to lighten a bit. I peeked outside, and there it was. I had held on through the rain and gotten my rainbow.
