We dropped down out of the Laguna Mountains today and left the rain and wind behind.
After a mid-morning breakfast in sunny Chariot Canyon on a dry, sandy creek bed, we set out again on the trail which followed a jeep road up a steep hill eastward. The day quickly became very dry and warm. Leaving the Laguna rim, we had entered the Anza-Borrego desert park, and everything around us indicated the change. Now there were cacti and other spiny, drought accustomed plants, lizards scampering off the trail before, the furnace shimmer of heat rising from the distant canyon floor. We found ourselves dropping way down into a valley on what appeared to be a multi-use road (there were mountain bike tire marks). We pulled out our poles which had been backpack bound for a couple of days to take some of the strain off our knees and legs, as the grade had gotten way steeper than it had been yet on the trail. Down and down we went until we bottomed out at about 2900ft (a drop of 1500 ft). It was here that Eliza asked (for perhaps a third time) if I was sure that we we!
re actually on the pct. I had been insisting that we must be, but never really checked our map. So then I did and on the pct we were not.
We were relieved and a bit surprised to find a grove of healthy looking Willow trees lining a running stream, so we took the time there to fill up our water bottles before beginning our backtrack ascent back to the top of the canyon. It turns out that we had missed the trail about 2.5 miles back, very near to where we had stopped for breakfast. Part of me knew the whole time that we ere going the wrong way. I had read the trail description and knew it wasn't matching, but somehow kept convincing myself that if we just waited and saw what was coming up around the next bend...Also, we have been tracking the other hikers around us on the trail by following their footprints. For example, we know Little Debbie wears New Balance running shoes. His print reads plain as day "New Balance." Then there's Trekker. He has a heavy hiking bot with a rugged tread, brand unknown. JD has the same sneakers that I do, the Montrail Masai and while I might not recognize it right off, Eliza!
definitely would. She generally walks just behind me. This footprint game is just something she and I do during the day, and all the way down this dirt road I kept myself going that somehow the wind or sme other magical force had wiped out the print of absolutely every other hiker that had passed before us. Either that or I was imagining that I actually was seing their prints down there.
All in all, the detour was no big deal. In a way it was a good realiy check, a reminder that getting in a ton of miles every day is only part of this hike. It's also dealing with setbacks and staying flexible. There should be a positive side to just about everything, depending on your perspctive. Had we not accidentally taken this trail, for example, we may have never walked on the floor or Oriflamme Canyon. The detour did afford us a chance meeting with two of our new trail friends, Gruevy and Donna, who we have been playing leap frog with and seeing every day or so this week. This is the same couple that we met three weeks ago in NC, who were also training on the AT. We had passed their tarptent yesterday evening in the blustery wind storm and figured that we just might never see them again. We are trying to make really good time and they had hinted that they were aiming for a bit of an easier pace. Today, though, oddly enough, there they were standing right at the!
trail junction which we had missed two hours before.
"Hey, look who it is!" I called out, cracking the first smile I had had in some time. "If you were thinking of maybe coming this way, don't. It's definitely the wrong way."
The remainder of the day was beautiful. The trail ascended and held a pleasant grade. Magnificent views of the San Jacinto Mtns. greeted us from across the San Fillipe valley, which we will cross tomorrow before the heat of the day sets in. The desert has a sense of alluring magic to it--it's creatures and plant life, so strange and exotic; the earth, so hard and burnt.
I feel that it is such an enormous privilege to be out here now, in the grip of this great, wild, expansive countryside.
Eliza decided at some point over the last couple of days to take a trail name. She was hesitant at first, her real name still feeling fresh and new since it's last alteration, but finally introduced herself as Koala as we were heading out after the kickoff on saturday. It has always been a sort of affectionate nickname between us, but I think it fits very well her personality out here on the trail--she's cute, cuddly, and potentially very ferocious if she doesn't get her eucalyptus leaves at suppertime each night.
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