Deserts: day 2
This post is part 2 of the "deserts_2009" series:
After such a rough night, we were up at sunrise (5:45AM), and scarfed down breakfast. The warming, loving heater of the car was a welcome retreat, as we drove clear across the park to the Lost Horse Trailhead. The first two miles of this 7 mile loop are on a maintained trail out to the remains of a hundred year old gold mine. The last 5 miles were on an unmaintained 'trail', which in hindsight was kinda scary. There was still a decent amount of snow on all the north facing parts of the trail & hills, which David loved, but I wasn't too crazy about. The hike out to the mine was alot of rolling hills, followed by the final ascent up to the mining ruins. The unmaintained portion of the trail was fine for the first two miles or so, as it ran along the side of a mountain high above Pleasant Valley with the occasional mining ruins along the way. However, once the trail climbed over the ridge, and started to loop westward back to its starting point, it basically descended into a series of washes, with virtually no clear path. This problem was compounded by the fact that since it had rained/snowed recently, any footprints that might have existed to clue us in on the correct path had long since been washed away. Finally, since most of the hills & ridges in the area looked very similar, I didn't really know which was the one where we had started off. About the only things that kept any faith that we were actually hiking in the right direction was the location of the sun in the sky (so that I knew that we were actually walking eastward), and random cairns that suggested that some human at one time walked through there and was trying to lead others somewhere. Thankfully, we were either very lucky, or I just had better trail finding skills than I thought, as we completed the hike in just over 3.5 hours. Had I been more confident in where we were hiking, I probably would have enjoyed the last few miles alot more, as they were quite scenic, with a nice mixture of joshua trees, cacti & desert scrub.
Once we made it back to the car, I made a nice lunch and then drove a few more miles down the road to Keys View. I'm starting to become convinced that the Coachella Valley is always shrouded in smog, as even on a cold, windy winter day, the view was mostly obscured. Afterwards, we drove clear across the park once more to the park's northeast visitor center to refill our water bottles/containers, and for David to play with the exhibits & look at the cactus garden.
Upon returning to the campground, the wind was somehow even worse than the previous day. Making dinner was extremely difficult, and we actually ate in the car just to get out of the wind. Bizarrely, and thankfully, the wind completely stopped after the sun went down, but then the temperature dropped even faster. That night, it bottomed out at 28F, and there was actually a thick layer of frost over the outside of the tent.
All the other pictures are posted here.
This post is part 2 of the "deserts_2009" series: