One Way Ticket to Somewhere

Until now, my food planning had been on point. I had added an additional day to each cache and, for one reason or another, had always needed that added day. So when I reached my cache near the Hole-in-the-Rock Road, I had only one emergency dinner and a few snacks left.   I didn’t have this safety net for the next section. It was longer than the previous ones and, due to the capacity of the cache, I was not able to add a full day of food. In addition, the parmesan cheese that was supposed to provide three lunches was moldy beyond rescue. I had chocolate that I could substitute, but there wasn’t anything extra. I was confident that I could reach my next bucket before I would run out of supplies, but it’s always better to be prepared for an extra day. Yahan’s Garlic - Yumm! I was well rested after an easy day hiking out of Coyote Gulch on a well defined trail when I set out the next morning, but the climb up Fiftymile Mountain broke my spirit for the day. It was a moderate 3000’, but...

I was glad I fortified my camp on the Poison Spring Benches. Soon after I went to sleep, wind gusts blew the first dust clouds into the tent again, then it started to rain. The pad still leaked, although it took the air some time to push through the duct tape and the ground wasn’t very cold. I fell asleep to the sound of the raindrops hitting the tent. They were still hitting it when I woke up in the morning. I left the tent and saw that low hanging rain clouds covered the whole sky. The Henry Mountains weren’t visible at all.   At that point I hadn’t had cell phone signal or WiFi since I left the Needles Outpost, almost two weeks earlier. I texted River over satellite and asked for the weather forecast. Apparently the following day would have clear skies. It didn’t look very likely, but I had already experienced how quickly the weather can change here. The rainstorm finally abated around noon and I started packing up. I had used the morning to pre-write the blog entries for the ...