Day 4 - Flowers and Misplaced Optimism

Flowers and Misplaced Optimism

The day began at 5:45 with an alarm sounding me to the bed of coals. It was oatmeal time again. We ate, packed up, and started out of camp by around 7:15. Up the canyon we found slight pools of water amongst the plentiful coarse red volcanic rock. Water was abundantly on and off for several miles. Although the canyon was an average narrow wash where we started, it kept surprising us with flat meadows, large openings, rock-walled narrows, and even a thick healthy patch of aspen. This was of note, Carson informed us, because they were the first aspen in our journey since the saddle of Mousier Canyon, overlooking Ely, on Leg I. They were a welcomed sight. The meadows we encountered were stuffed with blazing stars, which almost overcame the rocks as the most plentiful objects in sight. At one meadow in particular, we had to throw down and take a break because it was too stunning to stroll by. We took pictures, hoping to capture this beauty, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t get much of it. If you head on over there, sometime in May or June, you’ll find it. It escapes description. Among all of the places in Nevada I have been, which is a considerable amount, the meadow was the most “Nevada” of them all. That is - if you threw the whole state in a blender (cutting out, of course, the bruised and mushy parts like Vegas, Reno, and the Liberty Pit), the smoothie you would come out with would look, smell and taste like the Hot Creek Range. You might think I’m crazy, but trust me on this one.

The beauty of the canyon was balanced by its ruggedness. We were constantly presented with rock escarpments to scramble over. For the first time on the trip, I became ‘gassed’ before 10am. It was sad, but humbling. We took several breaks, and eventually scrambled to the top, over what had gradually become slopes of solid rock. We were greeted with a decently strong and cold breeze, and, of course, a good look at Table Mountain. We had made appreciable distance since our last vista, and now the snow lined ridge loomed only one valley away, Little Fish Lake valley. Sparing no time, we dropped into a canyon that would spit us out into the valley. The canyon was extremely steep and lacked most of the pleasant characteristics of the east side. We had to take off packs to pass them down a large cracked slab, which was an exciting breech of the standard, however it quickly became the norm. After less than a mile of steep rockiness, busting through p/j, aspen, mahogany, and rosehips, we popped out on to the bench. In about 45 minutes, we had descended the range that had taken us more than five hours to ascend from the other side. At the time, it was quite astonishing.

From the bench, we could see a large dirt road that we were to follow across the second half of the valley and a large hill/mesa about half way across, before the road. We decided on the hill for lunch, and continued our stroll. We broke up, all heading the same direction, and weaved through the old growth juniper and the warming breeze. Several regions of the woodland were nearly sand dunes of granitic grit. Several stringers of bitterbrush also made their way down from the tight thick canyons in the Hot Creeks to the southeast. We reached the hill, and walked up the side to discover that it was mostly cliffs on the other side. We had lunch on the edge, eating “our gloriously meager portions”, taking naps, and surveying the walk across to the big mountain.

We left the windy perch and found our way down through the cliffs and steep slopes to an interesting outcrop of hard white chalky rocks. To the south was a beaten and dusted draw that must have had water in it at one time, because there were about 50 horses hanging out. We caught their trail down to the real water in the valley bottom, and in the process spooked all of them, setting off a monumental dust cloud that marked their location even as they disappeared over several hills out of sight. At the valley bottom we found a muddy slurry of spring ruts. A decomposing rock and wooden one room house and the skeleton of somebody’s once trusty truck sat in the dirt on a hill close by. We crossed the flat and tied in with the well grated county road.

The road was a blessing and a curse. I gave Carson a shot at the sandals, and as he put them on, Paul and I took off down the road. It was a very straight road that had several yee-ha hills that could give you a bit of zero gravity if you were going upwards of 70 mph, but, alas, we were averaging about three miles every hour, so it was slightly less exciting. Paul and I swapped stories to pass the hammering walk, and after Carson caught up, Paul kept our minds off the trail with some interesting stories of his studies and parties in Vegas and his adventures in Israel and Sweden. We took a break under a juniper, only to find our feet slightly relieved at the cost of having to sit in the whipping wind, full of sand and poky vegetation. The break was ended and we plodded on, truly plodding for the first time. As we began to move up the alluvial fan of the other side, we came to an old ranch, the Clear Creek Ranch, which had been the subject of a conversation about a week before.

* * *

“There’s not really any place with people except for Hicks Station that we can head to in an emergency. Even if we get cell service, there’s only a few places we could call you in to easily” my brother said to my dad, both gathered around a few 1:100,000 maps spread on the table. Paul and I were examining a Nevada gazetteer.

“There’s no ranches over there? It’s been a while since I’ve been that way. You guys have gotta have some sort of a safety net figured out, you know, in case something bad happens…you’ll have a place to go. There’s got to be someone out there” my dad said, scratching his head, still hovering over the maps.

Paul and I spoted a dot on a page in the gazetteer, “This say’s there is a ‘Clear Creek Ranch’ right there in Little Fish Lake. I bet that’s still there, these gazetteers aren’t that old.”

“Yeah? I don’t know. Where?....Yeah……It’s not showing up as anything on the 1:100,000’s, although some of the other ranches are left out too” my brother said optimistically.

“Well, that’s at a good point in your trip to have something. You’ve got the Suzuki stashed at Big Lout, Hicks station in between, and then that ranch, maybe. From there…..” my dad was trying to piece together all of the details we’d thrown at him that evening.

My brother finishes for him. “From there, it’s a day on to Table, and two days down and across Monitor to Pine Creek. That’s a decent campground. There’ll be people there.”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t know about that ranch,” he said. “Let’s hope.”

* * *

We walked in the dropping angle of the sun past the buildings. Several were made of trimmed juniper logs piled with dirt, caving in to the six foot sagebrush bushes growing out of them. The corral fenced in several robust rabbitbrush, with a lone and dwarfed elm watching it all unfold. Some safety net. One shed had a deep rusted purple corrugated steel roof balancing on walls of milled boards, but everything else was made of the local wood and salt of the earth. It had to have been abandoned for more than sixty or seventy years. The sight of all of it was enough to make us chuclke at the follies of misplaced optimism in the planning process.

The creek could be heard as we got closer to the mouth of Clear Creek, and after I switched out into the sandals and Carson took pictures of the industrious ranch, we all dug deep for what little energy remained and we kept on keepin’, and eventually ran out of road, ran out of steam, and located the trailhead with a decent campsite right next to the clear and cold creek. There was even a pile of wood there, although it didn’t look like anyone had camped there in several years. There was an epitaph of one Robert V. League welded onto a sheet of metal, welded to a pole about knee height, decorated with a lone, faded, and empty whisky fifth.

Dinner was cous-cous-potato-mash, and the fire was great, even if it was mostly piñon. We worked on our own supply of whiskey, having not enough to make a difference but enough to make the point. The night came quick, and sleep accompanied it.

Our much anticipated ascent of Table Mountain stirred up a few butterflies and black holes in my stomach that afternoon and evening. We had been catching sights of it for the last few days, as if it were a yeti, peeking over every next hill, with a big dark and gristly grin, waiting to devour us. Now we were here, and with out first steps in the morning we would be walking into its jaws.

Day 3 - We'll Take Lots of Pictures

We'll Take Lots of Pictures

We groggily came to at 6:00, and Carson hopped out and got a fire going from the still hot coals. He cooked the oatmeal, and when I rolled out at 6:30, it was hot and ready to scarf. Paul and I broke camp and we cleaned dishes and got stuff packed. We were out by 7:30. We had to saddle the Park Range, drop down into a little valley where Hicks Station was. Hicks Station is a scary looking ranch. It’s one of maybe three or four little ranches within about 5,700 square miles (a little more than Connecticut). After we rendezvoused with pop north of that ranch for the pump, we’d have to make a bit more progress, across the little valley and into the Hot Creek Range to camp.

There was a bit of debate regarding how to saddle the Park Range after we left Tank, but we decided and trudged on. Our path led us up a narrow and steep wash with thick trees and a healthy serving of rocks. Eventually, we came upon what we thought might have been an old trail. It looked as if rocks had been placed and switchbacks made at one time, but it was now almost unrecognizable. We split up a bit to explore the open mini-basin at the top end of the wash, and we reconvened at the saddle. From the saddle we got great views of the journey to come. We could see our rendezvous spot, the Hot Creek Range, the next valley and in the far distance, the snow fringed Table Mountain. A quote straight from my journal:

“…we then stared at Table Mountain in the distance. It is going to be a bitch. I had a bit of an epiphany about my lunch rationing lately and decided that I should stop binging on lunch food and save some extra for the big Table Mountain day ahead.”

We extracted the map and spent a good time reckoning our proposed route through the Hot Creeks. Because we had never seen this country before, we had drawn our route up a canyon that, on the map, looked reasonable, but in reality was pretty gnarly. We examined the landscape a bit and picked a secondary route through the range to follow if our original route still looked nasty as we got closer.

We dropped off the ridge into a small canyon and walked it out, finding an old road that was not on the map. We took advantage of a good filming opportunity and I climbed up on a large precipitous volcanic rock spire and filmed a beautiful pan from above as Carson and Paul strolled down the road below. We ran into a few full water troughs and a muddy stock pond. At this point, our road started going northwest, and after a good rest under one of the last good trees, we broke off and continued towards Hicks Station through the scrub and brush. We were all pretty gassed from the late night, and still feeling the dehydration a bit. This could have been due in part to the fact that even though we had water, drinking enough of it to get hydrated was a psychological accomplishment of its own. We walked the low hills, flushing a few sage grouse, and eventually came to the main grated road that runs to Hicks Station. I sandaled-up and walked in a road daze down this path to the agreed spot of rendezvous. This spot was where, for Leg II, Carson and Paul had placed a food and water stash. We never made it to this stash that year, of course, and Curt had to pick it up a year later. Because he knew where this was and we knew too, it provided a good place to meet that eliminated a lot of navigational and communicational variables. We arrived much before 3:00. I stayed in my sandals and sat under a huge juniper that was raining ticks, and Carson and Paul dropped packs and continued down the wash to look for water and to look at the Hot Creeks and gain more insight about how we were to cross them.

They returned shortly and said that they had seen a water tank on a hill and a green meadow below it about a mile south in the valley. We decided that this was our best bet for water, and that we’d stick to our original path up the higher canyon. It was 1:00 and Curt was to arrive at 3:00. We sat, journaled, slept, and picked off ticks that were bombarding us from above in the most peculiar set of tick tactics I’ve ever seen.

As timely as a man should be who intimately knows most every dirt road in half the state, Curt arrived at 3:05, judging the three and half hour drive from Ely about perfect. We sauntered down to meet him from our perch on the hill, and examined what he had brought us. He could only locate a well used filter for out current pump and had a few other options for us. He had more iodine, two squeeze bottle filtrations systems, and one chinsy hand pump that Paul’s father had scrounged up from SprotsWorld. We discussed these options and ended up taking the used but decent filter four our pump, the chinsy but potent SportsWorld hand pump, and one of the squeeze bottle filtration systems. Curt sampled our smoked horse dung water, and said he admired the smoky mahogany flavor. I guess it could be pleasing if you didn’t have to see it through the whole process. We dumped all of our brown water and refilled a few liters from a water cube that Curt had brought. We didn’t want to fill up all the way, to preserve what little dignity we had left. We only took enough to get us to the green meadow Carson and Paul had spotted. We chatted for a spell about the impending cold weather that was to hit us when we were on Table Mountain, and then we left and Curt drove off. Once the vehicle had disappeared over the first hill, our isolation was quickly restored, and we were feeling pretty good about things in general.

We walked down the wash Carson and Paul had scouted, toward the green fenced in meadow. Carson took the video camera to set up a good walk through shot, and discovered then that the battery (the only battery) was only a few minutes from death. It had been accidentally set to another mode and had been left on in our packs for about five hours. Our good feeling about things in general was put out like a Boy Scout’s fire. We agreed that our coverage of the trip with still cameras from then on would have to be more complete than it had been. Regarding the few minutes of filming we apparently had left on the battery, we decided to pack up the camera and save it for possibly more exciting views on Table Mountain. Our good feelings were restored relatively quickly after we pondered how we wouldn’t have to deal with filming anymore. It was a relief of sorts.

We made it to the bottom of our wash to the fenced in fields that apparently belonged to Hicks Station. It’s time now to talk a bit about Hicks Station.

As one of the only ‘safety net’ locations on this trip, meaning there are humans there occasionally, we wanted to learn more about Hicks Station prior to the trip, in hopes we could take water from their property. Indeed, the only water in the valley was on their property. Two years earlier when we had placed the stash near the ranch, we learned that whoever lives there has been there a very long time and does not want to see you. Scattered about on every hill was old rusting machinery and vehicles, broken water tanks, piles of wire and other ranching debris. The turnoff to their private drive was gated with a locked padlock and a few dozen welcoming signs including ‘NO TRESPASING’ (sic), ‘KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY’, ‘NO ONE BEYOND THIS POINT’ and ‘STAY AWAY’, among others. I believe one of the fence posts was even adorned with the oxidizing skull of a cow or horse.

A few days before this trip, we opened the White Pine/Nye County phone book and looked for a ‘Hick’ or ‘Hicks’ family to call to ask about possibly getting water. There were several, none of which were in Nye County, and we decided to call the one listed for Ely. Paul called and had a very brief conversation with them.

“Hello…Hi. My name is Paul Bath and a few friends and I will be backpacking in Nye County next week, near a place called Hicks Station. I am wondering if you have any relation to the folks that live there, so we could talk to them and possibly get some water from their property.”

“Hicks Station in Nye county? No, we don’t know them.” [Hang up]

“Ok, thank y--…hello?”

All of these things together made us quite weary of Hicks Station. So, as we approached their fenced in oasis, complete with a few trotting trained horses, we were a bit worried about conflict. From where we were, we could not see any structures where people might be, but such structures were only right around a hill about a quarter mile south of us. We hid our packs in the rabbit brush north of the meadow, and grabbed all of our bottles and the pump with the used filter. We jumped the first fence and crossed the meadow where the two horses were grazing. They were very well taken care of horses, and they were curious about our presence. We jumped another fence and made our way to a spring head that came out of some rocks. The pool it made was very clear, but colored, and had little minnows of some sort in it. We crouched as much as possible and pumped for all we were worth until everything was full. We drank from the pump, too until we were as full as we could be, and then left. After we crossed the first fence, the horses decided we were nice enough and came trotting up to greet us. They must have known that I hate horses, because they ran to Paul, who petted them a bit and rubbed their noses, but when I approached they spooked and left. We crossed the meadow, jumped the other fence, and were on our way again.

Directly west was the entrance to our canyon, and we decided to hike up it and camp right before it got narrow. A few miles up, the combined exhaustedness of walking in sand and having been walking for three days caught up to us and we set up camp among some lofty pines and steep rocks on both sides.

We quickly got a fire going and cooked some soba wheat noodles and heated four pre-hydrated MRE main course meal packets. This filled us up, relatively. After dinner, having had a hard but very good day, we broke out a big stogie, a Punch, and passed it around until it became as wasted as our battery, and then moved on to work a bit more on the liter of whisky. Drugged and slightly intoxicated, we sat around the fire getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, trying to stay in the smoke, and then retired to our tent.

We had talked that day about luck and probability. Never before on a trip had we run into problems as we had done in the last two days. These problems were not horrific by any means, but they lead us to believe that if we could overcome them, all things being equal, the probability of running into more problems was much less likely - almost impossible – given our track record. Of course, all things were not equal, and never really are, but the thought was enough to relax us into the mental state we had been craving since the last leg of this adventurous journey. As I sat next to the fire, staring at the wall of the canyon and watching the sun retreat up them, I rose from our camp to a height of several miles above the mountains, and I realized some things: I was nowhere I had ever been or seen before; I had walked to such a place from miles and miles away; I was with only two people, surrounded by thousands of human less square miles; and I was carrying everything I needed to keep going for four more days.

These realizations put me at peace, and I have longed for this peace ever since.

The Adventures of Trail 22

In 2002, Carson Baughman developed a plan to hike from Utah to his home in Ely; a 60 mile journey across the Eastern Nevada wilds. He would make the four day journey alone.

For one reason or another, his first solo attempt in 2003 was unsuccessful.

Determined to make the beautiful journey, he tried again the same summer. This time, he teamed with a friend. Paul Bath was the man for the job.

The two set out following the same path, and successfully completed the trek in three and a half days. They called their route Trail 22.

Invigorated by this trip, the two, along with fellow adventurer Owen Baughman (that's Me!), soon began to dream of crossing the great state of Nevada in a series of legs.

These are their stories.

Leg I - August 2003 (Paul and Carson) & August 2006 (Owen)

---Writings by Carson---

The First Attempt

Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 1 & 2)

Round Two - With Wingman Paul (Day 3 & 4)

Leg II - June 2005

Coming soon!

Leg III - May 2007

--- Writings by Owen ---

Day 1 - Off The Grid

Day 2 - And Then We Drink It

Day 3 - We'll Take Lots of Pictures

Day 4 - Flowers and Misplaced Optimism

Day 5 - The Table Mountain Hop

Day 6 - The Final Steps of the Successful Leg

Day 7 and The Future

Day 2 - And Then We Drink It...

And Then We Drink It...

I arose at 6:00 to see the sun doing the same and made my infamous bland Good Morning oatmeal and rocketed by 7:20. Baby ravens had apparently survived the cold unaided by mom and were screeching away as we passed.

We started across Little Smoky Valley and stopped every hour or so to keep our speed reasonable. The walk was splendidly uneventful. The lack of any sort of independent features humbled us and we slipped into valley mode. We diverted off our bearing a bit about halfway across in order to intersect a curious rock outcrop standing alone on the other side of the valley. We walked with breaks to the rocks, conserving our dwindling water (as it was, not drinking enough).

We reached the rocks, which were larger than we had imagined, around 11:00, and hung out, shade hopping, for about two hours. The rocks provided only the motivated and crafty with shade. I moved from spot to spot, curling up on rocks and in cracks to keep as much of me in the shade as possible, and as I dozed off, Carson and Paul scampered around the other side and rigged a shade canopy with a ground cloth and a trekking-pole. They told me to come and join them, but I was too comatose to hear them, sleeping in my shrinking shade. I awoke later in full sunlight, sweating profusely. Grumpy, I searched for my compadres. I could not find them, so I sat dehydrating in the mid-day sun wishing I had either enough shade or enough water to make the situation pleasant.

Carson and Paul came back, and we bitched and argued about why I had not been thoroughly aroused and informed to participate in the man-made-shade. In the process, either dehydration or increased blood pressure (likely a combination of both) set fourth my first bloody nose of the trip. Wahoo. I dealt with that and we loaded up and plodded off in the dusty heat.

We made decent time stumbling tired through the sage aiming towards a canyon with two topographic options. We debated several times which option would take us to Tank Springs, a spring that we had confirmed dependable two years earlier for the unfinished ending of Leg II. We finally decided to follow the horse sign, figuring the mangy beasts would know where the water was. The packed and dusted horse trail wove us into the scattered piñon and juniper and the foothills of the Park Range. Everyone was getting pretty thirsty, reserving about a half liter in case Tank was dry. We would be in a world of hurt if it was, but we could make it another six miles by night to water at Hicks Station’s springs in the next high valley if we had to.

We rested in the welcoming lengthening shadows of a few piñons, knowing we were close to Tank, but not seeing any sign of water yet. Reaching over his head into his top compartment to feed from his bag of GORP, Carson spilled the contents of said bag down his back and into the deep duff of an ancient piñon pine. We helped him pick up the high calorie chocolates, nuts, and raisins, but stopped helping when he started picking individual oats from the porous pine needles. Food back in bag, we plodded on, running into horses and pushing them out in front of us as we approached where the map indicated the spring was. In uncommon appreciation of the horses, I hoped they were a sign of dependable water.

A bit of a climb led us through some choke cherries, currants, service berries, and other water loving shrubs. We rounded the corner of a thick stand of PJ, tired and thirsty, to behold the mangy Tank Springs, totally fornicated by horses.

“I guess that means we can drink up.” I said.

We dropped packs and spent some time trying to figure out how to pump water from the few square feet of inch-deep chocolate brown stud-pile infused water. In time, we decided to make a bit of a mud and rock reservoir below the main pool. We slightly drained the main pool, flushing it with a little clearer water from the seeping bank above. We let the bank refill the main pool and then overflowed that into our deeper reservoir. The reservoir filled in about ten minutes, and, hoping for the best, we wrapped a t-shirt around the acorn filter and began pumping.

The pumping soon got quite difficult and the pump (our only pump, and our only filter) eventually seized up after about a liter. This was decidedly not very good. Frightened, we took it apart to take a look at the filter. In the past, we have used standard filters for our pump, which, when you extract them, show you the riffled surface of the filter itself. When this white surface becomes soiled and brown, the pump is shot. This filter, though, was a new super-deluxe filter that had an additional filter screen that wrapped around the riffled primary filter. It had been used once in southern Utah a few months previous for a few liters, but was still very white and clean when we packed it for this trip.

We extracted the filter, and the outer screen was still stark white, just as wee had packed it. All three of us huddled closely over the filter, and Carson cautiously peeled back the outer screen, and we quickly learned that the super-deluxe extra screen was not an indicator of how clean the real filter was.

“Ohh…fuck…” He said gravely in a quivering tone you don’t hear when things are OK.

He exposed the surface of the main filter and it was a blackish brown, spotted with mold. It was the dirtiest filter I’d ever seen. Our hearts dropped into our thirsty bowels.

Paul and I gawked in relative silence at the filter for a moment. The rough edge of reality had hit us hard, and after a bit of disbelief and anger, we sat down next to the mud hole to talk about our options.

We could:

1. Try forcing more liters out of the pump, possibly contaminating our water or breaking the pump

2. Continue on, without a pump, boiling all of our water before drinking it

3. Continue on, depending upon our combined 23 liter supply of iodine tablets

4. Swallow our pride of a non-supported trip and try to call in another filter via cell phone to be rendezvoused to us at Hicks Station

5. Call off the trip and head back to the car about 17 miles back

6. Die of dehydration, waterborne illness, and general bad luck

There were obvious breaches of common sense in options one through three, and significant breaches of pride in options four through six. Thirty minutes of reasoned discussion led us to get a few fires going, set up camp, and start boiling water. I cleared out the dugout of a foundation of an ancient cabin about 60 meters through the trees from the spring and started two fires. Paul and Carson discussed what to do, sitting next to the spring. I got a nice bed of coals going and started the first pot of brown soupy water boiling. The water was too murky to see the bottom of the small pan, and as it boiled it smelled of fresh horse dung. As the pan cooled the first bed of coals, I stoked the second fire to get another hot bed. I switched the pot after about ten minutes, and it began to boil on the second fire. I re-stoked the first fire and continued this ad naseum.

Carson and Paul returned. We sat around the fire and Carson finally said what needed to be said:

“Besides pride…” He paused. “…Is there any reason that we shouldn’t call in another filter?”

Paul and I thought for a good while and agreed that there was not.

With that, Paul and Carson took Paul’s phone and headed up the side of the canyon to get up on a ridge. It would be a slight miracle to get reception out there, 40 miles from Eureka, 70 miles from Ely and 80 miles from Tonopah, with mountains between us and all those places. If there was a dead spot anywhere, it ought to have been there.

I remained within the bubble of light in the PJ, tending the fires and thinking about death, sickness, pride, and all sorts of hypothetical outcomes. I was suddenly humbled more than I have ever been by the elements, so dependent upon them for my acceptable survival and my uncertain future.

* * *

They returned within thirty minutes and said that they got through to Curt, and that he was going to meet us at Hicks Station the next day with a new pump or a new filter around 3:00pm. This firmed up our future quite a bit. We settled in for the evening and the water processing procedure began to develop.

However, first things were first; we needed to eat. We drank most of our reserve water and decided our cheese filled noodles were the best choice of food for the evening. I poured the dry noodles into the second batch of boiling water and cooked them on the fire in the scuz, hoping the noodles and subsequent cheese sauce mix would mask the dung overtones. It worked well and we eagerly ate the amazing soupy noodles as we began the lengthy and laborious process of refilling our water supplies.

None of us had ever had to depend upon boiled scuz-water for hydration before, so how exactly to go about the process was up for creative development. After we dispersed into the dark woodlands in search of good wood, we brought back a few good loads of juniper and mahogany. We had two aluminum pots, one bigger than the other. The smaller pot was used to boil the water for twenty minutes, and after it had, the water was poured into the other pot to cool and settle. Settling was very important here - there were a lot of 'things' in the water. The small pot was refilled in the pool and put back on the fire. After the boiled water had cooled enough to put into bottles, it was poured through a camp towel into a nalgene where its true clarity and quality could be assessed in full for the first time. From cold murky pool to warm murky nalgene, the process took about 45 minutes with good fires. The resulting water had a very interesting tase.

“And then we drink it. Mmmmm.”

The first few batches were immediately consumed since we were quite dehydrated. Manning the scorching mahogany fires contributed to this dehydration, but we eventually began to fill our bottles with this tinted, smoky and organic flavored water. These festivities continued late into the night. We had had enough around 12:30am. The fires were left to die beneath the clear sky and waxing quarter moon as we stumbled exhausted, dirty, and satisfied with our efforts to the tent to greet unconsciousness.

The second day was our first real day 'in the nowhere’. To awake and retire in such a setting puts one at the true mercy of the elements of the landscape. Considering the rugged and unforgiving nature of the central Great Basin, the day had definitely been representative of the landscape we were in: rough. We had been stripped down to the water-dependent and weak little creatures that we really were, and always had been. We were reminded how un-evolved we were for unassisted travel, yet also how enjoyable truly living by your wits can be, even if only for one night.

The next day, we would swallow our pride and scuzzy water and rendezvous for a filter re-supply. We would continue through yet another disappointing realization and end up deep within a landscape we had never seen, about to discover some of the most beautiful landscapes of our journey.

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Day 1 - Off the Grid

-Off The Grid-

Awoke confused at 4:00AM, and made breakfast; 2 eggs, some bacon, and a bowl of soggy granola. It seems that good things tend to start with granola. Did a bit of last minute packing and hit the road. The previous evening was a time of serious uneasiness and doubt. I kept assuming that we’d never return, that we would all die, and that I needed to say all of my goodbyes.

We picked up Paul, talked to his mother for a spell and then topped off the Suzuki on gas. I bought me a pair of cheap sunglasses, as I had recently lost my other pair, and headed up Murray Canyon. Made it to the top of Murray and remembered that we wanted to bring the Nevada gazetteer in the car in case one of us needed to return to the car and navigate to the site of some horrific accident. Not assuming a horrific accident was eminent, wee backtracked the 8 minutes to get the gazetteer just in case. All of this set upon a backdrop of Moby’s Play and Oasis’s What’s the Story Morning Glory.

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Some might say that sunshine follows thunder
Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine
Some might say that we should never ponder
On our thoughts today ‘cause they all sway all the time

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You might run on for a long time
Run on, ducking and dodging
Run on, children, for a long time
Let me tell you God Almighty gonna’ cut you down

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We arrived at Big Louie spring, the pitiful cow trough which I had last seen in the dying evening light almost two years ago with a heavy heart of foregone yet unrealized adventure. It was 8:00 on the nose, and we allocated trip food and packed up. Threw our packs back in the car, and set up camera for an arrival shot. Spent another ten minutes shooting said shot and shooting a few more scenes at the tank.

We hit the trail by 8:30 and hiked solid for an hour or so, most of it on a two track.

Had a bit of controversy over how to hit a little saddle, but made it over with a good stint of steep and thick bushwhacking

through some neat rocky escarpments. We saddled at our mark, getting a decent peek at the terrain to come, and descended the west side a bit to a good shade hole for lunch. Carson, who you could call our Water Guru for the trip, had studied the map enough to understand that our first essential water source could be dry. He discussed alternate options with us. We resumed our trek after about an hour lunch and slid into a bit of a high narrow valley in the Pancakes.

There was significant horse sign in the valley, and at a point, the horse trail we were following broke off of our westerly course and headed to the north. Our ‘water’ was a few more miles west, over another saddle and in the foothills of the next valley. The horse sign suggested to us that water might be to the north, and Carson confirmed a seasonal spring about a mile up. He volunteered to side trip down the horse trail to get enough water for us to scrape by for the next day and a half if the next spring was bust. He left, pack on, and Paul and I retired to shade of a lofty hedged juniper, kicking off our boots to rest up.

It’s been a while now, he must have found some water, or lost his mind and kept walking into the endless country to the north…

* * *

[insert Carson story]

Carson returned in one hour and fifteen minutes, and had found and pumped five liters. We gathered in a circle in the afternoon sun and all stared at the slightly yellow colored water of a nalgene. Carson took off the lid and smelled it.

“Hmm, it’s got a…a pleasant nose. Slightly hydric…it’s a little wet.”

He took a swig, “Tastes like water” and passed it to Paul, who also took a cautious sip.

“I don’t know what arsenic tastes like, supposedly it’s tasteless…” Carson said as Paul swished it around a bit. He passed it to me like a bottle of whiskey.

“It’s a little flat. I think you should go get some more.” I added.

All of us deemed it high quality H₂O, “The elixir of life”, despite it’s color, and we continued. We came upon more horse sign, and this sign eventually developed into real live horses. We pushed them out ahead of us and to the sides as we strolled along through the notably abundant and beautiful forbs and wildflowers in the grainy granitic soil. We saddled the west ridge of the small high valley and followed the intense horse sign down to the nuked Sand Spring, which had been our essential water source of the day before Carson deviated to play it safe. Paul and I made a bit of a pool in the Horse-poo-mud-mortar and waited for it to flush with clear pumpable water.

We pumped our packs to full capacity (about four liters each) in preparation for the evening’s dry camp and the Little Smoky valley walk that would greet us the next day. I put on sandals, Paul put on his tennis shoes, and we wandered down the two track out of the piñon and juniper forested foothills for a few miles to the edge of the trees. The valley stretched before us in full in the evening light, and we found a sandy place near a wash amongst some large granite boulders to camp. Pitched tent and started a fire by 5:30.

We cooked up some couscous-tater-TVP hash (which, if you might doubt it, is quite delicious) on the coals of the finest juniper. As we ate, Carson discovered three newly born ravens in the top of a nearby juniper, and we all took turn crawling up to admire them. They were very newly born, quite nasty, and looked more like archaeopteryx chicks than ravens. Momma raven was nowhere to be found, not even circling, and she never did come back, as far as we could tell.

We sat around the fire a bit, and Paul decided the day had been good, and, to the surprise of Carson and I, extracted from the depths of his pack a one liter travel-lite plastic bottle of Canadian Mist. It made it’s way once or twice around, and shortly thereafter we hit the hay.

It was a good day. My feet were a bit sore and I thought I could smell a blister coming on, but the last scrawled sentence in my journal reads:

“I’m happy to be out in the nowhere.”

The next day would bring bright and early oatmeal, a good long walk across Little Smokey Valley, and, unbeknownst to us as we slept, an error that would force us to take drastic measures to keep the trip alive.

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