Sunday April 27, 22.8mi/36.7km
Calumet Mine (242.1/790ft) to Cut Wash (266.1/2800ft) (CA) -1.2mi trailhead
I started off the day with many miles of flat easy walking, crossing the entire valley between two mountain ranges.
Pretty soon after sunrise some clouds formed and kept the valley nice and cool.
After a couple hours of flat and perfectly straight hiking, I came across my first object of interest, the BNSF railroad tracks.
It was actually a pretty active rail line, I could hear and see trains coming through about every 30 minutes. An hour after that, I came to old route 66.
There was zero traffic on the road, since multiple bridges are closed for repair. But it will be the route’s 100th anniversary in 2026, so Caltrans was hard at work getting the bridges fixed for the big celebration. Next I came to the wash where I had cached my water a few weeks ago, and quickly dug it up.
It’s only 18 miles to my next water cache, so I actually had extra water and had to dump a little bit. Now I was gradually hiking uphill on this cool breezy day, and the clouds really made scenery more interesting.
The guidebook says to follow an old 4wd road for a couple miles, which basically doesn’t exist anymore so I just hiked in a straight line toward the mountains.
I took a nice long break at an old mining area, which had some pretty neat looking equipment.
And also a couple frighteningly deep mineshafts that were fenced off for safety.
Hiking up the wash into the heart of the Marble Mountains was relaxing, and I no longer had to pay attention to navigation when I was just following a wash.
The guidebook has a list of plants for each section, I think these are Chinese Lanterns.
The Marble Mountains are volcanic in nature and that was becoming readily apparent from the cliffs of tuff.
The tuff also made really interesting color patterns in the washes, since the base rock is white but the gravel is reddish.
And right next to each other, I stumbled upon some very fragrant red flowers and a lucky horseshoe.
Volcanic tuff cliffs.
The cloud shadows playing with the lighting in the valley.
Towards the end of the day, I came out of the mountains and started hiking up Cut Wash, which was very wide and also full of various animal prints, including these.
Most of the hiking today was pretty easy, so when I checked my watch it was only 6pm and I had already covered 22 miles. I decided to camp here for the night, of course sheltered behind some bushes to protect from the wind.
