Monday August 18, 24.1mi/38.8km

Little Canyon Creek (120.5/5410ft) to BLM Fire Station (95.9/2670ft) (ID)

I packed up camp and left my cozy little camp spot next to the creek. I’m pretty sure that will be my last campsite near water for a while. I finished the roadwalk in the nice cool shade of the canyon.

These flowers lined the road much of the way, it’s like they were all saying good morning as I passed by.

After an hour I left the roadwalk onto a little singletrack trail, which was amazingly well marked.

I had a little descent off a plateau, in the distance I could see desert farms and wind turbines.

The trail was very well marked but strangely there wasn’t a gate in the fence. I quickly found a section of fence that was broken down and just stepped over it.

I was now clearly in volcanic rock territory, with a large cliff looming above me, and lots of little black rocks scattered around the trail.

After an hour of decent singletrack, I was back on dirt roads for the rest of the day. The views here were pretty expansive but mostly of wind turbines.

It was also quite dry, when I got to Cold Springs Creek at lunchtime, I discovered it was neither a creek nor cold.

Bummer. I had enough water to make it to the fire station at the end of the day but I was looking forward to drinking cold water, as the water in my pack was hot from the beating Sun. I sat in the shade of a Willow bush for an hour at lunch, the only bush around for miles. After lunch I hiked by more wind turbines, they were turning quite slowly, I think both me and them wished there was a little more of a breeze.

When I passed over Ryegrass Creek, I was surprised to hear a trickle of water, as the guidebook says this creek goes dry after springtime. I had to move like 100 tumbleweeds to get to the water, but water was definitely under there.

I even found shade!

I walked another hour and then sat in the shade of a little fiber optic communications building at an intersection. I waited till the sun got lower and then I found shade again, when the road descended through a cliff band.

Looking down on the Snake River Valley, with the little town of Hammett, and some artificially green farms.

I hiked to the little BLM fire station, and didn’t find a water spigot, as promised by the guidebook. Which was strange, every other fire station on this trail has had water accessible somewhere on its premises. I poked around the fence for a while, even called their phone number (disconnected!), but didn’t come up with a solution. I could have easily climbed the chainlink fence but I wasn’t desperate, and I didn’t see a water spigot inside either. A passing car saw me looking suspicious and asked what I was up to, after I explained about getting water they gave me a Snapple. I was surprised both by their generosity and that Snapple still exists. I backtracked a minute, and then setup camp amongst some nice golden grasses, just as the sun was going down.