Saturday December 9, 39.8km/24.7mi

Stepladder Mountains Wilderness (526.8/1440ft) to Old Woman Mountains Wilderness (551.5/3260ft) (CA)

We left camp at 6:15am and hiked along a dirt road for 3 hours. It was pretty dark for the first 10 minutes with only the glowing orange sky behind me.

Pretty soon it lightened up, and I could see the Old Woman mountains ahead of me to the west.

It was pretty cold maybe 40 F/4C, and rather windy, so I was happy to see the sunlight starting to approach the cold valley.

By 9am it had warmed up, and we had left that dirt road and started a short climb to a small pass.

And soon after we officially entered the wilderness area!

It was so incredibly windy, so even though it was 60F/15C by now, we kept most of our clothing layers on, and walked uphill into the wind.

We went over the top of the little pass and immediately hiked down the other side to get out of the wind. A mile later, we came to our first water source for today, another quail guzzler.

This one had a lid that was non-removable, so we had to get creative and fish water out of the skinny front portal, using a bottle taped to a hiking pole.

Once we had entered the Old Woman mountains, the landscape and geology around us changed noticeably. There were many more yucca plants….

… And much more of this type of rock, that I usually associate with Joshua Tree National Park.

We had lunch near this cool rock formation.

We spent pretty much all day very gradually climbing into these mountains, and now we could look down to the valleys to the north and see how much higher we were.

At the end of the day, there was a series of small but steep passes that we needed to hike over.

There were easier ways to get around these mountains, but instead the route chose to go through some of them. It was slow going and a little unexpected and out of character for this route, but we eventually got through the challenges. Looking down on a wash we were about to descend into:

We hiked in Sweetwater Wash for a couple of miles before it got dark.

After a series of confusing turns and some cross-country travel, we were hiking in the dark for an hour to get to our intended campsite near a water source.

We got to our campsite at 6:30 and promptly setup our tents, since it was getting extremely cold. Fortunately, the wind had stopped! I put on most of my clothing layers and crawled into my sleeping quilt.

Friday December 8, 37.8km/23.5mi

Turtle Mountains Wilderness (506.6/1580ft) to Stepladder Mountains Wilderness (526.8/1440ft) (CA) +2.5mi Whipple-Turtle shortcut, +0.8 quail guzzler

After watching the sky turn a glorious orange, I started hiking down the dirt road by headlamp.

I hiked by headlamp for maybe five minutes before it became unnecessary.

I stopped for a quick snack break after an hour, and TopShelf caught up. We hiked in Gary wash for the next hour, as the temperatures gradually warmed up.

Yup, we were going to be hiking up and over those mountains!

There were some fascinating rock formations around here.

Eventually the wash faded away, and we scrambled up a steep-ish rocky slope for a few minutes to a pass. It was super windy up there!

It was very cold in the wind, so we didn’t stay for more than a minute. I got a photo of our descent valley, and got moving.

Some of the really clever parts of this route are how its creator has found animal trails to use. We followed a sheep trail for 10 minutes, to where the terrain was more mellow.

Our descent ridge with the turtle mountains behind it.

We descended the ridge quickly, to get out of the gusty wind. When we reached our intended gully, it was noticeably steeper and slow-going.

We carefully and slowly picked our way down the rocky gully, which I thought was tons of fun, it reminded me of the Hayduke. I saw my shadow on terrain that was far below me, showing how steep it was!

Eventually the gully became a flat wash, and we found a spot to have lunch that was protected from the wind. And it has views of some of the Turtle Mountains that we had just hiked thru.

We hiked another hour, and arrived at a trailhead, which was funny because I can’t picture anyone driving here. It was so remote!

There was another short series of dirt roads, a nice way to spend the afternoon while my lunch digested.

And at the end of the roadwalk was a surprise…a picnic table and a shade shelter!

We took an unplanned break there, since neither of us can ever pass up a good picnic table! Afterwards, we had the pleasure of hiking on a beautiful singletrack trail, the first actual human-made trail I had seen in a very long time.

It was sunny and warm, with beautiful views and easy hiking… doesn’t get better than that.

The trail ended, and we made our way down into a wash, which we followed for an hour.

Down in the wash, we were protected from the wind, so it was nice and warm. The time flew by and pretty soon we were on a dirt road, our final segment for the day.

We hiked a couple of miles and setup camp near the road, then went down a side-route to get water. It was another quail guzzler, they seem to be the only types of water sources in this California section.

After getting back to our campsite, we got warm in our tents and made dinner.

Thursday December 7, 40.6km/25.2mi

West side of Whipple Mountain (476.0/1920ft) to Turtle Mountains Wilderness (498.5/1580ft) (CA) +2.7mi impromptu shortcut

After a tough day yesterday, today’s easy miles were greatly welcomed. We started off at 5:45am with a short section of xc hiking, with surprisingly sparse vegetation.

We crossed a wash, where I found an antler shed! I figured it’s from a mule deer, though I haven’t seen any recently.

We hiked over a low pass, where the sun finally greeted us. It’s so much warmer in the sunlight!

The rest of the morning was on flat and easy roads. Perfect!

It was relaxing to not have to constantly navigate, or figure out where to place my feet. And we had a decent view of the upcoming Turtle Mountains.

TopShelf was ahead of me all morning, and I think I see more wildlife when I’m alone. When two people are together, we tend to make more noise with talking, etc. This snake was sunning itself, and it wasn’t at all interested in moving.

I caught up to TopShelf and we stopped and had lunch. It was a really warm day, so we ate in the tiny shade of a creosote bush, ha! After lunch and some solar charging, we found an old tortoise shell. Poor guy.

There was an hour of walking in a wide wash, which was a little slow since it was loose gravel.

Finally we made it to a quail guzzler, our first water source in 30 miles! These are all over the desert of southern California to help thirsty birds, and are maintained by volunteers.

We filled all our water bottles, as the next water source is 32 miles away. We slowly hiked away, as our packs were now 4kg/8.8lbs heavier from the 4L of water we were now carrying. After crossing highway 95, we hiked up a wash and into the Turtle Mountains!

The wash was pretty terrible, with a weird combination of loose sand and boulders. It was often faster to hike right next to the wash, using it as a handrail. Eventually we tired of that game, and I devised a shortcut to a dirt road. It saved us 3 miles, and after an hour of night-hiking thru unexplored terrain, we landed at the dirt road and setup camp.

Wednesday December 6, 32.0km/19.9mi

Whipple Mountains Wilderness (456.1/1320ft) to West side of Whipple Mountain (476.0/1920ft) (CA)

We started the day at 5:45am, which is when it’s just getting light here. The easy roadwalk continued for another hour, which was a nice warmup to the day.

By 6:30, the sun made its appearance into this valley, and everything was washed in light.

We turned a corner, and entered the massive Whipple Wash.

For most of the morning, we were surrounded by towering cliffs and we hiked completely in the shade. It was pretty warm today, so that was welcome.

After an hour of hiking in the gravelly wash, it became narrow and rocky. Soon we were hiking between boulders and cliffs.

The whole time in the Whipple Wash canyon, we kept searching for water. We saw plenty of signs of subterranean water, such as this shockingly green grass.

TopShelf coming up one of the scrambly bits.

Several sections were narrow with rocky slabs, and we were hopeful to find water here…but there was none. The map marked several places as “possible seasonal water” but so far all of them were dry.

Eventually we found water, courtesy of the local burro population. They can smell water, and will dig holes to find it. We came upon a freshly dug hole, and filled all our water bottles, as it’s almost 30 miles to the next water source!

We continued up the narrow canyon, which was entertaining and enjoyable.

A surprise skeleton awaited us around a corner. I’m pretty sure it used to be a burro.

We had lunch in a shaded spot in the gravelly wash, and then started our long climb up to the summit of Whipple Mountain. It was steep at first, but soon we gained a ridgeline and had some more gradual climbing, and some views.

Looking back down into the canyon that we had hiked in all morning.

After a couple of hours hiking on the ridge, we neared the summit. The final push to the top, with great views!

I’m pretty sure that’s Lake Havasu below us. We arrived at the summit just 30 minutes before sunset, so we didn’t linger long at all. There was a summit benchmark, and more views!

And of course a summit cairn.

We hiked along the ridgeline for another 20 minutes…

…and then started dropping steeply off the west side.

We spent the last hour of the day descending a rocky ridgeline in the dark. My headlamp is pretty bright, but it would have been helpful to see more than 100ft/30m ahead of me, to more efficiently navigate. Eventually, we were at the bottom of the peak, and back in a wash. We hiked a few minutes further, looking for a flat spot to camp, and found one in the wash. We setup camp at 6pm and by 7:30 I had eaten, cleaned up, and fallen asleep!

Tuesday December 5, 17.9km/11.1mi

Parker Travelodge (445.0/400ft) (AZ) to Whipple Mountains Wilderness (456.1/1320ft) (CA)

I was awake at 7am, because my stomach was telling me it was hungry. Way past usual breakfast time! We walked next door to Stark Family Bakery and bought some sugary calories.

We spent the rest of the morning packing and listening to Christmas movies in the background. This is the longest section of trail yet, at 130 miles. I’m also mailing some food to the town of Amboy CA, so it took me awhile to sort it all out!

I went to the post office and mailed out the food, picked up my new shoes, and then stopped by the laundromat on the way back to do my laundry. By the time I got back to the motel, it was almost noon. Oops. TopShelf left for the post office, and we checked-out of the room, so I sat outside in the courtyard doing phone chores while I waited. Eventually we left town at 2pm, goodbye Parker!

We crossed the bridge over the Colorado River, which is also the state boundary.

Welcome to California!

And welcome to San Bernardino county, where we will be hiking for the rest of this trail. It’s a short but wide county!

Just before we departed the paved roads, I saw one more sign, which was rather hilarious.

After a couple miles of hiking, we joined a dirt road up into the mountains.

I spotted a new variety of prickly pear cactus, this one appears iridescent and doesn’t have spines.

We hiked into the sunset, as we watched the mountains get closer every minute.

Some of the cliffs even had little windows in them!

Now that we are in the Pacific time zone, the sun sets at 4:30, and it’s dark at 5pm. We hiked until 5:30 and camped next to an old road, where it was unfortunately a little windy.

Monday December 4, 20.1km/12.5mi

Gibraltar Wilderness Boundary (432.5/840ft) to Parker Travelodge (445.0/400ft) (AZ)

We left camp at 6:15am and hiked by headlamp for 30 minutes on dirt roads. We had one little ridge to climb up and over before we started our roadwalk into town.

Coming down the other side we could see the fringe of civilization.

TopShelf making the final push up over the ridge.

About a mile after we dropped off the ridge, we hit a residential area.

We were pretty close to the Colorado River and could see it ahead.

We last saw the Colorado River almost 2 months ago in the Grand Canyon, when we were on the Arizona Trail. Full circle! We walked on a street along the river for a few miles, and it felt very tropical with all the palm trees around.

At one point, we could even directly access the Colorado River and it felt quite warm.

We kept hiking and got into Parker at 11am, and our first stop was some fast food.

The McRib was back! I hadn’t eaten one in like 10 years and they were just as weird as I remember. After our meal, TopShelf went to a dentist appointment, and I walked the rest of the way through town to our motel. It was really funny to see a decorated Christmas tree next to some palm trees and a saguaro cactus.

When we leave this town tomorrow we will cross the Colorado River and enter California, it is very close!

I got to the hotel room at 3pm and had a few hours to relax, so I took a shower and watched some Christmas movies.

TopShelf arrived a couple hours later, and we were both starving, so we walked over to an amazingly good Indian restaurant. Naan and curry!

Each table at the restaurant had a cute little saying. Ours seemed quite appropriate to this hike.

On the walk back to the motel, we passed by a Pizza Hut, which surprisingly had a lunch and dinner buffet. I hadn’t seen these in years and I thought Pizza Hut had pretty much died.

Once we got back to the hotel we spent the rest of the evening watching some Christmas movies, and planning the end of our hike, which should be around Christmas Eve.

Sunday December 3, 35.7km/22.2mi

Planet Ranch (410.3/640ft) to Gibraltar Wilderness Boundary (432.5/840ft) (AZ)

We started at 6:15am in the dark as usual, and walked for awhile along the dirt road before heading up a wash into a canyon. By the time we had climbed part way up the canyon, the sun had risen to illuminate the valley below.

This little canyon was full of old mines, the opposite hillside was pockmarked with them.

After we climbed out of the canyon, we were up on a sort of plateau, where I could see mountains in all directions.

We walked right next to another old mine, this one was all boarded up to prevent entry.

We took a snack break near the old mine, since by now the temperature had warmed enough that we could sit down and relax. From there we headed down a wide gravely wash, which slowly became another canyon.

And a mile later, a very narrow canyon.

The route today was like a small roller coaster, since as soon as we hiked down that wash we climbed right out and back up another ridgeline.

We followed an old road along the ridge, and we could see for dozens of miles to the south, with no signs of civilization.

We took a lunch break on top of a high plateau, where we had distant views to the south, and also some high voltage power lines.

It was a very faint old road, but easy to visually follow nonetheless.

The final part of the day involved walking down a wide gravely wash for 5 miles, which was a nice relaxing break from having to constantly navigate.

It was a pretty chill couple of hours of hiking, even though we saw a couple furry creatures along the way.

We exited the wash and hiked another mile to camp, since we wanted to avoid camping in the wash, as they are usually a little colder than the surrounding area. We setup our tents at 5:45, just after sunset. A pretty view to the west!

We’re pretty excited about getting to town tomorrow, and getting showers and food!

Saturday December 2, 44.9km/27.9mi

Rawhide Mountains Wilderness (382.4/1760ft) to Planet Ranch (410.3/640ft) (AZ)

After such a tiring day yesterday, I slept hard and woke up refreshed, in our quiet and cozy little camp spot. We left at 6:15 and finished the climb to the top of the ridge, before dropping down the other side in a wash.

Eventually the wash grew larger, and we came to an impassable pouroff that needed to be circumvented.

After we got around the pouroff and back into the canyon, we were surrounded by redrock cliffs for a mile.

They grew to be pretty tall!

It was a nice little canyon, and the wash was compacted gravel so it was easy to walk.

We exited the canyon and traveled cross-country for a few miles, occasionally ducking under a barbed-wire fence.

The rest of the morning was easy xc or old roads, and it a nice change from yesterday.

After lunch, we began our descent down the the Bill Williams river.

We followed an ATV road all the way down to the river, entering the Swansea Wilderness along the way.

We followed the road / wide wash to the trailhead, where there was surprisingly a trail register.

This is the same river we hiked in yesterday, and this section is downstream and usually dry most years. But not this year!

We had to cross it several times as it meandered across the valley.

After a few miles, we were far enough downstream where the water had gone underground and the riverbed was dry and cracked.

By the time we left the river, it was just a dry wash.

It was close to getting dark, but we wanted to make up some of the miles that we didn’t get yesterday. We continued hiking for an hour after dark, and we were able to pick up the pace following some good burro trails.

According to the map, we would be following a very old abandoned road for four miles, but really the road had long ago been washed away by the nearby river.

We got to our planned camping area at 6:45pm, and went across the road to a place called Planet Ranch, where we filled our water bottles from a tap.

We set up our tents quickly since it was getting pretty cold, and we were pretty tired after a very long 28 mile day.

Friday December 1, 29.1km/18.1mi

Rawhide Mountains (365.6/2160ft) to Rawhide Mountains Wilderness (382.4/1760ft) (AZ) +1.3mi Ives Canyon shenanigans

We were hiking at 6:15am and spent most of the morning traveling thru washes and burro trails. It started off pretty cold (40F/4C), but warmed quickly once the sunlight hit the area.

The washes were wide and easy to follow.

The burro trails were the best I had seen so far!

We saw lots of evidence of burros, including poop, hoofprints, and even their noises. And finally today, we saw the actual burros themselves!

We followed Spenser wash all the way to Alamo Lake State Park. Towards the end, it started to get pretty narrow, which was fun.

And eventually, it ended at a road culvert, where I exited the wash.

We stopped at Lake Alamo State Park, where there was a campground, a store, and a boat launch.

I got some snacks and a pop from the store, and we had a nice break on a nearby picnic table while I dried out my tent.

After 30 minutes we left, knowing there was some slow terrain to cover this afternoon. First we climbed up a small hill, where there were great views of the lake.

From the highpoint, Lake Alamo reflected all the colors of the surrounding mountains. Cool.

From there we descended into Ives Canyon, which was a half-mile long slot canyon. It had a few scrambly obstacles and pools of water, so we expected it to take maybe 30 minutes.

After we scrambled around the first dryfall obstacle, there was a nice vegetated wash for a minute.

The lower obstacles were shorter, but also much wetter. There was some butt-sliding down slimy rock chutes, which was interesting.

Sometimes there were pools of water, most of which we walked thru.

One of the pools was neck-deep, so we skirted around it to the right on some rock ledges.

TopShelf coming down a small pouroff.

The final obstacle was a rock chute, which required climbing around it on rock. It should have been a simple downclimb with maybe a 3ft jump down to the ground. The only problem was the ground was now 5ft down, as the gravel streambed had been scoured away by spring floods. After 15 minutes of trying a bunch of ideas, we gave up and turned around, heading back up Ives Canyon. We cut over to the bypass route, using a shortcut I had devised, and we were happy to have our feet on a dry road. We had lost probably 90 minutes with the canyon shenanigans. The view from the road below the dam was impressive.

Our next section was hiking for in the Bill Williams river for two miles. It was fun at first, but it was slow and tedious having to wade across the knee-deep stream so many times to avoid thick brush on either bank.

TopShelf coming across the river, in the deepest crossing we had.

Eventually, we gave up on the brushy banks, and just walked in the water along the shallow edge.

We exited the river at 5:15pm, just a few minutes before sunset. It felt so good to be out of the water, and let our feet start to dry before it got cold tonight. We hiked another hour up to a pass, which generated some body heat and we dried quickly. After hiking by headlamps for 30 minutes, we setup camp at 6:30 in a nice sheltered spot near a pass. What a wild day!

Thursday November 30, 34.0km/21.1mi

McMullen Valley (344.5/2080ft) to Rawhide Mountains (365.6/2160ft) (AZ)

We were hiking at 6:15am as usual, and used our headlamps for 30 minutes before we saw this amazing sight.

It was getting lighter! We could see the mountains we were about to climb over.

It was a gradual uphill on an old mining road, with our familiar Saguaro cacti friends.

After a couple of hours, we were on the final push up to the top of the ridge. It was super steep, and it took like 30 minutes to go a half mile.

But once we were on top, it was great! It was also noticeably colder and windy.

After a quick break at the top, we escaped the wind and descended the other side, using a nice ridgeline.

That part went faster, but we kept getting separated so that added some time. Finally, we were at the bottom, and found a dried up water source.

The solar well didn’t seem to be running, probably because it’s for cattle, and there weren’t any nearby. After another 30 minutes of hiking, we came to a guzzler with plenty of green-ish water.

As we were leaving, we met a quail hunter, he was curious what we were doing way out here. The feeling was mutual. We hiked some old dirt roads for an hour, and then climbed up another ridge, this one was much shorter.

The descent off that ridge was speedy, and then we were back in a flat valley with the Saguaros again.

Towards the end of the day, we crossed a paved road, which was very unusual. It was the road that led to Lake Alamo State Park, where we will be tomorrow!

The last hour of hiking for the day was in nice gravel washes, and we even found a very nice burro trail to use. Sweet. And at the end of the day, we randomly stumbled upon a perfectly flat spot for camping, pretty much exactly where we hoped to find something. Perfect!