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Start: Baker, CA
End: Shoshone, CA
Miles: 80
Day 9: Anxiety and Wilderness
Start: Hollow Hills Wilderness Boundary
End: Shadow Mountains
We're up and packed by 5:30 as usual, ready for the day ahead. I'm feeling mentally worn out this morning- it's been stressful, not knowing if today will be the day that things go wrong and we have to bail, whether we'll have water at the day's end or whether we'll be hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere. And the stress has just been piling up. Baker was not nearly the luxurious break that I had been anticipating, and was instead a different sort of stress, that of being amongst people, and not the most covid-conscientious people at that. I've been out for a meager 9 days, but every day has felt like two or three days' worth of stress so far on this trip.
We begin another long, gradual slog up an alluvial fan that will take us into the heart of the Hollow Hills. Away from the 'infrastructure' of the Mojave, and back into legit wilderness. The going here is the typical loose rockiness of alluvial fans, with imperceptible uphill adding on surprising difficulty. But looking back towards Baker shows that we are gaining elevation, up from the 1,000-foot valley floor back into high desert. Long before it reaches us, the sunrise illuminates the peaks of the Avawatz mountains across the valley to the Northwest, 7,000 feet bottom to top.
We turn away from the valley and enter the Hollow Hills as the alluvial fan starts to consolidate its offshoots into a wash. I see a few small, grey birds flying low to the ground on the sides of the wash. Looking closer, I realize that there are dozens of them, a huge flock flitting about through the bushes. With Baker no longer in view, this area feels wild. Who knows who came through this wash last- Blisterfree and Tree didn't go here, and it isn't on the Desert Trail route. With no significant peaks or other notable features, it has probably been years since anyone traversed these rocky reaches. I scan the jagged canyon walls that rise above us, expecting to see a herd of bighorns hopping through the rocks or a mountain lion slinking about. No mountain lions or bighorn sheep show, sadly.
The wash turns into a small canyon with some pleasant vegetation. One of the cool things about this hike is how much I've come to appreciate the most mundane things. Anywhere else, the weedy-looking scrub that grows in the wash bottom would be entirely unremarkable. But here the sight of any green plants is a noteworthy event.
The canyon turns back into a small wash, which forks and narrows until we're going along a little eroded ravine. It's a short, steep clamber up the ravine to reach the 3,000-foot saddle and emerge into the rising sun. There's an old mining camp out here it seems, with piles of rusty cans and some other debris. The temperature soars up in these sunny highlands. We follow a mix of wash and mining posts to a dirt road on the border of the wilderness.
From here it's a hot slog up dirt roads through the canyons. Jet Fighter and I set a good pace, charging up and up. We crest the hill at 4,000 feet, just below the weather station thing on Turquoise Mountain. Yucca and joshua trees reappear up here. We stop for lunch just past here under the biggest joshua tree we can find. It's been a big morning, 17 miles before lunch, and Jet Fighter is feeling it. As usual, after sweating heavily in the sun the shade is cold, and I find myself layering up again. The desert is weird.
"I really hope Francis Spring has water."
We have three miles to go to Francis Spring. The characteristic Spring Anxiety returns. Despite all the difficulty, all the struggle, I really don't want to quit here. I had completely given up on getting to Tecopa back on my way to Fenner, so the fact that we're looking Tecopa in the face makes it all the more tantalizing. The three miles pass by with agonizing slowness. Pleasehavewaterpeasehavewaterpleasehavewater
I scan ahead at every turn in the dirt road, searching for signs of the spring. I check Gaia again. We're close. The wash bottom here is full of cow poop and dry grass. It looks like it used to hold water, but not right now. I really hope this isn't the spring.
The walk of anxiety
I turn the corner to see metal bars surrounding an absolute pond of water. We are good to go!!! I'm not a talented enough writer to express the feeling of elation that accompanies these water discoveries. It makes no sense, finding these sources in the middle of the desert, and I don't know enough about geology to even try and make sense of it. It is pure magic. It is an invitation to continue the hike and continue the suffering. It is life.
Jet Fighter and I spend a few minutes celebrating and drinking the rest of our water, then snacking, before heading to the spring. As usual I take off my pants, then duck under the bars to fill up my water cube. Desert Trail reports said that this spring was disgusting and fouled by cattle, but compared to all our other sources this water is actually quite nice. I grab 8 litres for Jet Fighter, filter it through my pants, then go grab 8 more litres for myself. I drink some of Jet Fighter's now-purified water, and it actually tastes great! The water source that I have been expecting to be gross is better than Mopah Springs, the sulphur water, the rat water, and the barn water! We drink up as much as possible at the spring-- it's a long haul, 40 miles to the next surefire water source.
Eventually we have to get going again. We haul our heavy packs to our backs and start off away from Francis Spring cross-country. Some cow trails help us out through the joshua trees and crumbling washes, before spitting us out into another big flat.
Some thick clouds-- the first real clouds of the hike, I think-- roll in, threatening rain. My Achilles starts to ache; it is a microcosm of the rest of my body under the strain of 8 litres of water. We cross under some huge powerlines. Looking down the powerline corridor, the rolling flat here is a beautiful patchwork of reds, yellows and browns.
We join up with an old, old dirt road as the sun starts to set. It's basically a glorified scree pile with two tire ruts, and it hurts. Jet Fighter and I shuffle down the rock pile, entering the home stretch for today. The threatening rain clouds start to clear up, and a brilliant sunset colors the horizon. It gets brighter and more vivid, becoming by far the best sunset of the hike so far- and that's saying something. Jet Fighter and I spot a sandy wash to settle down in for the night. The sunset peaks, lighting everything up orange. Then
it fades fast. It has been another tiring day, but we are still alive!
The lighting really was pretty here
no filter
Day 10: Cross-country on the moon
Start: Shadow Mountains
End: China Ranch Wash (at Tecopa Pass)
Awake at 5. I brace myself for a long, long day with a heavy, heavy pack. Jet Fighter and I amble down our dirt track in the dark as it fades in and out of existence. We lose the track a few times, and eventually settle into a wash going in the right direction. We have a decent cross-country stretch ahead, climbing up and over a pass to get through the Shadow Mountains. We turn off the wash to head up to the pass blindly; the first signs of dawn are starting to appear at our backs. To my relief, the pass that we have to climb over is quite low and it goes easily. There is a fun-looking game trail up on the pass, following the ridgeline into the craggy hills on either side. It would be cool to take this trail someday when there is more room for error, see where it goes.
But Tecopa awaits, and so we plunge down the far side of the saddle. The character of the rock changes on this side of things. Our wash slices through crumbly beds of limestone and sandstone, all piled up into bizarre formations. The going is easy and the rocks make impossible formations across the terrain. I've timed my breakfast Reese's for spectacular canyons two days in a row, and I think I'm starting to Pavlov myself into associating canyons with Reese's and vice versa. This is certainly the case with the Reese that I'm eating right now, typing this up a month after the hike.
Walls steepen and the wash widens as we cruise downwards. The hills here are barren rocky piles, streaked with yellows and oranges. We are truly out there, in the middle of nowhere. (By my count we're seven miles as the crow flies from the closest wilderness boundary, never mind paved road, never mind actual human habitation.) A little bird flitting through a side canyon catches my attention, and I look up it to see a big cairn by the headwall. Maybe there are petroglyphs up there... or water! I scramble up to the cairn to find nothing. As I turn back around, however, I can see the faint remains of other cairns, navigating the cliffs to escape this wash. Weird. I wonder where this goes, and who built it.
My questions are partially answered just minutes later, when we round a bend in the wash and stop. There's nothing but air in front of us. This is by far the biggest dryfall I have ever seen. It must be at least 100 feet high and wide, probably more like 150. I inch to the edge to peer over, and the magnitude of the drop is just too much to process. There is a 0% chance of downclimbing this monster, so Jet Fighter and I backtrack to the escape trail.
We climb out of the canyon and join up with a sloping ravine dotted with volcanic rocks. The trail vanishes just as quickly as it appeared, and we scramble downward through the monoliths. The rock here is sharp; I grab it for some stability and my hand is immediately sliced open. It's so sharp that I'm almost concerned for my shoes crossing these rocks. We navigate along the edge of another steep-sided wash until its dryfalls end, then we take a side wash and plunge back in, getting into some minor disagreements with acacia along the way. I'm quite proud- we just took a major detour and avoided the dryfall without missing a step, without getting lost or even having to consult the map. We are learning how to hike with the terrain.
There is a single, enormous cairn down here below the dryfall. Jet Fighter and I head off past it, cross country over the washes. We climb up a small pass before taking a skittery slope down to another mouldering dirt track. It's basically cross-country without the routefinding. If the terrain through the last canyon was a badland, the terrain on this side of things is a veritable moonscape. Weird piles of rocks and red dirt intermingle with no discernible patterns. Some areas have boulders, others are piles of smooth stone. We fight across the terrain, taking washes this way or that. We arrive at an actual good dirt road, and I can see a blob of trees in the distance that must be Kingston Spring.
Ignore the bushes and you're on the moon.
Kingston Spring is a weird one. There is no terrain trap, or huge assortment of hills, or really anything that would cause a spring to be here, so far as I can tell. But here it is, a dense thicket of grasses and acacia. There's even a lone cottonwood and some cattails deep in. These islands in the desert are really neat. I get the sense that this is an isolated one-- there is some coyote poop, and a single pile of ancient burro droppings. But overall this place is empty, even of animals. By my count, the closest reliable water source is the Amargosa River, 16 miles away as the crow flies and countless more as the burro trots. I poke around by the cottonwood but get blocked by impenetrable thickets. There is no obvious surface water that I can see, but I'm sure you could find it if you were desperate. The dirt is quite moist by some old red plants on the far side of the spring, the same type under which I found the surprise qanat in the Mojave. I don't even bother looking through the cattails- we have enough water, no point in trampling this fragile desert habitat.
There's water in there somewhere, right?
Just past Kingston Spring we come across what seem to be the remains of an old mining camp. All that's left is metal- metal cans, metal boxes, metal bedframes strewn in piles across our wash. We leave the mining trash behind and re-enter the moonscape of odd volcanic formations. Up a hill and down the adjacent wash, and we hit an enormous settled dune. From here it's a long, sidehilly climb along the side of the dune, every footstep sliding in the wrong direction. It sucks.
Reaching the top of the dune area, the terrain is not much better. Some kind of rodent has made huge networks of tunnels through this sand. It's really cool to see their tracks going this way and that, but every few steps we collapse into the tunnels. It's like postholing, but even more jarring. The day is also heating up, fast. We have nothing but creosote to accompany us across this vast, desolate area.
"Lunch break at the next shade?"
Jet Fighter and I finally come across a decent wash, the only notable terrain feature of the past hour or so. We collapse into the scant shade of a larger-than-average creosote for a much-needed lunch break. Up the wash to our right looms the craggy Kingston Range. I had considered an alternate that took a sort of high route through there. Seeing them now, I'm glad that I didn't go through with it. One day.
The Kingstons
The next three miles of route are the worst three miles of hiking since arriving in Fenner. We start out with two miles of relentless uphill. But this isn't the good kind of uphill where you can chug up it and you're guaranteed amazing views and a rewarding downhill. No, this is an agonizing, 200ft/mile uphill where you can barely tell it's a hill yet every step up the sandy wash is magnitudes harder than it should be. I run the last half mile the crest of the climb, so sick of it and annoyed that I burned all of the energy accrued during lunchtime in the span of forty minutes. The desert gives us no rewards for this one- this is just a random crest in the undulating waves of desert. We get a brief respite with maybe a half mile of downhill, and then we hit the boulder field.
The difficulty of the two mile uphill was unexpected, but I knew that this mile would be a rough one looking at topopgraphic maps last night. For this mile we have to traverse perpendicular to washes. The contour lines through here have all the squiggly peaks of an erratic ECG reading. It's going to be a rough one.
Jet Fighter and I climb out of the wash to begin our traverse. The terrain up here is nothing but smoothed
boulders. Calling it a talus pile doesn't do it justice- these rocks defy logic, defy gravity, in the weird crests that they form. It's relentless- a short tumble into a wash, then several big steps out, all while picking through smoothed, football-sized boulders. Over and over. It sucks. Maybe by this point we are feeling the long-term wear and tear of the trip. Or maybe we are both afflicted with some curse. I don't know, but this one mile feels so much harder than it should, and takes us a solid forty minutes.
The camera isn't crooked- that's the gradual, imperceptible grade that I was talking about
Arriving in the shade and straightforward passage of another canyon-wash sort of thing is a relief. Jet Fighter and I take a brief rest in the shade to recoup, and then it's on up another sandy wash. The wash takes us up and out into an airy plateau land, and we say goodbye to the Kingstons as the sun starts to set. We join up with a dirt road and traverse across this lonely landscape. It is incredibly pretty, with the yellow-green grass contrasting with black volcanic rocks, all silhouetted by the setting sun. I can see for miles, and all I can see are plains and mountains- just like every view today. Over the past two days and 56 miles, we have seen 0 people, 0 cars, 0 paved roads. We really are out here.
Absolutely beautiful
Jet Fighter is really struggling with her foot pain as we straggle along these last few miles. I get that thing where the suffering of someone else gives you strength, and this combines with the amazing landscape and cooling temperatures to give me one hell of a second wind. This serves to give everything a unique beauty for me, and the landscape takes on an otherworldly mystique, as if literally anything could appear around each bend in the road. We grind out the last few miles to Tecopa Pass as darkness falls. I spot a water tank, and a mass of vegetation that must be China Ranch Wash. We descend into the wash and head into a grove of big tamarix trees. I have to say, this is an A+ campsite. The now-cold air is a good 10 degrees warmer in these trees, and the ground is soft needles. It feels great to be camping under trees again.
I walk around to scout out water while Jet Fighter preps her dinner. We have enough water to make it through the night comfortably, but we'll be basically out of water tomorrow morning, still a good few miles from anything reliable. This area really feels like it should have water- there are big cottonwoods and green tamarix everywhere. A large channel is full of cracked mud. But there is no moisture to be found anywhere. It's been a dry year.
I head back to camp empty-handed. But that's ok. We have an easy hike down the wash, then a few miles on actual trail along the Amargosa River, and we'll hopefully make it to Tecopa by noontime. We can get snacks there and find a hot spring to chill out at for the afternoon. We crushed 28 miles today, 25 of them cross-country, and easier days are in the forecast. Thank god I don't know about the day ahead.
Day 11: The Fun Never Ends
Start: Tecopa Pass
End: Shoshone, CA
We're up at 5 and hiking by 5:30. I'm excited for the pretty canyon walk with easy navigation that lies ahead. We hike over to a dirt road that heads down the canyon for a quarter mile or so. The edges of the wash start to tower over us in cool formations. Our road turns off to the right, and it's time to leave it. We head down into the main channel. The cracked muddy gully here is surrounded by impenetrable masses of acacia. It makes me nervous; I hope that the main channel gets enough periodic flooding to stay clear. Just as I think this, we round a bend to find the path blocked by some reaching acacia branches. We cut through them without too much trouble, only a few scratches. This route must be passable. I mean, the desert trail is routed down it, and my research turned up nothing about a bushwhack through here.
This was before it got bad
We keep going down the wash, and turn another corner to see a barricade of acacias ahead of us. Fuck. The route would be more passable if there was a solid wall ahead of us. The acacias are easily over 10 feet tall, coated in barbed thorns, with thick branches lower down to keep you from just pushing through. You would have to climb up into the acacia and swim across to get through here.
"Things look more open against the walls over there."
We backtrack to a game trail heading off towards the canyon walls. This route is mostly acacia-free, but only marginally better: we have to climb up and down the rollercoaster of sediment and rockfall at the base of the cliffs. This game trail was decidedly not made by human-sized animals. I can see the main channel, free of acacia again, but now there is a wall of thorns between us and it. We are stuck on our course. We keep scrambling along the edge of the canyon until we reach a spot where we can access the main channel. I pick my way through some less-dense acacia back into it, Jet Fighter following a bit further back to avoid getting a mouthful of thorns. We reach the channel and head down it, only to hit another acacia wall almost immediately. God damn this stupid route.
"The canyon walls only get steeper, do you think we should bail out while we can?"
"Yeah, let's do it."
The slope back along the cliffs looked just gentle enough to climb out of, so we backtrack back through the acacia. It's a short, slidey climb up the loose canyon wall to escape this thorny mess.
We check the maps: It looks like the vegetation in the wash clears up about 4 miles further down, where the thin line of the canyon turns from green to tan in satellite imagery. The grade on the canyon's edge right where the clear area starts looks like it might be passable. This seems to be our best option. Of course, now that we're paralleling China Ranch Wash we are going perpendicular to all the washes feeding into it. The relentless ups and downs start up again.
The rock here is absolutely bizarre. It's like there is a thick, solid crust of stone overlying a huge layer of loose sediment. We have to skirt around 3-foot gullies in the terrain that abruptly punch 20+ feet down into impossible slot canyons. Jet Fighter and I decide to cut inland and pass through some hills, where the washes aren't as unpredictable. This goes surprisingly well, and we quickly find ourselves heading back towards the canyon to drop down into it.
It's like a weird optical illusion. The canyon floor is forty feet down there.
The topographic map made this area look gentle, but the canyon rim feels remarkably airy as we approach. I can see the 240-foot cliff walls across the canyon, but I can't see the wash bottom. Jet Fighter and I scramble down into a small ravine and head towards the canyon walls. I can see nothing but open space up ahead. Please please PLEASE be passable. I get to the edge of the wash, to the edge of a 30-foot cliff. Fucking FUCK.
There is an RV parked across the canyon from us. The owner gets out and stands on the far side of the canyon rim, watching us. (Probably getting ready to call search and rescue when we fall to our deaths.) I look around. The sloping ridges that descend into the canyon below us look completely passable, if I could just get past this small cliff band. The sediment here is barely glued together, much too crumbly to even think about getting close to the cliff edges, nevermind doing any sort of scrambling. Off to my left, a small ledge skirts between two cliff bands towards a higher ridge, 20 feet away. If we can get to that ridge, we can make it down. I decide to go for it. Probing each part of the ledge with my trekking pole before stepping, I inch my way across to the far side. It goes! I drop my pack off and cross back over to take Jet Fighter's pack across too. We both make it across safely. From there it's a quick, low-consequence scramble down onto the ridges, and we can slide our way the rest of the way down. Cheers of elation. We've made it. This was an unexpected obstacle, but it's smooth sailing from here to Tecopa and food.
You can see where we descended, on the left-hand edge of the tamarix trees
I take in the beauty of the canyon. Enormous 300-foot cliffs tower all around us. Again, I don't know whether it was luck or skill, but we picked quite literally the only passable route down to the canyon floor. Everywhere except the broken wall that we descended is sheer cliffs; going 20 feet further left or twenty feet further right would not have worked.
The next few miles pass in sheer beauty and relief. The rock formations are absolutely insane. I've exhausted my vocabulary to describe the canyon with words, so I'll just share the next few miles in pictures instead:
There's an unnamed spring marked on Gaia, so I decide to stop and check it out. Besides not having drunk any water since waking up this morning, I am becoming addicted to finding water in the desert. The small pool at the spring looks dry from a distance though, and I'm not eager to fight the acacia to get a closer look.
The vegetation grows thicker and taller around us. We start to pass huge stands of cottonwood trees, and then we pass our first few date palms. The rock here has water marks a solid three feet up, but at the moment everything is bone dry. We had a very specific time frame to do this, but I really regret not being here for springtime in a wetter year to see growing plants and lively animals. The soil around the palms is slightly damp, but the cottonwoods are water-stressed, sparsely covered in yellow leaves. Everything is drying, browning, dying.
The route gets a bit ambiguous between here and the Amargosa River, so we head towards an open ridge going in the right direction. Out of nowhere I can hear rushing water; looking way down the canyon to my right, there is a big waterfall gushing down into a pool of water. Where did that come from? The water is completely inaccessible right now, but our goal is to get down and find the mouth of that wash to get our water. We get a good view of the valley all the way over to the Amargosa Canyon from here. China Ranch Wash is a narrow ravine of lush green growth through a landscape of bleak badlands. Ahead of us is the date palm farm.
Just our luck, the ridgeline that we're on is ringed with acacia everywhere except for one spot going into the date farm. And of course, there is a truck parked right next to the opening with some people harvesting dates. I approach them with trepidation and ask if it's ok to cross through the farm to get back on track. I'm expecting to get told off for being on private property and have some sort of aggressive confrontation. To my shock, these people are incredibly friendly. They tell us that we can explore wherever we like through the date farm and offer us some fresh dates.
Jet Fighter and I double back to pick up the wash where it emerges onto the farm, and then head upstream until we find the flowing water. Giardia be damned, this water looks fantastic. It's the first flowing water I've seen since being dropped off at the Colorado River 11 days ago. I fill up my bottle and down a litre right there. Jet Fighter and I sit in the shade next to this stream eating fresh dates for quite a while. It's crazy how a single experience can completely change your outlook-- I had never cared for dates before this hike, but now I love them. While there were spectacular things yet to come, this is probably my favorite moment of the entire hike.
But alas, we are eager to get going so that we can relax in Tecopa, so we head onwards through the date farm. We hit a trailhead for the newly constructed Amargosa River Trail, which will take us all the way into Tecopa. There is some nice trailwork here as we follow a small stream through thickets, and I appreciate the fact that we have a wide corridor to buffer us from the thorns. From here the trail emerges into the Amargosa Canyon proper, a wide valley full of grasses.
The Amargosa is just a small trickle through here. Once again I feel the need to return in spring, when all the grasses grow and the wildflowers pop up and the river flows stronger. Apparently this stretch of canyon is home to two endemic species, the amargosa vole and the amargosa pupfish. I keep my eyes peeled for any furry things in the grasses or any ripples in the water.
The trail from here follows an old railroad grade. Jet Fighter and I decide to take the side trail to see the 'waterfall', which is unlike any waterfall I have ever seen. The valley just drops six feet out of nowhere, with a cascade of muddy water pouring out from the grasses into a series of enormous rocky pools. I bet this is where the pupfish live, but I don't see any.
I want to sit in the spray of the waterfall for a while then go explore the signage for a slot canyon, but Jet Fighter wisely wants to push on for Tecopa. Someday, someday I'll be back here with a good book and sit by the waterfall reading for hours and watching the birds flit by. And then I'll go explore the slot canyon. In an amazing butterfly effect, this decision to skip the slot canyon probably kept us on the trail down the line.
The walk through the canyon is quite pleasant, with an easy trail, views of the river, and cliffs looming overhead. We pass actual hikers, and a pair of mountain bikers. Jet Fighter and I decide to stop for lunch in an area called 'the bowl', a bowl-shaped bend in the river ringed with craggy cliffs. It's a wetland here more than a river, and big pools of water leave the thickets to soak all the way up to the trail's edge. There are lizards everywhere. The valley gets more and more lush as we get closer to Tecopa. The canyon walls are covered in grasses, palms, and other plants, and every 100 feet or so we cross over a spring trickling down from the mountains. Some of them are quite large, a gush rather than a trickle. Tecopa arrives fast, and we abruptly leave the trail for a dirt road to the post office. We made it.
Surprisingly, the woman working the post office is the same one from Baker! We chat about our travels for a bit, and get a perspective on covid quite different than ours.
"Oh, by the way, do you know of anywhere around here to get some snacks?"
"Hmm well there's the Shoshone General Store, it's about 10 miles down the road in Shoshone."
"Oh. Ok. Thank you!"
What. I could have sworn that I saw a "Tecopa General Store" on Google maps for snacks and stuff. Jet Fighter and I thank her and then go sit in the shade to sort everything out. It's a 4-day food carry from here into Death Valley, starting out with a 43-mile water carry. I feel exhausted and overwhelmed. My head won't work, I ate a very meager lunch, and I'm still residually dehydrated from this morning. We are beat up, mentally and physically, and absolutely need a day to rest and recover. We can't jump straight into that.
Tecopa is deserted. The two restaurants there are both closed due to covid, and neither of us have cell service. We decide to walk two more miles to Tecopa Hot Springs. There are a bunch of campgrounds and other services there. Maybe we'll find the general store, or somewhere to get food.
The sort of basin that Tecopa is in is bizarre. There are big desert mountains all around it, and yet the basin is dotted with ponds and wetlands of various sizes. We cross over a ditch in the road filled with actual water. To my left is a big pond surrounded by tall grass; to my right I can see all sorts of little pools out across the basin. We climb through a small set of hills and descend down into Tecopa Hot Springs. There's a guy hanging out by the side of the road. We ask him if there's anywhere to get food, and he too directs us to Shoshone. We pass closed campground after closed campground; one of them has a general store that sells snacks, the Tecopa General Store that I had recorded in my spreadsheet. It's closed. We decide to head over to the "Natural Hot Springs" on BLM land marked on the map to make our decision: to go to Shoshone, or to end the hike here.
We also need water, as Jet Fighter and I have half a litre each. I test one of the pools along the road- heavily alkaline, as expected. We arrive at the natural hot springs. They are closed too, but we just need a place to sit and make a decision so we go over to them. The springs would be a really pretty spot if they weren't 200 yards from the road, but the amount of foot traffic suggested by the trail's compaction does not match the series of small pools there. The water here is slightly alkaline but still drinkable, so I grab a couple litres of emergency water. I have absolutely no intention of drinking this disgusting water that people have been bathing in, but it would be dumb not to have a backup. Then it's decision time.
I could be happy ending the hike here. I have learned a ton and faced huge challenges and I'm proud of what we have done. It is very tempting, thinking about getting back to Phoenix and then spending a week exploring Arizona and car camping. But at the same time, we are nowhere near maxed out. We still have more effort to give. With Death Valley this close, it would be a shame not to try. We have to go on to Shoshone.
So, with the sun getting low on the horizon, we begin our 7-mile road walk. Leaving the hot springs, we pass an older man in a car. We talk about our route, and he says that he wants to hike the AT someday. Then he offers us a ride. As tempting as that is, it's an easy "no thank you"-- covid is a thing, and plus Jet Fighter and I are too purist to ever consider breaking the continuous path.
It's a long slog along the highway into Shoshone. We pass a state police officer at a car that ran off the road, but thankfully he doesn't tell us that we can't be walking along the highway or anything like that. He doesn't even acknowledge us. Some stretches of the road get annoyingly narrow, and we have to scramble up loose dirt piles when trucks drive by. A pretty sunset lights up the mountains bright orange, and we pass a few cars stopped along the highway to get pictures. A bunch of bats dart around overhead, providing good entertainment.
Darkness falls and we can see the lights of Shoshone, just a mile away. And then we're there, and we're walking into the general store and looking at food and buying the food and leaving the store. We find public bathrooms to stop at and get water, saving me from the bath water. And then we tromp into the desert between two houses, getting far enough away from Shoshone to find some quiet darkness in the bushes. And we're eating our snacks and we fucking made it. We are in Shoshone of all places and that is something. Then we go to sleep.