We continue to climb after packing up our gear. The trail winds along the ridge line for miles with views of Ridgecrest and the desert floor. We are, again, grateful that we stopped where we did the night before. The trail has steep drop-offs and sketchy crumbling edges. We climb over more downed trees that I can count. We make it up to the saddle area and then start a steady descent; what we think will be descent for the rest of the day. Wrongo!
Before we figure out we have another climb to do though, we needed to go off trail about 1/4 mile to get water at Joshua Tree Spring. This spring is a steep descent down through the prickly desert into a little oasis in a gulley. If it weren't for the thought of drinking tainted uranium water, it would have been the Garden of Eden. Most springs in the Sierra have traces of uranium but this particular spring happens to have been tested so that's why all the warnings. BLM actually has the numbers for this one. Whatever. Filter and drink. We had lunch down in the oasis after we got our water and rinsed out our hankies. Then we had to climb back out with a full water load. Ugh.
Onward we hiked, starting another ascent. The trail in this section was very overgrown. Too early in the season for many feet to have trodden the path yet. So far, from logbooks, we only knew of 4 thru-hikers ahead of us. After that ascent, we went down, down, down, into the Spanish Needle area. We would have 4 Spanish Needle Creek crossings coming up soon. Each trickle we crossed was pathetic so we kept going. The third crossing was probably the best and there was a teeny tiny space to pitch tents but we kept going, holding out hope that the next crossing would be better. It wasn't and there wasn't a place to camp. We scouted around a bit and we thought we should cook our dinner and eat it and then continue on up. It would be another climb with 3 more miles to the next good place to pitch tents. Hmmmm, there's a trickle of a stream down below though. So I proposed to Ingrid that we climb down into this gulley where the stream was trickling a bit better and pitch tents. We climbed down in there and scoped it out. There was just enough room for 2 tents and the ground was soft so we could kind of make the site a bit more level (not really). So that's what we did. It got us totally out of the howling wind and we were able to save ourselves a heavy water carry on the next steep climb.
Photos can be found on my Instagram @tinahikes
Author of Lola Hikes the Icy Mountain
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