I have a great nights sleep and get up and get ready to go by 5:30. I snap the following picture of the desert below. Wow…. what a view.
I make pretty good time while it is still cool and at about 6:30 I come to a camping spot. Probably very handy for those that are making the 20 mile climb up.
Still around 6:30 I take the picture below. The sun is just coming up and the desert at this time of day is beautiful.
At about 7:30 I get to another camp in the desert. This is the only place I know on the PCT where there are signs marking and naming them. I wonder who Hachey is and if he maintains these camp sites year after year. I could not find any information about these sites. They are probably used but since there is no water near-by. Perhaps a trail angel puts a water cache at these areas during the prime hiking season for this section.
At about 11:30 it is just plain hot and there is no shade to be found. I snap the picture below and my attitude has changed. The hills are not golden, the hills are dead.
At noon I finally find some shade. If I take off my pack I can squeeze most of my upper body into that little cave and get a little shade. That is exactly what I do.
It is really dangerously hot. The trail gets down to the desert flow in about 5 miles as Swathout Canyon road. That also happens to be about 5 miles short of I15. I ask Martha to meet me there rather than at I15. She gets there earlier than I do and starts to walk the trail to meet me. After about a mile she does exactly that and she has brought some water with yet that I drink right away. She wonders why anyone would want to do this. She has walked one of the most miserable miles on the PCT.
California is a done deal. We now drive to Tucson to pick up Lenora and all of us head to Washington. On the way we see a Diamondbacks baseball game in Phoenix and a Mariners baseball game in Seattle.
