Start point

Tentsite at mile 666.3

End point

Fox Mill Spring, mile 684.3

Miles hiked

18

Wilderness area

Owens Peak Wilderness

Chimney Peak Wilderness

The day on trail

It’s really exciting to have Walker Pass behind us. We’re making excellent progress toward the Sierra and the end of the Southern California desert section.

Sinead and other hikers we meet are really excited to put the desert behind us. I’m more wistful. I love the desert. The pinacate beetles delight me. The lizards are familiar in their colors and how they freeze, scatter, and do pushups. The scrub plants are fragrant and glorious in their muted greens. The rocks have so many textures. The flowers, when they bloom, are vivid reliefs of purple, yellow, and violet against the green, beige, and tan landscape. The nights come alive with millipedes, moths, bobcats, and coyotes.

I will miss the desert. But I want to miss it only while I’m away, not while I’m in it. There’s no reason to miss something twice or miss it early. So I’m drinking up the experience of hiking in my element.

We had an early start to beat the heat and so we can go slowly to allow Sinead’s knee to keep healing. If she has any chance to make it in the Sierra, slow going will be the key. We take lots of breaks. We stick together pretty tightly. It’s sinking in how much we missed hiking together. There’s a hole in the group from Dirty Rafa and Piñacolada, so we are a little extra tight.

The weather in the morning is perfect. Cool, not warm, not cold. Perfect for hiking. Perfect for taking your time. It’d be perfect for pushing harder if we were able, but that’s not relevant.

There were mosses on rocks that were absurdly vivid, almost an abstract painting.

Some lichens are pulling up and away from the rocks.

And there was what almost looked like a tomatillo plant.

Water is still squeezing out of the ground and melting from snow in hidden places.

The trail just stretched on. As it will for another 2,000+ miles.

Sinead’s knee was feeling a little better on the climbs, and still aching on the descents. The descents are what are most concerning. The scents give us a lot of hope. It’s such a push and pull and the source of a lot of angst. We want answers but they’re just not going to be there until they’re there. Just like so much in life, we just have to wait to find out. You can’t rush the process or it’ll just fall apart.

You can’t focus on the angst though. There’s a hike to experience, and this section had splotches of white flowers all over! Just like if someone had dropped bubbles of white, these patches of flowers were just scattered all over the hills.

Someone took some care to arrange these monstrously sized pinecones.

We were rewarded with some views for some climbs.

In the middle of that meadow in the last photo you can see a building. The trail descended and curved around the meadow to show you the building better.

We got to a water crossing at Chimney Creek and ran into Marie, Big Box, and Murphy. They’ve been starting hiking around 4 am and taking a siesta around noon to avoid peak heat. I don’t find it hot enough to do that and everyone’s tolerance is different. I respect their dedication to their style of hiking. It was at this point Sinead’s knee was hurting too much to go on. She proceeded to the Chimney Creek campground a quarter mile off the trail. I went onward to Fox Mill Spring because I just had too much energy to stop. She also gets up earlier, so it would be easy for her to get up and meet me at my campsite in the morning.

I proceeded on after a few shared tears and lots of words of encouragement for her.

It wasn’t far, though I did need to go to the bathroom. It wasn’t urgent enough to stop, remove my pack, and do all the other things required to go. I just pushed on. It’s those kinds of things, bathroom breaks vs water you’re carrying vs hours of sunlight left in the day, that make this sort of trip a little difficult. That said, I prefer those sorts of logistics a lot more than trying to figure out how many hours of work I have left in the week if I take a shorter lunch break.

The trail snaked it’s way uphill. It was a lovely climb. Not too hard, and not easy. I got to push myself just a little bit after holding back. Burning off this sort of energy feels so good and I feel like it’s what my body was made for.

I saw a squirrel munching on something. It was cute. So you get to see it.

And then I walked into Fox Mill Spring. It’s the ruins of an old mill with gigantic blocks buried in a hill. It sits over, but not overlooking, a small spring and creek. There’s too much vegetation to see the creek from the hill the mill sits on.

I went to the bathroom, of course far away from the water, because of Leave No Trace. Then I went down to the water, filled up my dirty water bladder, got my filter setup going, and started looking for camp sites.

There were a lot of mediocre ones at the foot of the hill. I wanted something amazing. I walked up the hill and found a dirt road emptying into a huge dirt camping ground. Perfect!

I grabbed my gear, set up on top of the hill, and had the entire site to myself. It was a perfect evening under a tapestry of inky blue sky punctured with points of light.