Sunday, May 31st--Day 39

Woke up this morning to heat. We'd just gone to sleep four hours earlier, and my tent was an over. I stuffed my sleeping bag, dripping sweat everywhere and scrambled out of my tent to surprisingly cool air. I had slept with the rain fly on and closed, in an attempt to maximize shade, but had instead made my tent twenty degrees hotter than the desert air.

We took down camp and made our way down the ravine to find shade, and ended up laying out our sleeping pads under the bridge, where we slept for several hours. After a late lunch, it was time to filter water and leave. We made it out around five o'clock and hiked through the desert as the day cooled off.

This is the first time I've been in Real Desert. Wide open spaces stretched all the way to the mountains far off in the distance. There were Joshua Trees everywhere, and the ground was carpeted with what looked like dry grass. We hiked up hillsides in the deepening shade and made our way into the mountains just before nightfall. After dinner at a creek, we set off in the dark.

Nighthiking is treacherous. My headlamp, which works fine for writing and reading in my tent, barely illuminated the trail, and I found myself unable to see the gradient of the terrain. I stumbled for a few miles before shutting it off and letting the moonlight show me the way. We pushed up sandy hills while the wind, strong and brutal, blew grainy gusts in our faces relentlessly. Physically, it was still much easier than hiking in the heat of daytime, but the strain of focusing on every step was mentally very tiring.

We set up camp at around one a.m. under a tree up in the hills. Hopefully, tomorrow will be all downhill. We're going into Mojave, but there could still be ten miles between us and town and the desert heats up fast in the morning. G'Night.