My 47th day on the PCT was a very short one, due to getting blown by the wind over the Mojave Dam spillway then re-camping below, near Deep Creek, which, coupled with a brutal heat wave, made me dispirited enough to call for a ride to end this section that morning, but I vowed to return when the weather was better.
From PCT mile 313.1 to 314.3 Total: 1.2 miles 11/4
When I went to sleep that night, everything was calm. Perfect weather, up there on the spillway, my tent set up directly on the concrete. I had a rock holding the flap open, and life was good. I figured that I would be able to avoid the coldest air that tended to accumulate down in the bottom of the valley, air that flowed like a cold river from the higher elevations in the mountains near Big Bear. It was a great idea, with one flaw. All that cold air had no place to go once it reached the huge dam at the junction of Deep Creek and the Mojave River. It doesn’t seem like much, but on an otherwise calm evening, this river of air heading downstream needed an outlet. It had to go somewhere, after all. And that somewhere turned out to be the spillway of the dam, right where I was camped.
It began just after sunset. The sun’s heat was gone and the upward thermals died out. Then the cold downward flow began. At first the breeze was annoying, but I wasn’t too worried. True, I was already in my sleeping bag, but I got up and wandered around the area, collecting larger boulders to hold down the corners of my tent. This worked, to some degree, and I fell back to sleep for a while, with the tent flapping in the steady breeze. At least it wasn’t gusty.
It was an hour or two later when I realized that the wind wasn’t getting better, or even remaining level. It was getting much stronger. The upwind (upstream) end of my tent was slowly getting pushed back, as the wind pressure on the tent dragged the large boulders along, one tiny tug at a time. Soon, I was scrunched up in my sleeping bag, and my feet were now the only thing holding the tent in place. The tent had pulled itself out from under the rocks. This was beginning to seem like an emergency, as I couldn’t possibly sleep with all this flapping going on.
I realized that I would have to pack up everything and leave this spot if I was going to get any rest that night. I wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t also blowing down below the dam, but it seemed likely to my inner physicist and also to the weathernerd that I am. So I started packing my gear. I’ve taken down a tent in windy conditions before, and it isn’t pretty. It takes a plan to prevent pieces of the tent from blowing away as you take it apart. Last time, back in San Gorgonio Pass, I almost lost the entire tent, and was thankful to only lose a couple of tent stakes. This time, I came up with a new plan. I put all of my gear inside the backpack, then tossed the backpack inside the tent on the upstream end. The pack was now my new big boulder. Then I went outside and dismantled the tent, one piece at a time, gradually lowering its wind profile as I went, and stowing the pieces carefully, so that they wouldn’t blow away. Eventually, I got the tent down, very crudely rolled up, and crammed it into the top of my backpack.
I put on the backpack and headed down the steep hillside using my headlamp. As I got away from the spillway, the breeze grew less and less. I sighed with relief. All I needed now was a flat spot to set the tent on. When I arrived at the bottom, I watched with horror as an off-roader in a big truck with massively bright lights was tooling around on the sandy roads in the basin. He was noisy and blinding and very obnoxious to a bone-tired backpacker like myself. What was he doing? Where would he go next? Would he run me down later if I camped on the only flat spots I could find, which happened to be on the roads? He drove right past me as I hiked, then circled around again. It was Friday Night, and he was out for a good time, probably drinking beer with his buddy, or, most likely in this part of California, doing meth and staying up all night long. Big sigh.
Eventually, using my Far Out app, I got onto the PCT itself, which was a proper trail and not a road. He surely wouldn’t drive here. I walked along and eventually found a bare sandy bump within a dense thicket of spiny burr plants. Not an ideal spot by any means, but I didn’t care any longer. I set up the tent and got inside. The dorkus in the truck almost got stuck in deep sand near the dam’s outlet, judging by the sounds of his revving engine. I would have laughed if I hadn’t wanted him gone so badly. Another big sigh, but this time I was safely in my tent. I got out my Kindle and read for a while. There was no sleeping with that clown out there. He eventually left, after getting unstuck, and this time I let out a sigh of relief. Good riddance! I thought. I was still a bit wound up, so I read my book a bit longer. And I finally got back to sleep. At least the nights are long in November!
Long night or not, I still woke up in the dark, as always. This time I didn’t bother cooking any breakfast. I called Vicki at 5am and told her that I would see her soon. Luckily, she gets up early, too, or I would have been a dead man. It would take her over two hours to get to the trailhead a mile or so away. I had plenty of time but I didn’t care. I wanted out of here. I packed up everything and started hiking in the dark.
It wasn’t very far to the creek crossing. Last night, I read some of the comments in the Far Out app about this crossing. Last Spring, when I quit my thru hike due to plantar fasciitis up in Big Bear, the crossing right here was terrible. The huge snowmelt was in progress, and people reported wading across this sandy area, chest-deep in the water! They carried their backpacks high above them, over their heads, as they waded across the wide yet calm waters. Nobody mentioned this when I was hiking! I was almost glad I quit! Back in 2016, when Vicki and I came through here in late May, it was an easy crossing.
This time it appeared that my crossing would be somewhere in between. The app mentioned a log that people were using. It was dark, so I turned my light up full blast and cast around. There it was! And it wasn’t very thick. In fact, some of it was underwater. “People used this log?” I asked myself. It seemed to be the only one, and there were plenty of tracks in the sand. So I set down my backpack, got out my hiking stick, and put it back on. If I were continuing onward to I-15, I would have removed my shoes and waded, even in this icy air, but since I was getting a ride I decided to risk getting my shoes wet. Amazingly, the log didn’t sag much with my weight, and the inch-deep water didn’t soak through to my socks. Excellent! Finally, something was going right today.
After that, the hike was easy. The trail followed along next to Deep Creek until the outlet tunnel which was about ten feet in diameter and went all the way under the dam to the other side. This large pipe had a cage of steel girders to stop big trees from getting stuck in the pipe, like a filter for logs. When the creek was swollen, the waters backed up on this side of the dam, but the pipe had no gate. Its diameter was the limiting factor on the water flow. If a flash flood came down Deep Creek, its rush would be halted here, and a larger yet steady flow would result downstream. It was a flash flood buffering device, in effect. Rather simple, really. And it has worked many times in the past.
The trail gradually rose out of the creek basin and headed west toward the trailhead at Highway 173. There was another chunk of dam along this region, but it had no spillway or tunnel. It was so huge! I wondered what kind of storm it would take to overflow this monstrous dam. Days and days of thunderstorms, or a stationary atmospheric river dumping rain, endlessly. Yes, except for the breeze, the spillway I foolishly camped on was unlikely to ever see angry water.
I arrived at the Deep Creek Trailhead just before dawn, and set down my backpack. I watched the sun rise as it struck the distant San Gabriel Mountains to the west. But otherwise, there wasn’t much to do. The air was quite cold, so I got out my goose down jacket and wore my fuzzy hat. I still had cell phone signal, so I checked on Vicki’s location using Google Maps (we share locations when out on adventures, which has come in handy) and she was still a very long way from here. Oh well. I got out my Kindle and started reading. I walked back and forth to stay warm. Time passed.
Finally, Vicki arrived! I was very happy. I put my pack in the back seat and posed for a photo. Yes, I document everything. She handed me the key. It was my turn to drive.
We drove east through the Mojave Desert until we met with Highway 18, which headed up the hill, south toward Big Bear Lake. Then I turned left on Highway 38 and continued up the long grade to Onyx Summit. And there was my car, safe and sound.
Vicki then drove her car, and I drove mine, and we headed to a Jack in the Box restaurant near I-15 in LA. We decided to meet there and eat breakfast together, as a way of breaking up the long drive home. After that, it was time to head for the showers and soft bed that I’d been missing the last few days.
As I drove, I thought about what happened. If it weren’t for the incipient heat wave down by the dam, I wouldn’t have picked up my car until tomorrow afternoon. I would have hiked those thirty miles. But no, I was a wimp and quit hiking. Again. That seemed to be the recurring theme of my 2023 PCT Thru Hike. It was a sad story in its own way, possibly a saga, even, but at least I can safely say that I avoided a Sufferfest. That’s the last thing I wanted. I was too old for that, and I’ve had my share of tough times in the wilderness, so I know. Enjoyment should be what it’s all about. Although I have to admit that a sufferfest makes for a good tale.
Unfortunately for me, I still had about one hundred miles of Desert Section left to hike. I wondered how I was going to finish it this year, if at all. It was already November, after all. I decided to regroup and refresh. Maybe an idea would come to me in the next week or two. Even during this heat wave I knew that Winter was coming, but it wasn’t here yet!
For a topographic map of the hike see my CalTopo Page
For LOTS more photos of the trek see my Flickr Page
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