Joshua Tree to Canoe Ridge

Hitting the Trails, not Hiking the Trails, do you know the difference?  One beats the crap out of you and one keeps you coming back to get the crap beaten out of you.  Kind of like golf, you can play a crappy round and swear you will never play again, then on the 18^th hole, that beautiful drive, on target approach and one putt for a birdy has you signing up for your next tee time.  Hitting the Trails was the scheduled hiking excursion Jesper had planned for March 2016, you can sign up whenever you want, but the hike details aren’t usually revealed until about a week before…Pandora’s Box.  So I waited for that email from Jesper that baits you into signing up for his hike and it showed up:  Joshua Tree (I haven’t hiked there before, a plus), a through hike – Juniper Flats to Black Rock Campground (love through hikes, another plus), flowers in bloom (another plus), about 16 miles (depending on the change in elevation, this is not a deal breaker, but it did bring me to a pause).  So I emailed Jesper looking for his input, googled the hike details, just looking for something that would prevent me from signing up for my longest hike yet.   Jesper comes back with an email that gently pushes me to sign up, you know, that gentle wiggle of the fishing pole to entice the fish to take the bait.  Well I bit, and no sooner after I received my registration notice, in comes another email to the group from Jesper… by the way, my calculations might be a little off… according to Tom Harrison it looks like we will be hiking about 19 miles on Saturday.   So yes, this is Hitting the Trails, a test of your perseverance, strength, and resilience.

As a newbie hiker, I am still struggling with how much water, how much food and what necessities do I need to carry around for 19 miles on my back.  My biggest freak is running out of water and there are no water sources on this hike until you reach the end.  So I loaded up with 4 liters of water and my in-case-of-emergency-only 16 oz. water bottle, frozen to keep my lunch cool, which consisted of chicken salad wrap (both halves), carrots, 8 oz. trail mix (walnuts, almonds, dried berries and yogurt raisins), dried mangos (yum), Doritos (salty), Tang powder (electrolytes), strawberry fig newton’s, a couple of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies from my neighbor, an apple and a emergency snickers bar.  All this with my first aid kit, headlamp, Swiss army knife, hiking poles, rain jacket, emergency gummy bears,  whistle, poop kits (toilet paper and a Ziploc), rope, hat, shower in a bag, sunscreen, lip balm, glasses, and a miniature of Jim Beam Fire.  All this brought my day pack to weigh in at a whopping 23 pounds!  Stop laughing!  I am hiking 19 miles in the desert in the heat…uphill both ways!!!  Who knows what will happen?  I might have to be airlifted out at mile 15…

Late, late, late into the night at 5:30 am, morning to some, but it was still dark, I made my way to Rancho Senior Center in Irvine to check in with Jesper and the other hikers that he suckered in to joining him.  Luckily we all arrived on time, as the van rolls out of the parking lot at 6 am, whether you have arrived or not, not even sure if Jesper would stop even if you were running after the van.  I settled into the very back seat with my pack, my smoothie (700 calorie cinnamon banana almond milk smoothie) and coffee, chatted with Petra, Bruce and Rick who all seemed like seasoned hikers.  About 8:30 am, we arrived at the Joshua Tree Visitor Center, where we are allowed out to use the facilities, last flush toilets until we arrive at Black Rock Campground.  Go now or dig a hole later!  Now I haven’t been paying too much attention, as I don’t have to, that is Jesper’s job, but I assumed we entered the Joshua Tree National Park at the Western Entrance.  After waiting in a bit of a line to enter, we pull through and got a holler out of Jesper, because apparently the last couple of times he tried to smuggle people in, he had to reason with Joshua Tree’s border patrol.  So he must have finally been removed from the no-fly list as we sailed right in.  Whoop whoop!!  Passing all the Joshua trees and rock formations, as we continued through the park to our starting point of Juniper Flats, was quite beautiful.  The rocks looked like someone picked up wet sand and let it drizzle through their fingers creating hills of smooth rock piles.  Sorry, no pictures yet, as I was still wondering whether I would make it to our destination 19 miles away. 

Now, in order for this to be a through hike, someone needed to bring the van to Black Rock Campground.  This presented us all with an option, start here and hike to there or go with Jesper and the van and start there and hike midway to here, make sense?  Well it means that I have an out!!  However, Petra and Bruce elected to go with Jesper to give him some company, so what would my excuse be if I elected to hike with Jesper?  We won’t go there.  So he put Brad (Mr. Kilimanjaro, impressive 19,340’, see what I am up against?) in charge of making sure we get to the halfway point of Upper Covington Flats or at least marking the spots on the map of where he had to leave us, so rescue could find us.  We unloaded at Juniper Flats, and while it was cloudy, it really didn’t look like rain, PLUS the weatherman said no rain until tomorrow, and he is ALWAYS right.  Therefore I pulled out my rain jacket, apple (I was going to eat before we started, but wasn’t hungry) and the fig newton’s, so now my pack probably weighed about 22.8 pounds. 

Jesper led us, Brad, Volker, Kerry, Rick, Alan and myself to the small fork in the path, took our prerequisite picture and said good luck, nice knowing you, hope to see you in Covington Flats for lunch.  Bye Felicia!

I took a couple of deep yoga breaths and started off, hiking along the California Riding and Hiking Trail, a 37.3 mile trail through Joshua Tree National Park, that goes from Black Rock Campground to the North Entrance of the park.  We have picked it up roughly at the halfway point at Juniper Flats, BTW no bathrooms here, like I saw at some other trail heads that we passed. Luckily the trail starts out fairly easy, with a slight hill to peak interest, our first summit according to Kerry, and continues mostly flat for several miles.  My eyes and body are enjoying the hike as the scenery is quite lovely, with Joshua trees and flowers blooming.  Just being out in the middle of almost nowhere, cut off from society (thank you airplane mode and lack of cell service) with just your fellow hikers is peaceful and powerful; however this is not enough for the chatter in my brain.  But I knew this would happen, so for the first time since I started hiking more frequently I decided to listen to music on my hike and had created a 6 hour hike playlist on my phone.  I mention this, because there were 4 times along the trail that I can distinctly remember the exact song that was playing, perfectly queued for that point of the trail.  When I arrive at those points, I will tell you the song, I KNOW, the suspense is killing you! 

Not much about the hike to chat about that pictures can’t tell you, so enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a short pit stop, a mile or so before the descent into Juniper Flats, if I am reading the map correctly.  Not sure I needed to stop, but gnawed on some almonds from my trail mix anyway.  I was still full from my smoothie that I drank at 7 am this morning.  But hey the body needs fuel!!  Upon arrival at the descent, this was about mile 6, as I noted from the elevation map that Jesper provided which indicated the first major ascent would be around mile 6.5/7, we paused to soak up the scenery, or at least that is why I paused.  Check it out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a fun part of the hike; the trail was a little narrow and rocky, twisting and turning, up and down. 

But then we started heading up, yes the dreaded up, but decided since there were some big rocks, we would have a proper break and sit rest before ascending the hardest part of the trail.  Works for me!  Snacked on a dried mango slice, still not hungry, but it tasted good.  We needed to forge on, I think it was about 11:15 and we were trying to meet Jesper by 1 pmish at Covington Flats.  So Mr. Kilimanjaro, (I say that with the utmost respect) turns to me and says, you haven’t led yet, why don’t you lead us now, up this hill.  (Shana, I KNOW you are laughing!)  I look at Brad, wanting to whine, I don’t lead uphill, maybe I did whine.  But I sucked it up, and Kris Kringle started singing, “put one foot in front…”, sing along Petra, I know you know it!  AND NO, this was not on my playlist.  I can lead; I can lead downhill; I can lead on flats; I can lead up and down little mounds, but I can’t lead uphill.  I want to walk too fast, which gets me out of breath and makes my muscles scream for air.   I do try to tell myself to slow down… but no, so about ½ mile, or a ¼ mile up, I stop and let the boys pass me and I tell them I will catch up.  But Brad stops with me,..ah shit, he won’t let me fall back from the group. Now I see why Jesper put him in charge.  But I will not be an x on his map, so I forge on, this time a little more slowly, as I only have one person behind me now, always remembering that Baden Powell set my bar.  This is cake.  We make it to the top, where a group of hikers are sitting eating lunch, enjoying the view we just climbed out of.  1^st play list song I remember: My House by Flo Rida, I felt like we were traipsing through their house, and they didn’t even invite us to stay and join them for lunch.  Couldn’t they see I was dying? 

Well, luckily for me the next couple of miles were flat, a little sandy, but flat, so I took the lead this time enjoying slightly different scenery.  There were not too many trees up here and it seemed like our path was more the rain wash trail through the valley. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stopped at the next junction and waited for Brad to indicate the way.  

A measly 1.5 miles to go!  Note that this last leg is mostly uphill, not steep uphill, but uphill nonetheless.  This is where the second song I distinctly remembered cues in, 8 minutes of Master of Puppets by Metallica, powerful enough to get me up the hill without too much whining!  Now the weatherman said no rain today, not even 10% chance, well he was wrong.  It started sprinkling, big sprinkles, good thing I left my rain jacket in the car.  Upon reaching the upper plateau, one starts thinking, almost there, just around the next bend, and then my Walkmeter (GPS iPhone app) chimes in with 11 miles walked.  Wow, did we pass Covington Flats?  Then through the Joshua trees on this plateau I see a white truck or car at which point Simon & Garfunkel cue in with El Condor Pasa, ahhhh.  We made it, I say we, because Rick was right behind me!   Rick is very knowledgeable about this park as he has frequented it quite often, even hiked in to camp overnight with his sons.  He let us peruse his Joshua Tree book in the van, which indicated that we would find a dead Joshua tree with a very large trunk circumference prior to ending at Covington Flats, check it out:    

 Upon entering the parking lot, BTW Rick and I were a little disappointed that the van wasn’t there waiting for us, we see Jesper, Petra, and Bruce entering the parking lot from the other side.  We couldn’t have timed it any better, 4 ½ hours to get from Juniper Flats to Upper Covington Flats, not too shabby and not too difficult.  Now during the days prior to this hike I was thinking when we get to the lunch spot, we can mosey, eat a little, enjoy the scenery and relax for about 30 minutes.  Nope!  Jesper says to find a rock, eat your lunch, rest up a bit, and we will head out in about 15 minutes.  I would have asked for another 15 minutes to explore around, but Freyr was working his magic for Jesper today; the weathermen should never underestimate the Norse gods.  So I ate half of my wrap, my carrots, and some Doritos with Rick on some rocks that mark the parking lot, hoping the clouds don’t unleash. We pack up, use the nicely decorated outdoorsy facilities, and continue on our way with Jesper in charge, hiking the remaining 7.5 miles to Black Rock Campground. 

On the way down, yes down, for the most part, we passed a meadowish flat area that had a very tall live Joshua tree.  It was here that we removed our warmer clothing, as the sun decided to grace us with her presence. 

 

The trail became a very sandy descent through a narrow valley that could become very violent during massive rain storms.  It was on this part of trail that Jesper introduced Volker and me as fellow wine snobs, so now we are talking about wine and steak, definitely my kind of conversation.  Volker gave me a couple of tips on some good and reasonably priced wines, from… sorry, top secret info, you had to be there. 

 

Finally, we come into a shift of the trail, off the wash, onto an actual trail that will lead us to Black Rock;  still about 1.5 miles away from the end. 

 

 

 

Alan, Rick and I were gimping along during this last mile, searching for a campground around every bend, when Leonard Cohen chimes in with Dance Me To The End of Love.  Yes please, dance me to the end of van, I hear you Leonard! 

 

 

Well, we finally made it, all of us, no x’s on Brad’s map, whew!  It was about 5 pm and the sun was still shining, no headlamp hiking today.  Now, I wish I had a scale, because I am positive my backpack probably lost approximately 4.5 pounds, ending at 18.5 pounds.  This means I had WAY too much food and too much water (only drank 1.75 liters, but started well hydrated).  I am okay with WAY too much water, but the food poundage needs some major tuning.  I probably could have survived comfortably for about 2 more days in the park.  So we all pile our stinky, sticky, exhausted bodies into the van, kind of feel sorry for next people that use that van. 

Gleefully, we are on our way home!  Now Jesper always stops somewhere for a treat, another nonnegotiable event, a dangling carrot if you will.  The carrot this time was Hadley’s, home of the famous date shake. 

Now I have driven by here at least 100 times and never stopped, which tells me that I need to slow down on my trips and start smelling the flowers along the way.  Totally rebuilt, revamped store, lots of little goodies up and down the aisles, and of course, a café with their famous banana date shakes. So I splurged for the 16 oz. one and after the first sip, I was in heaven, a perfect dinner.  Jesper never steers you wrong, he might go the wrong way, but he will always self-correct.  We all limply rolled back into the van and to our surprise hit no traffic, which brought us back at about 8:20 pm.  Home, showered and sipping my Chateau St. Michelle that Ryan had open and waiting for me, by 9:15 pm.   Ahhhh!!

 Stats:  44,680 steps for 19 miles (51,121 steps for the day, personal best); 320 flights of stairs; 18.92 miles/6.29 hours walking/8.12 hours total; way too much food packed; great hiker companions; 1 toenail (I know, gross, but I am keeping track of injuries); ½ bottle of wine, Chateau St. Michelle Canoe Ridge Cabernet 2009 – “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” – Bob Marley