Day 45 : The final waterless hurdle

3rd June 2013
Mile 622 to mile 651 : Willow Spring to Walker Pass
Mileage : 29 + 1
One of my all time favourite scenes in cinema history is from Lawrence of Arabia, where the raiding party is just about cross the rubicon and start into the Nefuud desert. Looking it over the desert Sherif Ali says "From here on no water but what we carry, for the camels no water at all. If the camels die, we die, and in 20 days they will start to die". In response Lawrence turns to look at him and says "Well there's no time to waste then, is there?"
Now i know it is overly melodramatic for me to compare what I'm doing with their accomplishments in Arabia, but i thought of it anyway as i looked over the maps for he next section.
Today we have a long way to go to escape the desert, the heat and the waterless stretches of the trail once and for all. The weather has been so hot over the last few days I decided to night hike the last 20 miles to Walker Pass campground. Even with 600 plus miles of conditioning this is too much during the day. I can't even stay cool in the shade, and there is none in the exposed desert so a day hike is out of the question. I was up very early in order to get to Bird Spring cache to set up for the 23 and had covered the initial miles in the relative cool of the morning. Done by 10:30 there was nothing to do but wait out the sun, the intention being to start hiking with the setting sun and get all the way there in one go.

Well i made it into the campground at 2am, but it was a tough hike, even in the relative cool of the night. I had wanted to go farther but my feet hurt too much so i had to stop. I also had an encounter with a tree that lost me both my warm hat and my sun hat in one fell swoop. A low hanging branch hit my head and knocked my warm hat into the night, and as the branch went sweeping past it also went straight into my sun hat which was tied to the top of my rucksack and put a hole straight through it. Doh! Consequently i was not in a good mood when i finally tried in camp as i knew it'd  be a hassle to replace them both, but replace them i must.

This guy was not happy to see me at all, i wanted a better picture but i didnt dare get closer.