Read Online Blistered Kind Of Love by Angela Ballard, Duffy Ballard - Free Book Online

Campground. For the first time we were in true desert, the Anza-Borrego. We began in high spirits, refreshed by our day off, and made good progress in the twilight up Granite Mountain. The only impediment to our buoyant mood was our water supply. We’d been unexpectedly unable to supplement it at a “water cache” at Scissors Crossing, the intersection of Highways S2 and 78, at the base of the San Felipe Hills. Trail angels and PCT-friendly locals maintain a number of water caches along dry sections of the trail. Cache locations are advertised on the Internet and propagated by word of mouth. We had no difficulty finding the Scissors Crossing cache, the first on the northbound PCT, but were dismayed when we saw that it was completely dry. More than forty plastic one-gallon jugs lay in the sand, bone dry, pointlessly secured by a rubber-coated serpentine chain and lock.
    It is in part because of experiences like ours that water caches are controversial in the long-distance hiking community. Critics note that hikers are more likely to engage in irresponsible water-carrying practices if they know of caches along the trail. If these hikers carry less water than recommended (two gallons per day) over a waterless stretch and then find an empty cache, the result could be quite thirsty indeed. Long-distance hiking “purists” (a term Angela explains at length later) also charge that water caches detract fromthe natural challenge of the trail and make it more accessible to hikers who perhaps aren’t properly equipped, mentally or physically, for the task. Of course, most hikers are overjoyed at the sight of a water cache, and the presence of one at a location like Scissors Crossing can save them either a trip into town to re-supply or from carrying two days’ worth of water. We arrived
from
town, but had done so without a full store of water, counting (irresponsibly) on the presence of a cache.
    But for the time being we had enough water to maintain hydration, so I focused my attention on the changing habitat. Here in the “true” desert, chaparral gave way to cacti, yucca plants, and agave—asparagus-shaped plants rising four to eight feet in height. We switchbacked past a forest of ocotillo shrubs, plants that the guidebook described as a “bundle of giant, green pipe cleaners.” Octillo shrubs spend most of their lives covered with spiny and lifeless branches, but perhaps half a dozen times a year, always two to three days after a rainstorm, they “sprout vibrant green clusters of delicate leaves along their entire length.” The ocotillo is a perfect example of the unique adaptation seen in the desert environment. With less than two weeks of rain a year, and summer temperatures of up to 120 degrees, it is incredible that much of anything can live out there, but on that evening the San Felipe Hills were bursting with highly specialized life.
    After three miles of energetic hiking we found a cozy and scenic campsite on a dry creek bed, surrounded on three sides by granite boulders. With our tent snuggled in between the boulders, it was like being in a sauna—the rocks, after absorbing the sun’s heat all day, now radiated it. We hung our sweaty clothes on them and sat down to admire the view west across San Felipe Valley to the lush Volcan Mountains. From our boulder-protected perch, the Volcans looked tantalizingly wet and green. An extension of the Laguna Mountains, the Volcans act as a barrier to cool and moist air moving east from the Pacific Ocean. Coastal air settles and precipitates on the mountains, spawning a verdant tapestry. On the eastern side of the mountains only hot, dry air remains, and in this air the San Felipes bake day after day. Unfortunately for hikers, the trail does not pass through the Volcans. Back in the PCT’s planning stages, the Forest Service wasn’t able to convince private landownersto allow the trail to be routed through the