Day 1.
7.1 miles
We got on the route today. We had spent the previous 4 days driving the route and putting in food and water caches, 17 in total, 7 food and 10 water.
We finished up a few little chores in Tonopah and at about 11 started to try and figure out where to leave the car for 2 months. It soon became obvious that we should have done this beforehand-every single storage facility was full, with a waiting list. Hilariously, every person we talked to had about three recommendations of who to call who might be able to help us. Small town. Finally, we struck gold so to speak (Tonopah is a mining town)- the woman who owns the general store/gas station in Carvers, Nevada offered to just let us park behind the store for 2 months. As we were parking and packing up, an old man with a giant white handlebar moustache drove slowly by in an old pickup truck-I smiled and waved-I’ve been helped out many times in the past by kindly ranchers. He picked us up and drove us to his house to change trucks, in the tiny community of Carvers, dirt roads and double wide trailers. His property was serene, green grass and flowering bushes-and he excitedly showed us his workshop that he had built from local piñon pine. He was so incredibly kind and excited for us and drove us a mile up the dirt road towards Peavine Camp. We hope we can see him again when we complete the route, and hopefully hear his country music band, “The Peavine Pickers.”
We started the walk up towards Peavine Camp late in the afternoon/the sun was hot, maybe 85 degrees, but not unbearably so. We passed another ranch and the owner stepped out and chatted with us for awhile-he wanted us to try some of his home brew ale, but he had tested positive for Covid and was in quarantine until the 22nd, he said.
We arrived at the beautiful Peavine camp at 6:45pm, and the stream was running, although maybe a little low, but cold clear water. I did some evening yoga and Da Bear made a little fire, and we ate dinner as the last light faded and the stars came out, and the crickets chirped. The perfect first day.
Day 2
19.6 miles
We got up and moving just before 8 am. The Route gently gained elevation on a dirt road for some time before climbing 3,000 feet towards Peavine Mountain. We got up on the Toyiabe Crest, which was beautiful-wide open rolling ridge line. I am feeling the weight of my pack more than I would like to-I probably need to be eating and drinking more. We have been gratified to find all of the water sources have been running, though some quite low. It had rained for almost a week before we started, in huge dramatic thunderstorms-maybe this is showing up in the creeks and streams. We dropped down onto the Reece river and walked along it through rough trail, fading in and out in the meadow, but always findable again. We turned back up towards the Crest and prepared to make camp near a nice small stream-and met two young women who were doing trail maintenance on the Toyiabe Crest Trail and were delighted to see us-they said they had seen no hikers in four weeks. Da Bear made a little campfire, and I did yoga-it’s really helping my back and hips to not ache after hiking. We relaxed under the billions of stars, the campfire crackling.
Day 3
16.1 miles
We started hiking just before 8. The trail was quite good for a mile or so, and then proceeded to die in the upper meadows. We spent quite some time casting about-and then to my delight Da Bear noticed a pink ribbon on a tree 100 feet to our right which the Trail Crew had tied, indicating good trail, not at all where the trail was indicated on the map. We soon came upon the trail crew, who were exceptionally friendly and chatted with us for some time. The crew was from the Friends of Nevada Wilderness. The remaining climb up to the Toyiabe Crest was straightforward, although once again I am moving slowly on the uphills. It will get better with time. We gained the Crest and stared at the beautiful Toyiabe Range spreading out in front of us. The trail stayed quite close to the true Crest, sometimes crossing high meadows-we came upon a herd of wild horses, who ran when we were close-the stallion standing between us and the herd, staring us down. After lunch I started hiking just before Da Bear and took a little wrong turn-maybe 10 minutes total off trail, but it was enough for him to pass me without realizing it. I hiked alone for the rest of the afternoon, and it was quite hot-my feet hurt and I felt the heat. I slowly made my way down to Ophir Pass in the early evening and started to walk down the road towards Ophir Creek, the only water that we knew of, 1.5 miles down this road. I soon encountered Da Bear coming back up, walking slowly with 14.5 liters of water, enough for both of us. We walked to a pullout on the dirt road and made camp, and I did yoga next to the fire once again. I went to bed quite exhausted at 9:30pm.
Day 4
14.6 miles
We had a leisurely morning. The sun rose, red, over the plateau below us, slowly lighting up the side of the mountain. We talked, drank coffee, and had breakfast, and I took a bath. I started hiking just before 9 am and rejoined the Toyiabe Crest, above tree line, nine to ten thousand feet. At 1 pm we were delighted to find water flowing down one of the canyons-we had no water information for this section of the Toyiabe Crest because Dirtmonger wrote the route to drop down to the desert at Ophir Pass. Dirtmonger hiked the full Crest trail in 2015, and we had learned that the full 70-mile Toyiabe Crest Trail was originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1930s, which is special to us-the CCC built many shelters, bridges, and other structures along the Appalachian Trail. So, we decided to extend the route all the way up to Kingston, Nevada at the end of the range. Anyhow, the upper half of the crest trail threaded through a collection of emerald park like meadows, streams, cows with their friendly “moos”, and whispering aspen groves, light green in their summer coats. We hiked slowly, a bit mesmerized by the beauty of high Nevada in the late afternoon slanting summer sun. There were absolutely no other people around-the region felt utterly devoid of people. In the evening, after tanking up with 5 liters of water each, we came upon a little meadow amongst the sage. We set up here, made a small fire, ate dinner, and we did yoga as the light grew dim in the west and the stars came out. We lay under the stars cuddled in our sleeping bags, warm and relaxed. It is hard to believe I was in Los Angeles eight days ago. All of daily life has changed.
Day 5
21.8 miles
We woke up to cold air, no sun-when I opened my tent, the sky was opaque grey with forest fire smoke-the morning sun hung coldly red in the smog, unable to penetrate. Forest fire smoke exacerbates my asthma, I know from previous trails, so I was disappointed and it really affected my mood all morning. Plus, we could hardly see any of the beautiful Toyiabe range we were finishing. I hiked slowly until about 2 pm, then felt better and picked up my pace. In the afternoon the smoke seemed to improve and we ascended 700 feet up a green cirque, and to our surprise the cirque was filled with sheep. We saw the shepherds up at the top of the climb, and they spoke Spanish-I think they are Basque. We continued along the end of the Toyiabe Crest and descended as it got dark towards the road, making camp in a little grove of trees just before the road.
Day 6
6.8 miles
We walked down today to the town of Kingston. As I was coming down from our little campsite just above the reservoir, I saw Da Bear talking to a man at the tailgate of a truck with a beer in his hand. The man’s name was Dean and he was out doing trail maintenance with a crew on the Toyiabe Creat Trail. He let us know that we were in luck-today was the day of the annual Kingston Volunteer Firefighters Barbecue. We walked into town and were delighted to find a barbecue happening in full swing, with a raffle, bingo, and a watermelon eating contest. We hung out there, ate a lot of amazing barbecue, talked to a bunch of the friendly Kingston folks, including a gentleman who wanted us to look for aspen carvings for him. We thought we’d get a beer at the Lucky Spur, which Men’s Health apparently voted “The Best Bar in the Middle of Nowhere.” When we entered everyone looked up and someone shouted, “we thought you’d end up here!” We hung out getting the local Kingston gossip and getting to know the locals till about 6 pm, then one lady who we had met earlier drove us to the highway. We tried to get a hitch for about an hour, but then one of the older men from the bar, named Eldon, drove by, and he gave us a ride to our cache. We dug up the cache, packed the food and water in, and walked about a half mile into the desert. We made camp and passed out.
Day 7
18.6 miles
I got moving at about 7:40 today. We walked up the open desert, on dirt roads-we had to climb over a couple of barbed wire fences. It didn’t get really hot until maybe 10-11 am, partially because the smoke is still insulating from the sun. We listened to a few podcast episodes together of “The Shrink Next Door”, which is pretty engaging. In the early afternoon we took a long break under our umbrellas-I have an ultralight umbrella that is silver on the outside which really helps with the sun. We continued to
Climb towards Mt Jefferson, slowly through the sage. Around 5 pm we found water at Moore’s Creek, and took another long break in the cool cottonwoods around the creek. Crossing the basins during the day really takes a lot of energy, because of the sun and heat-we’ll try night hiking in the future. Da Bear found a perfect set of bighorn horns in the sagebrush.
Day 8
13.2 miles
We climbed Mt Jefferson today. It was a steep, hot, strenuous climb, but the plateau was beautiful. We saw a large herd of bighorn sheep just after the Middle Summit. As we descended, we started to take a very lovely maintained trail down towards Pine Creek camp, then realized the route led into the parallel canyon, Andrews Creek to Trail Canyon. In retrospect I dearly wished we had continued in our “error”-to future GBT hikers, just know that from Mount Jefferson, The Darkness highly, highly recommends taking Forest Road 31 to Pine Creek camps, then cutting down to Dirtmonger’s route.
Day 9
16 miles
We got up and got moving just after 8 am. The field we had slept in soon revealed a rough Jeep track, which we followed down to a little creek. Surprisingly, the creek had a good amount of water-actually more than Andrews Creek had the night before. It seems Andrews Creek was actually more affected by snowmelt, since Dirtmonger had described it as “raging” from his early spring hike, when there was still snow on the high peaks. Andrew Creek for us was a very small trickle, barely moving. We continued to angle down, now off trail and in and out of the wash of Trail Canyon, which was dry and full of trees and blow downs. The going was slow and became slower as we encountered 6 foot high weeds and brambles filling the canyon. We scrambled up around a rock shoulder, which at least afforded us a nice view of the canyon. I found an absolutely massive bighorn sheep skull with its horns still intact. We scrambled back down from the cliffs above and picked our way down the wash-I startled a very large diamondback rattlesnake, which coiled and rattled at me. We finally cleared Trail Canyon-good riddance-and started to cross Monitor Basin. Mercifully, some big cumulus clouds moved in and cooled the valley. We came upon a fence, and could see cattle in the distance-Da Bear guessed correctly that there was a well for the cattle, and we walked the half mile off route towards the well. An absolutely beautiful Grey and white horse, wild, was among the cows-it approached Da Bear curiously, then whinnied and galloped off. A baby antelope was also hanging out on the periphery-it was kind of a strange animal menagerie in that field. We got a few liters of cold Clear well water and started to climb up towards Table Mountain. We made camp under a juniper tree, and we had our dinner, and the sun set and the moon rose, a candy pink sliver on the horizon.
Day 10
17.5 miles
We got moving at about 7:40 today. The route climbed up onto a ridge, cross-country, and then slowly made its way up towards Table Mountain. We had lunch at a beautiful hunting camp in an aspen forest, washed our clothes (at least the essential ones), and took baths ourselves. It occurs to me that this is almost the longest I have ever been out in the wilderness without a true town stop-on the Great Divide Trail I was 8 days to Peter Lougheed center, where I resupplied but did not shower, and then 11 total to Banff. This will be at least three days longer than that.
In the afternoon we walked into another hunting camp, where there was horses and a man in camo who I think was a hunting guide-he seemed surprised to see us, and gave us some advice about which trails to use towards Table Mountain, and then he brightly said “did you happen to come down Pine Creek off Mount Jefferson? I just cleared that whole trail out last year.” Da Bear quietly groaned next to me-he had just listened to me bemoan not taking that route for the past 24 hours. After this, we came upon many aspen trees with old carvings, as the man in Kingston had described-some seemed very old, with carvings of cowboys and other images, and the oldest date we saw was 1939. It was so I nteresting how the carvings had grown and split as the tree aged, and it was like a treasure hunt to find the old carvings and speculate what they meant. We ascended onto Table Mountain and enjoyed walking its length as the sun set. We set up a camp at its far end, before the descent, and went to sleep as the wind blew in the trees.
Day 11
Today was just one of those no-good, very bad days. We got moving a little later than usual. The descent off Table Mountain was a mess of brambles, blow-downs, and tightly-packed aspen groves, with no trail to be found. I realized that I had made a mistake with my electronics. My solar charger was not working adequately to charge my phone, and my Inreach was also displaying low battery. Da Bear had gotten a few miles ahead of me, and I was concerned that I wasn’t going to be able to even keep any of my navigational aids running long enough to catch him, on this trail less, bushwhacking section. I finally got to him midday-he had kindly dug out a small spring for me so that it was usable, and I filtered 4 liters of very silty but very cold and delicious water. I took the parallel dirt road for the next section, which continued to be trailless and entered a creek bed which looked traumatically similar to me to Trail Canyon, my arch nemesis. Da Bear continued down this canyon, called Black Rock Canyon. I walked along the dirt road. The wind shifted and a few huge thunderheads rolled in. A few drops fell. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I arrived at the end of Black Rock Canyon an hour and a half later. Da Bear soon emerged. His right ear was bleeding and his hiking shirt was torn into ribbons, and the left sleeve was almost torn off. He had a huge grin on his face. “Wow, that was beautiful! Except I don’t know why they called it Black Rock. It was really yellow and red rocks. Oh, and also there was a lot of rose bushes…”
We walked until dark started to fall.
Day 12
24.9 miles
This morning was a lot of dirt roads, which was a welcome relief. I really picked up my pace and cranked a bunch of miles, which felt good. I have been moving slowly in the off-trail sections, which is to be expected, but it is nice to be able to really get some miles in. Da Bear joined me around noon and we walked towards Butler Creek-the weather shifted again and a rain and hail cloud absolutely opened up on top of us. Sweating in the August sun an hour before, we were shivering, hurrying to put on extra layers and raincoats. I got water from Butler Creek-the rain had churned it full of mud, so it was dark brown. I’ll filter it later. We continued to walk, now off trail and up a ridge, picking up bits of wild horse trail, in and out of aspen groves. There are many wild horses in this area. They look up at us as we pass, and maybe snort and stomp at us, and gallop gracefully away. We stopped for a late lunch around 3 pm when the rain had subsided. I hiked down the ridge while Da Bear stayed and tried to fix his shoes. His shoes have almost completely disintegrated, after only a few weeks-the Altra Lone Peak 5s, which are a favorite shoe in the thruhiking community-but it looks like they have really decreased the quality since they got so popular. The soles of his shoes have almost completely delaminated. I walked fast on more dirt road, and then cross country through sage flats-and then came almost to a dead halt in some of the thickest mahogany forest I have ever encountered. Huge dark gnarled branches blocked my progress going every which way, tearing at my clothes and skin. I fought my way through going about 1 mph. I heard a branch snap behind me. “Hello? Scott!” Nothing. Must be a stray cow. I kept fighting my way slowly through the comically thick forest. More branches snapped. That had to be Scott, but why didn’t he respond when I yelled to him? There was simply no way any other human would be in this forest right now. “Scott! Hey! Koo-WEEE!” I listened. A large crash, and then a long string of shouted explitives in a Massachusetts accent. Scott finally exploded out of the underbrush, face flushed, eyes ablaze, little bits of mahogany leaves and twigs stuck in his shirt and hair.
“Wow, this is f^#^**ing B^<%>S#%!” He exclaimed cheerfully.
We picked our way down thru more sage and found good horse trail as the sun went down. We wearily followed this to Antelope Valley Road, and found our cache, which we dug up in the dark. We set up the tents in the Sage, and I lay down, my skin tingling and burning with a thousand little cuts and scrapes. The moon rose, waxing, and the Milky Way spread her frothy white skirts across the night sky. It grew utterly quiet, and the Sage slept, and I melted into weary sleep myself.
Day 13
15.5 miles
I woke up as the sun came up and immediately attacked my newly full food bag. Da Bear yawned loudly from his tent 10 feet away.
“Are you eating your pork rinds for breakfast? Those Tennessee roots are really showing.”
We hiked up a long series of fields and slowly made our way up towards Ninemile Peak. It was hot. The mahogany from yesterday that had gotten in my shirt has given me a terribly itchy rash all over my back. I finally gave up and just hiked in my sports bra. We climbed slowly up Ninemile Peak, 10,000 feet in elevation. I skirted around just below the summit and Da Bear went over the top. We got a little water from a tiny spring near Sheep Spring, then filled up for the night and the next morning at a beautiful maintained horse tank. We camped a little ways down from this.
Day 14
21 miles
We crossed Spring Valley today. It was very hot-probably mid-90s-there was an extremely good trough with an electric pump before the desert basi butn, set up by the BLM for wild horses. We moved slowly across the basin in the heat-taking two long breaks and then hiking into the night to Mcullough Spring. Unfortunately for us this source was bone dry. We conserved water in preparation for the long dry walk the next day.
Day 15
We walked the 13.2 miles on dirt roads into Eureka.
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