It's a Dry Heat

(Monday May 19, 2008)

I think anytime anyone ever mentions Arizona or New Mexico, the phrase "But it's a dry heat" comes up. And yet I think you'd be hard pressed to find 10 houses without air conditioning in either state. Throw in the desert region of Southern California (where you can currently find yours truly) and you wouldn't stand a chance winning that bet.

Yesterday morning I hiked a ridiculous 17.5 miles in 5 hours and 45 minutes. Somehow I still think I skipped a portion of the trail because people started out before me that I somehow passed but never saw. Either way, I covered some big ground early on.

I stopped for lunch at 11:45am and already it was 90 degrees. Normally I just hang around for an hour or so, but the temperature kept climbing, 91, 92, 93 before topping off at 94.6. A little bit after that I checked the temperature and it "dropped" to 94.4 so I decide to head out figuring that even though it was still hot as a fat man's crack on a humid July afternoon, the worst was over and it was starting to cool down, albeit slowly.

So after my longest mid-day break of the trip (3 hours), I head out with a guy named Sweetfish toward the Robin's Nest RV Park eight miles away.

Little did I consider the 2000 foot elevation drop into an entirely shadeless area as a result of a complete burn out a few years ago.

Now, it's not that I didn't know this part was coming up, I just figured it wouldn't be that bad. As I hit the bottom of Mattox Canyon with 4 miles left until the RV Park and saw the trail winding up hundreds of feet to the ridgeline and then checked my watch once (101), twice (102) three times a lady (103) I uttered my favorite on-trail-and-under-duress phrase - "Fuck the PCT."

At one point I had to just stop in an oasis of shade and sit down because it was so ungodly hot. I had plenty of water, but it aside from hydrating me (as if that's such a horrible thing) it was really warm and was far from refreshing. Just good enough to keep me alive.

Originally I was planning on night hiking to the next town, but when we hit the RV Park, I was done. And by done I mean Well Done. I can't ever remember being that hot before. I was so hot my breath was making me sweat. The air out of my nostrils was dragon-esque.

I stripped down to just shorts and dunked my head under a cold faucet. tided me over for 45 minutes until the pizza arrived and I downed 32 ounces of root beer. And once that cooling effect wore off 20 minutes later, I was back to being basted in hot turkey juices on Thanksgiving.

Thankfully...THANKFULLY there just happened, in this water-starved region, to be a swimming pool. Dear Lord. Rounding the bend and seeing that 300 feet below and seeing it the entire climb down was enough to make me sign away my soul for one 5 minute dip. I think it would have taken me all night to cool off without that small miracle.

And let me just tell you, the pizza we ordered (from The Pizza Place - good name) was about 800 times better than I expected from a random desert town. The root beer was also like feasting with Zeus on Mt. Olympus. I think I'm reacing the conclusion that after a long stretch of hiking, a clean pair of Depends would probably rank on par with finding Aladdin's lamp.

The Yogi Book's description of the park said it was the most depressing place on the trail, but all hiking-induced pizza euphoria aside, it really wasn't that bad. It wasn't Disney World or anything, but far from the horrible place they cast it as.

Except for the one bathroom. Broken urinal, flies buzzing around the toilet. I felt guilty even bringing my toothbrush in there. There was a puddle of something leaking out from the stall pooling under the urinal which made me try to pee outside, but it is a public park, so I went back in and went for it. Unfortunately I mostly added to the devil puddle because standing just outside of the puddle was also just far enough that only the peak pee stream reached the urinal. Oh well. Not like anypne was going to notice with the shape that place was in.

It was a great night for sleep though. Didn't even need my sleeping bag. I did hear something that sounded like two people havng sex being broadcast over a muffled loudspeaker, but nobody I was with knows what I'm talking about.

Even better, I didn't even need an alram this morning. A coyote (which I thought was someone's out of control dog) was howling at 5:00am. Just the time I was planning on getting up anyway (no sarcasm there, I really was getting up at 5:00am to beat the heat. See, I learned my lesson.