HUMANITY HIKER

The first day of this week found us full packing through canyons in Capitol Reef National Park, with yet another thunderstorm lasting for hours.  The remaining days found us slackpacking along desert roads with nothing but sunny skies.

We managed to wait out the thunderstorm under a pavilion in Capitol Gorge.  Even with the protection I was a little apprehensive about flash flooding.  A flash flood through this same canyon reached seven feet during the deluge we experienced a few nights before.  Fortunately, the current storm did nothing more than delay our arrival to our rendezvous with Ky at the end of the day.

First the remainder of the gorge, then open lands, stretched between the park boundary and the road that was to be our destination.  The trail disappeared soon after the gorge but, no matter, we hiked mostly in a direct line towards the discernible road, still far in the distance.  Others must have gone a similar way, as we passed a sign propped up by farm equipment that read “WELCOME,” but we encountered a few obstacles that challenged the wisdom of our route.

Chief among the obstacles was a creek with a red clay bottom.  As I neared the far side of the crossing I sunk down fully up to my knees, like quicksand.  I pulled myself out with the help of a protruding root along the far bank, but even then the ordeal was exhausting.  Being of much less weight with body and pack Cindy fared better than me, but both our legs were covered with red clay after the crossing.

We reached the road near dusk, looking dirty and bedraggled.  We had insufficient energy to guess which way we should walk on the road to meet Ky and waited for her to come and find us.  A mother and daughter team pulled up to us first and invited us to stay at her parent’s bed and breakfast place down the road.  Taralyn was caretaking the place while her parents were on vacation.  During this conversation Ky arrived with news that Barrett and a friend who was visiting were back at the camp.  She went back to retrieve everyone for a rest day at the B&B.

Taralyn had experienced recent hardship in her life as a single mother whose house burned down.  The touching display of community support for her plight moved her to look for ways of paying it forward.  We became the latest beneficiaries of her Good Samaritan zeal.  Of course, this became one of the experiences that I would bring up in my future talks.

We left Taralyn’s great hospitality to slackpack our way across Utah desert, with the desert heat aggravating tensions between us.

Ky felt uncomfortable in the originally intended role of being my publicist/agent for the talks I gave across the country.  As I took over the role of being my own publicist the talking points I provided to news media focused on the kindness and community experienced, not the hiking or Cindy’s affliction.  One time when prompted to share details about our hike by a print media outlet, my neglect to mention Ky as our support person disappointed her.  I acknowledged this as a mistake, but something else also irritated her.

Ky felt we should have contacted and included her in the invitation to the dude ranch.  In our previous hikes with others, people in different situations experienced different trail magic and tribulations.  Instead of including everyone in everything, these varied experiences made for good stories to share when together again.  Plus the circumstances of the trail magic would have seemed like applying a bait and switch move on our benefactor.  I never thought about asking to include Ky and, in this case, did not acknowledge my neglect as a mistake.

Our finances stressed me.  My original calculations of cost were based on fuel for a single support vehicle.  The extra costs of chipping in for Ky’s camper, plus the extra fuel costs this meant, led to yet another cost of purchasing merchandise to sell along the way.  This included T Shirts, CDs of my songs about community and freedom, and a book I had published.

The idea was by selling this merchandise at talks I could cover the extra costs generated by the camper.  With a bit of foresight I might have realized I would not be giving many talks during the wilderness portion of our journey and be patient that our fortunes would turn around once we hit the plains.  Instead I sometimes gave away the merchandise to the abundant trail angels we met, a businessman I am not, while fretting about what to do when we ran out of funds for Ky.

Embarking on yet another detour also irritated me.  The previous detours were brought about by adverse weather and trail conditions experienced along the way.  When they added miles that felt like proper penance for deviating from the designated route.  The spectacular scenery through Hell’s Backbone would have made that recent detour a  planned detour anyways.

The detour we took after Capitol Reef NP was not so spectacular.  Based on the unimproved roads we had experienced so far, having Ky meet us with water through southeast portions of Utah was impossible with the camper attached, and difficult even if detached and stowed.  We absolutely depended on meeting Ky for water while hiking through the remote desert in summer and had to take a northern detour that brought us north to Green River, then back south to Moab.

Having experienced the slot canyons of southeast Utah previously, I wanted to follow the ADT route through there.  I also did not like that this detour would be shorter.  Because we were hiking home from the end of the ADT, tacking on a few hundred miles, we were in no real danger of falling below 5,000 total miles for the journey, but reaching that milestone was important for me.

Cindy’s stress was caused foremost by our “halfway house” back home.  To shorten a long story and omit delicate details, three people around the ages of our own children were staying at our house, while our oldest daughter Charissa served as landlord.  Two were delinquent in paying rent, a source of stress for our daughter and me, and I could not help out because of our own financial challenge on the trail.  The delicate details I omitted about our “halfway house” caused even greater stress for Cindy.

Before, during and after the brief visit of Ky’s friend Jenny, Ky spoke in glowing admiration about her pursuit as a graduate student looking for dinosaur fossils across the Utah landscape.  This seemingly innocuous praise of Jenny as an amazing Adventure Woman living out of her car irritated Cindy, the Expedition Woman who has bivouacked and navigated cross country wilderness routes on her own.  I do not think this would have bothered Cindy under normal conditions, but the feeling of one’s independence and capabilities being robbed by the cruel fate of cognitive decline causes a person to perceive unintended slights.

For the first two months of hiking Cindy started the day lifting both our spirits with her cheerful embrace of the day. On this stretch that changed. Weighed down by her stress, I detected few smiles from Cindy. Given that the purpose of the hike was to relieve her stress this concerned me. I tried to compensate, being as cheerful as I could in the morning, but by afternoon the desert heat compromised my mood as well.

The temperatures no doubt made moods worse.  One night during this stretch barely fell below 100 degrees, and one day a DOT worker stopped us while road walking to check if we were alright and to tell us we were hiking in 132 degree heat.  Yet at least by this time the desert heat did not phase us physically.  I came up with a strict, regimented routine of stopping every three miles to imbibe small quantities of water and food, generally finishing the 20-25 mile days by 2:00 pm.  We may have been cranky and stressed, but we were now lean, mean, desert hiking machines.

We carried full packs for all but the first day of this week, including a five day “wilderness” stretch that started without wilderness.  We had only five miles to hike from our Otter Creek State Park campsite through Antimony but we never quite reached the trail on the other side of town.  In fact, we did the unthinkable for a long distance hiker, backtracked two miles even though we knew we were on the correct route.

We first stopped at the Antimony Community Center, where the director there explained how the center provides Internet access for townsfolk.  Far off the beaten track, electricity reached Antimony last in Utah and Internet access was similarly difficult.  By providing Internet access the Community Center offered a means for telecommuting in this remote place.  These were the types of community benefit stories I loved to gather.

We stopped next at the Antimony Merc, a combined RV park, gas station, cafe, store and local hangout.  We mixed well with the locals, with one of them giving us some helpful details of the route ahead.  We also learned that Barrett and Buster had passed through town the morning before.  We had not seen them since our first day in Utah and now we did not expect to see them again until Moab.

Despite our lollygagging through Antimony we might have entered the wilderness that evening had not a car pulled over, when we reached the southern outskirts of town, to ask us what we were doing.  This same car had passed us going back and forth into Antimony a couple times.  We told the driver, Burns Black, about our journey and he invited us to stay at his Rockin’ R Ranch on the northern side of Antimony.  Staying at a dude ranch for free was an offer too good to refuse and we backtracked two miles.

We had planned for four relaxing days through Dixie National Forest, with the first day being the hardest. Before ascending all day we took a wrong turn and had to backtrack.  Fortunately, this enabled us to encounter Randy, the Otter Creek campground manager who also owned a ranch in the area, driving his ATV with Ky riding on the back!  News travels fast in a small town, alerting Randy and Ky to our delay in reaching Dixie National Forest.  Randy also used his ATV to bring soda to our campsite that evening.  Though we followed jeep roads all day Randy’s arrival amazed me because the route was as rocky and steep as mountain trails in the Northeast.

Once again the most memorable parts of this stretch were the camps.  A ferocious thunderstorm accompanied by a deluge held off until nighttime for us.  Safely tucked away in a perfectly pitched tent kept us dry, providing the luxury of enjoying the sounds of pelting rain and thunder.  We no longer talked like we used to do under these conditions, but the night would become a special memory along with the other severe storms we weathered over the years.

A photo of my left foot hanging in traction that night confirmed my ongoing problem.  I found that the swelling went down during the day while hiking, but would return at night.  I resorted to ibuprofen and elevated traction for my foot in order to get some sleep.

Another campsite on this stretch ranked in the top five for the journey.  After crossing Dixie National Forest a campground host tipped us off to what he described as an oasis in Sheets Draw.  We found this to be accurate.  A small, flat, grassy area by a clear flowing stream over red clay, with a lone cottonwood tree as a standing sentry, provided a stark, green garden contrast to the surrounding canyon walls of red sandstone.  A little sputtering of rain interrupted the cooking of supper, but even that intrusion upon our tranquility left us with a rainbow that further enhanced the setting.

At one point within the Dixie National Forest we were to follow the Great Western Trail, but within the first few hundred yards we encountered a few blockades of blowdowns, no doubt another casualty of the extraordinary snowpack and avalanche season.  We followed instead the recommended alternative ADT for cyclists, which brought us through the canyonlands known as Hell’s Backbone.  The spectacular scenery made our detour a preferred option to even a cleared trail.

All in all, this stretch of full packing through wilderness melted much of our cares away.  These were the best of times, when Cindy and I were off by ourselves in what might be considered our natural habitat as veteran long distance hikers.  Unfortunately, more stressors loomed in the future which were immediate to our situation.

Utah started out well enough, a beautiful campsite with a gorgeous sunset our first night in the state, a motel room comped to us the third night, both scouted and obtained by Ky.  While the day temperatures exceeded 100 degrees, they now felt twenty degrees cooler. One might think that going home for a wedding would be good news as well.

Ky brought us to Salt Lake City to fly back east for the first of two weddings we would be attending on Cindy’s side of the family. We arrived in New York City, where the temperature also reached 100 degrees while we were there, except that the much greater humidity made 100 degrees really  feel like 100 degrees.  We took public transit to the wedding being held in Westchester County, with an assist from our kids picking us up at the station.  All told we spent a little more than a day back east and only took three days off the trail.

People occasionally cannot attend family weddings; one might think that hiking through the Great Basin desert on a year long journey might would be one such reason.  The expense of leaving the trail to attend both weddings hurt our finances, having already spent down retirement savings to reboot our lives.  Cindy did not want to go to these weddings despite them being on her side of the family; the decision to go was mine.

Why was I more motivated to attend?  At our send off party one of Cindy’s siblings admonished that I better take care of her.  Her family’s concern reflects what I discovered society as a whole feels.  Hiking 5,000 miles with a loved one experiencing cognitive decline was crazy behavior.  I hoped that showing up at these family weddings would appease their concerns.

During one conversation near the buffet table (where, as a long distance hiker, I spent much of my time), a few of her siblings reiterated their concerns.  Cindy also was aware of their thoughts which, in hindsight, was probably the major reason why she did not want to attend. If only I had listened!

Our return to the trail found us leaving desert terrain and hiking over mountains.  At first we were on dirt roads with no worries.  In Beaver we stopped at a ranger station for a scouting report, to see if the trails through Fish Lake National Forest were like Nevada trails, poorly maintained at times to the point of nonexistence.  The rangers informed us that the South Fork of South Creek route we would be taking had been cleared recently, but then I eavesdropped on a phone conversation where a ranger was telling someone about closed trails due to avalanches.

We hiked on cleared trail along the South Fork of South Creek as promised, experiencing 2.5 miles of pleasant ascending, simply placing one foot in front of the other.  We made camp just before the pass.  The next day, on the other side of the pass, we descended somewhere along the Old Government Trail.  I say “somewhere along” because four miles of intermittent blowdowns littered the actual trail, exhausting us by the time we reached the other side.

Just as a wet year created 15’ minimum June snowpacks in California, and summer flooding of Nevada deserts, Utah achieved 600 percent of normal snowpack.  This anomalous year replenished previously depleted aquifers in the state, but for us meant an abundance of blowdowns from avalanches that a trail crew may or may not reach before us.  Unlike Nevada, where trail conditions were due to lack of maintenance, I could not complain about what fate dealt us.  As usual, Cindy never complained about the hiking either, though she was not as chipper as she had been in California and Nevada.

During our rest days in Ely we caught up with Barrett Jordan and his dog Buster, also hiking the ADT from west to east.  I first learned about Barrett when we entered Nevada and he contacted me via the blog not to drink the water as we exited Virginia City.  During our “Trail Angel Day ” one of the “angels” informed us that Barrett had laid over in Belmont, which suggested he was behind us.  We were pleasantly surprised when we met the only other person doing what we were doing that year.

The ailing economy cost Barrett his IT job and hiking the ADT was his answer.  Besides his IT training Barrett had a variety of handyman skills and served in Desert Storm.  We caught up to him in part because he stopped to do handyman work to support his hike, in part because he carried an even heavier pack than ours.  Food for Buster and the superfluous gear of a first-timer with military training contributed to his pack weight.

Fortunately for Barrett over the next few days he could shed his backpack as he hooked up with us to slackpack the rest of Nevada.  As a lover of dogs Cindy was thrilled to have Buster along.  Buster was a mix of breeds but looked like an oversized chihuahua to me.  At times Barrett slung Buster over his shoulder but, even without carrying the dog, his natural pace was slower than ours.  Perhaps this was due to being a smoker?

Our first night out of Ely we stayed at Cave Lake campground.  The only other lake we encountered in Nevada was Washoe Lake at the foot of the Carson Range, near Nevada’s western border.  Cave Lake signaled the foothills of the South Snake Mountains, by Nevada’s eastern border.  Barrett and Ky swam in the refreshing lake shortly after our arrival.  I could not muster the energy to join them, totally out of character for a guy who twice broke the ice in alpine lakes to take a dip.  I faulted the still lingering lethargy from bad water.  I could hike 25 mile days in 100 degree heat, presumably by placing myself on autopilot, but would still feel lethargy for a couple more days.

After dinner I grabbed from the support vehicle my Martin backpacker’s guitar, which I brought along for performing at Lion Clubs talks.  As I sat on the picnic table and played an original instrumental, “Humility, Faith and Courage,” a man from the campsite above us came running down enthusiastically and said:

“I just had to see where that beautiful music was coming from …. Barrett!”

The man was Ted Oxborrow, then the Nevada ADT coordinator, who was at Cave Lake in support of Brian Stark, speed record holder for hiking the ADT, as he attempted to set a new speed record hiking the Nevada section.  Ted had come out to assist Barrett in central Nevada and recognized him at our campsite immediately.  Now he was supporting Brian Stark, record holder for fastest hike of the entire ADT. He invited us up to his campsite where perhaps a historical photo was taken of four thru-hikers in the same place on the sparsely hiked ADT at the same time.

Our last few days in Nevada went smoothly, alternating between foothills and desert valley, with no further rain.  Even so, our last few miles heading south from Baker was along the strange sight of flooded desert in late July. This final portion of Nevada also headed us directly into southerly winds so strong they bent over trees, but no longer did we suffer from chapped lips or heat exhaustion.  We had acclimated to the desert.

In response to my blog posts about hiking through Nevada I received requests from both sides of our families to hear from Cindy.  This came across as a little strange.  Though we had not made Cindy’s affliction public in regards to the hike our families knew something was wrong.  I dutifully asked Cindy if she wanted to contribute to the blog and she predictably declined.  Even if she accepted, at this stage of the hike I would be forced to dictate her entries for my blog as I did for her own journal.

Yet there were two positive developments for Cindy’s health as we hiked through Nevada.  Hiking with Barrett actually elicited conversation from her, hearkening back to her old thru-hiking days when she was known as “Gabby Galvin.”  Plus having Buster along brought great cheer to a long time dog lover.

One moment in central Nevada best reflected the tonic for Cindy our hike had become.  As I sat struggling with the maps, trying to figure out why the trail disappeared again and which pass we should cross, Cindy pursued her interests in flowers and rocks.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me: We are lost again.

Cindy:  Look at these beautiful wild flowers!

Me:  I’m not sure where the next water source will be.

Cindy:  Oh, I love the colors on this rock. I’ll add it to my collection.  (Cindy was the only thru-hiker I knew that voluntarily put rocks in her pack. Usually that resulted from pranks thru-hikers played on each other.)

Me:  We’re going to die out here!

OK, so that last part was hyperbole.  Nevertheless, so far all the stress from the journey fell on my shoulders, while removing the stress we thought responsible for Cindy’s alleged anxiety disorder.  Returning to our passion for long distance hiking to reboot our lives and Cindy’s brain health might be working!!

At least for now.  Utah would be a different story.

As a long distance hiker you hear things about those who have hiked the trail before you.  I knew that lack of water along the Nevada ADT occasionally forced hikers to take an alternate northern route along US 50 instead.  We ended up taking an alternate route into Ely, Nevada as well, but ours was a southern detour caused by too much water.

On the third day of our seven day stretch heading out of Carvers, thunderstorms and my continued lethargy from bad water caused us to stop short at a backcountry campground, featuring the grand attraction of an outhouse to accommodate my frequent visits. The next day I felt better but more thunderstorms plus, um, backtracking from a wrong turn caused us to stop short again. More thunderstorms caused more setbacks, creating a dilemma.

I was scheduled to present my second talk to a Lions Club in Ely, Nevada.  At our current pace I would miss that talk, with the possibility of more thunderstorms and obscure routes preventing us from arriving on time.  Heading south to US 6 would add miles, but we would be able to make up ground quickly by walking a reliable route.

We passed an outhouse early in our detour.  Though the outhouse was private I could not resist making a contribution, still afflicted by intestinal difficulties. The owner of the small ranch came by and, rather than scold us, invited us to lunch and to bathe in the hot springs on her property.  We learned we were not the first ADT travelers she encountered, though personally I had not heard of anyone taking a southern detour before.

Our goal for the southern detour was US 6, which we would then follow into Ely.  A watering trough for cattle awaited us there, allowing us to take a lunch break and fill up with water, knowing that this would be the last source until we reached Blackrock Station in the middle of the next day.  Actually, we did encounter more water that afternoon, in the form of yet another thunderstorm.

At a turn out in the road, featuring a large gravel pile, we huddled with our packs under a groundcloth.  After waiting out the storm for over an hour we made camp behind the gravel pile, the only feature in the open desert that could block our view from motorists.  Not that we had much to worry about.  When we hiked along US 50, the alleged loneliest highway, a vehicle would pass us about every 5-10 minutes.  Along US 6 the gap was 15-20 minutes during the day and at night I doubt more than a handful of vehicles passed our “campsite.”

The next morning the lack of traffic became a problem.  With Blackrock Station still a couple hours away we ran out of water.  We could have hiked two hours without water even in the desert, but memories of heat exhaustion along the Pony Express Trail forbade me from risking that.  Whenever I saw or heard the sound of a vehicle I held up a water bottle as we continued hiking.  Three vehicles passed us without stopping, then I figured that my gesture might have been mistaken for a sort of “toast.”  I instead held the water bottle upside down with the lid open and the next vehicle stopped to give us water.

Blackrock Station on US 6 was a far cry from Middlegate Station on US 50.  At one time the Blackrock Station provided gas and supplies to motorists traveling between Tonopah and Ely, but now the one building there was a single family residence for the owners.  Fortunately, they were home and provided us with water and snacks.  I also used their landline to call Ky and tell her that Blackrock Station was our new rendezvous point.  During our seven day stretch Ky had returned to California to spend time with her sister.  We camped on nearby BLM property that evening.

We slackpacked the 75 miles from Blackrock Station to Ely in three days, with Ky meeting us along the way.  After a couple days without thunderstorms the occasional puddle greeted us along the side of the road, though midafternoon temperatures surpassed 100 degrees.  Thankfully, when a thunderstorm did occur we now were able to wait it out in Ky’s camper.

As each vehicle that passed us was miles away from the next vehicle, we got a good sense of which drivers were friendliest to vagabonds on the (real) loneliest highway.  All truckers gave us a wide berth, which usually was sufficient to avoid blowing off our caps with their draft, and honked their horns in friendly greeting.  Motorcyclists were the next friendliest.  Cars and pick up trucks seemed not to even notice us and sometimes tested our nerves.

My Lions Club contact in Ely was also the high school principal and allowed us access to the school during our rest days there.  We “camped” in the school foyer but could use the showers and other school property during a window of hours.  The talk went well but, as was often the case, I learned as well as presented.  I learned about Ely that a former boom and bust mining town revived itself by diversifying its economy.  After witnessing the devastating effects of boom and bust economies across the state I retained this lesson on the importance of diversification in my memory banks.

Nothing noteworthy about Cindy occurred during this stretch.  I continued to set up the tent, cooked the meals and recalled each day’s events for her journal.  Fortunately, she was able to use the showers at the school without my assistance.

Week 06 found us heading into the mountains of central Nevada, namely the Arc Dome Wilderness area and Jefferson Summit.  The wet weather that took a break while we hiked across the desert returned to us in the mountains.  The straightforward route finding was replaced by trails hard to find and hard to follow, and the day packs were replaced with full packs.  As I reminisce about this week, what sticks out in my mind are three campsites and one very special day.

The ADT route suggested a jeep road into the Arc Dome wilderness, but our FS map showed a parallel trail.  Hey!  We’re hikers!  We are going to hike on trails when available!  That is when I received my first lesson about alleged Nevada “trails.”  The trail petered out to nothing, leaving us to traverse the rugged side of a ridge like billy goats. With evening approaching we headed down to a willow-choked creek for camp.

The next morning made this campsite memorable.  As a light sleeper I am awake at first light.  Around 6:00 am, when Cindy first began to stir, she asked me if I heard two women talking as they walked by our tent.

I pointed out the folly of how we arrived at our isolated campsite, literally as far off the beaten path as possible.  Could she imagine two women choosing a route that traversed steep, rocky ridges and/or slashed up through willow choked creeks for miles as part of their daily morning walk?  We both had a good laugh at that.  I sometimes share the story as an amusing anecdote, while yet wondering whether Cindy’s condition accounted for such a hallucination.

The next day we made our way back to the official ADT route, which now followed a trail, a designated National Recreation Trail in fact.  As we hiked up through a narrow, V-shaped valley the trail doggedly stayed in the creek bed.  The overgrowth of willows and other vegetation suggested the trail had not been maintained for years, maybe decades.  The frequent crossings of the creek, a definite hindrance to hikers, suggested the trail was created for horse riders.

We crossed the creek almost twenty times in just three miles.  The water was often knee high or higher due to all the wet weather the west had been having.  Eventually we just left our boots on for the crossings, instead of wasting time constantly taking them off and putting them on.  The wet vegetation soaked them anyway.

Rain came down intermittently while dark storm clouds blanketed Arc Dome and the high pass towards which we were heading.  We stopped hiking early when we hit the upper limits of shrub sized vegetation, avoiding the exposed higher elevations before the impending storm let loose.  That turned out to be the right call as thunder exploded around us that evening and during the night.  In the morning we awoke to ice and snow outside the tent.

A few days later we camped just below a pass near Jefferson Summit.  After a long day of ascending out of Carvers we stopped at a high altitude grassland, near a small stream and with an open view towards the setting sun.  I spent the evening taking pictures of the scenic panorama while Cindy wrote in her journal, sitting comfortably amidst the grass.

Our campsite embodied the purpose of our trip, providing a stress free environment for Cindy, surrounded by the natural beauty and wildness she loves.  I suspected this campsite would rank in the top five for our trip; in hindsight I was right.  Yet in order to write in her journal Cindy needed my continual input as to what happened the past couple days.  In essence I was writing in her journal for her.

Our route the next day followed dirt roads up over the pass, down to a high desert and on to a campground.  As the day was Saturday, July 3rd we encountered a surprising amount of recreationalists for backcountry dirt roads in Central Nevada.  As the day came at the tail end of a heat wave, the majority of those recreationalists stopped to offer their assistance.

I subsequently referred to that day as “Trail Angel Day” in talks and writings about the ingredients that elicit kindness.  Backpackers across a desert on the last day of a three day heat wave engages people’s empathy.  People recreating on a Fourth of July weekend were not too hurried by their busy lives.  As they encountered us separately from each other there was not the diffusion of responsibility that occurs in mass societies and urban living.  The result was gifts of water, food, smiling encouragement and even a monetary donation!

My intestinal problems that day may have contributed to a pathetic look that invoked empathy.  I believe in the well-supported hygiene hypothesis, which essentially claims that the immune system benefits from a workout like other parts of our body.  The hygiene hypothesis provides an explanation for why the Spanish flu perplexingly ravaged younger adults instead of old and why hygienic city folk have more allergies.  The hypothesis explains why people get sicker when they drink bad water the more they try to prevent the possibility through filtration.

In 1975, the year of my first long distance hike, my “filtration system” was dipping a Sierra cup into whatever lake or small stream I encountered.  No one filtered back then, yet no one in my circle of hikers became sick.  By the 1980s the comeback of beavers and the increase of a bacterial infection known as “beaver fever” led to the common practice of filtering water.  For many hikers this meant filtering all water; for me that meant assessing the surroundings and filtering only when I thought prudent.

Over 20,000 miles of backpacking later, after drinking from countless sources of unfiltered water, I have felt ill three times from bad water: once on the Continental Divide Trail in 1985; once on the Wonderland Trail in 2005; and now on the ADT, likely from water in the Arc Dome area.  Two of those three times I suspect, from the symptoms of extended lethargy and diarrhea, that I had “beaver fever.” However, each time my symptoms were mild enough to allow me to continue hiking without any medical intervention or prolonged rest.

Upon looking back, I now realize that Cindy was with me on each of those occasions, drank from the exact same unfiltered sources and never got sick at all.  I realize as well that Cindy seldom suffered from colds.  Her immune system appears to be mightier than mine, yet not mighty enough to ward off dementia.

To start our fifth week we headed into the expansive and usually dry Great Basin. For the next two months we would be hiking through high desert … during July and August!  My focus shifted from “How well can Cindy handle this?” to “How well can we handle the hottest, driest hiking we likely will ever experience?”

Why on earth would we choose to hike the desert portion of the ADT during the summer months?  Deciding to start west and hike home, and to do so over the course of a full calendar year, led to our May start date.  Our experience with blizzards in the Rockies during our Continental Divide hike made September 22, the date the first blizzard trapped us at 10,000+ feet in the Arapaho Wilderness, as our target for being well beyond the Divide and heading into Denver.  I was more apprehensive of autumn blizzards in the mountains than summer heat in the desert.

Most of our previous desert hiking occurred during cooler fall temperatures.  Between the two of us Cindy tolerated heat better; I better tolerated water scarcity over long distances.  Neither of us previously suffered heat exhaustion from hiking.  That was about to change.

Our route early on followed the historic Pony Express Trail.  The original users of the trail had the advantage of riding horses as “the mail must go through;” we had the advantage of meeting Ky, allowing me to wear a daypack and resupply our water at the end of the day.  I filled my daypack with water bottles, but lacked a tent, tarp or any other means of creating man-made shade.

We met our first desert trail angels, Matt and Miriam.  Every year they arrive from Switzerland to explore a historic trail in America, renting a Land Rover to aid in their exploration. After having met they turned into trail scouts for us.  Once we arrived at a dirt road junction just as they were backtracking from taking the wrong turn.  Another time they drove back a considerable distance just to advise us which route to follow.  They also left us a gallon of water.

Even with the additional water I misjudged how much water Cindy needed, essentially providing the same amount for both of us.  Towards the end of that first shadeless day Cindy had a touch of heat exhaustion.  The next day I made sure she drank enough water, but I experienced heat exhaustion instead.

Towards the end of the day, after going over a slight rise in the topography, our destination of meeting Ky at US 50 came into view in the distance.  The Pony Express Trail intersected the major road at an angle, like the hypotenuse of a triangle from where we were. My heat-addled mind opted to head on a right angle to US 50, a deviation that in theory would add slightly more miles to the overall route but end the current day quicker.

Unfortunately, I had not recalled the lesson I learned from my previous desert hiking, that distances in the desert deceive.  The distance from our position to US 50 was at least three miles over salt flats.  Having drunk plenty of water that day, Cindy comfortably eased into the lead over the salt flats while I plodded along behind, my foggy head acting like an autopilot to force me on.

Once on US 50, billed as the loneliest highway in America, we continued to day pack until we reached the “town” of Middlegate Station.  The “town” consisted of a rustic motel, an all-purpose store and a few trailers in the back.  Yet every Saturday evening bikers flocked to Middlegate Station for their all-you-can eat steak barbecue and live entertainment.  Guess which evening we managed to arrive there.  There is nothing like an all-you-can eat anything for long distance hikers.

We considered our good fortune in Middlegate State as a reward for surviving our first excursion through the shadeless desert in 100 degree heat.  Our desert tribulations were not quite over, though.  Heading east from Middlegate Station we alternated between ridges and ever higher desert.  We still were day packing, had plenty of water and the temperature was a little cooler, but often found ourselves heading into a stiff 30-40 mph southerly desert wind.

I never had a problem with chapped lips before, despite hiking over snowfields at 10,000+ feet, despite never using chapstick.  By the time we reached Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, from where we would acquire our full packs and start heading into mountain wilderness, my lips were chapped and bloody.  Cindy, with sensitive skin normally prone to sun and heat afflictions, spared herself a similar fate through her habitual application of chapstick.  Another week down, another week during which Cindy overall fared better physically.