Oracle to Kearny: The beauty in the beast

Sorry, leider gibt’s diesen Blog Eintrag nur in English. Danke für dein Verständnis.

After taking a last break at the High Jinks Ranch to fill up water and to check out the historical site, Marney of the Chalet Village Motel picked us up at the American Flag Trailhead.

Summerhaven out to Oracle the terrain was extremely rugged again with lots of crazy steep downhill.

We stayed one night in one of the A-Frame buildings. They are super cool looking, two beds, own bathroom. Marney offers a really good hiker price and offers a lot of services like laundry and shuttling to food places and grocery stores.It’s a really awesome and friendly place, they love hikers.

We took a zero day there and waited for our friends Softserve and Stripe to arrive. We met them on the PCT in 2016 and didn’t see them since then. We ended up having a nice little PCT reunion party in the backyard followed by a nice breakfast together with all the other AZT-hikers who were staying at the Chalet Village Motel.

It was only 65 miles in total to Kearny leading us through a big flat, dry and open desert. Night hiking and long water carries is the motto. Really amazing though how beautiful this desert looks like. So many different types of cacti all spikey but cool looking. The first flowers showing up making it all look lush and not at all deadly dry.

It was dry for us though, with an empty water cache at the Freeman Road Trailhead we had to carry water for about 27 miles with temperatures going up to 95°F. Pretty damn hot and dry out here.

The desert starts to bloom though and so do we grow into nature. Leg and armpit hair are growing, beards do too, our dusty legs get more and more muscular and used to the terrain.

We are drinking water from stinky cow troughs. There’s no flowing water to drink from or rinse ourselves off with. The wet-wipe shower is my best bet these days. It’s all about the experience!