You can never carry enough water. You are always going to need more than one gallon a day. Each gallon weighs eight pounds, so for three nights in the desert that means more than 32 pounds of liquid.
Even though I’ve been backpacking the Mojave my entire life, every time I head out I am surprised by just how much water we need. Maybe it’s because bushwhacking is exhausting work, but the water invariably goes faster when you’re off-trail. You might be inclined to think that when the desert is cool, as it was in February when we took our last trek up and over Granite Peak across the Preserve, you may not need such a large personal reservoir. But even without the devastating temperatures, you can’t carry enough.
It was three nights into our four-day desert journey when the true immediacy of our lack-of-water situation hit home. I’ve been hiking with the Juniper Ridge crew for over 10 years now and I’d been in worse scrapes than this with founder Hall Newbegin. We are comfortable out here. Solutions to every type of problem present themselves when you’re in the wilderness. The only real danger is psychological. On this trip we were leading a crew of six, including a couple New Yorkers who had never backpacked before. For the newbies, the moment they realized we were running low on water and were still 20 miles away from the road was a moment of profound disbelief. They had never experienced a moment when water was simply not to be had.
There was never any true danger, unless you count the danger of letting the fear in and being overcome with emotion brought on by exhaustion. 20 miles only becomes a big number when you start believing that it is. Backpacking is often more about your mental training than your physical training – and we were, eight people who had tested our physical constitution for the past three days now forced to test the reliability of our mental fortitude.
But there was water all around us. The sandy bottom floor was dark and damp as we dug down, but nothing liquid. Hiking with Hall and Jeff for so many years, we’ve developed patterns. Those two lead the front charge while I tend to be the anchor in the back. I get easily distracted by the beauty around us, as if someone is constantly tapping me on the shoulder wanting to tell me something. Hall and Jeff tend to barrel on through any obstacle, and on this trip they had it in their heads that the best solution was to get out of the canyon and to the road. We could get to water by dawn.
I wasn’t convinced we needed to and kept my deliberate pace. Letting Hall and Jeff run ahead with the New Yorkers, I stayed behind with Colin and Molly. The canyon was just too beautiful, and we decided if we were going to die, so be it – right? It was early evening and the deep red light was cutting across the dark marble canyon under the most vivid turquoise sky. And there was the clue I needed – marble! These walls were granite and we were on a sandy canyon floor. We needed to get higher to see if any of these stone basins held any water. As the canyon snaked and cornered left and right, I kept my eyes on the confluences, where the side canyons entered this main larger vein.
Just before sunset, when the light was at its most opalescent and we were at our most tried, I found it. It was just a trickle, running down the rock in a thin line of pure diamond refreshment. I put my lips up to the stone wall and began to make out with the canyon, and I’ve never tasted anything so good in all my life. Colin pointed out a natural staircase in the rock wall, and the three of us began a short ascent to a place that was so stunning in its refreshment that we were all a bit overcome by emotion. Shallow ponds connected by a strong vein of flowing water extended up the blue stone gully, which seemed to be a temple to some desert goddess. We were instantly all loyal worshippers.
We followed the spring up to the source where we filled four gallons of water from the seep and washed the dust from our faces in the sacred pools. It was there that I penned the poem “Mojavia Diosa.” How could I not? We had felt like we had been saved by the desert herself: that she had somehow not only accepted, but welcomed us.
We met up with Hall and Jeff again about an hour after that. The party reunited in a moment of whoops and hollers like a pack of drunk coyotes. That night, under a blinking blanket of sapphire stars, we slept and dreamed about the beers waiting for us at the end of the trail the next day.
This article was originally published in RANGE Magazine Issue Three.
Handwritten trail poem by Obi Kaufmann.