What a day.
At the start of the morning, I had half a litre of water left and nothing to eat that didn’t require cooking. The plan was simple: walk to the next water source a few miles ahead, marked directly on the trail. I switched the phone off to save battery and just walked.
At some point I decided to check the map. The source wasn’t actually on the trail — it sat just off it, close enough that the difference only showed when zooming in closely. I had already walked three miles past the turnoff, all of it downhill. Going back up wasn’t an option.
The next source sat just over nine miles away. I had eaten nothing, I had almost no water, and I was back in the desert — hilly, but distinctly desert-like terrain. Fortunately a cool wind blew throughout the day. Without it, things would have been genuinely unpleasant.
About four miles from the next source, I came across a very shallow, not particularly pleasant-smelling puddle. I filtered it three times — first through the drinking tube to remove the worst and protect the filter from clogging, then through the filter itself, and finally treated it with purification tablets and mixed in electrolytes to make it drinkable. One litre of water. Still nothing to eat.
At the bottom I ran into the group of four hikers I had mentioned on day 21. They gave me gas and snacks — I was genuinely grateful, especially for the food. After three energy bars and two packs of mashed potato with four servings each, the world was back to normal.
Cowboy camping that night was perfect — until the moon came up. It was absurdly, almost comically bright, like someone had positioned a floodlight overhead. I could have walked by it without a headlamp and seen every stone. At one point I woke up and searched through my bag without needing any light at all. It took an embarrassingly long time before I thought of pulling my hat over my eyes. After that, sleep was manageable.
The group mentioned they were visiting someone the next day — possibly with room for one more hiker.
