Today, Tuesday July 13th, marks one week on the trail. Since I've last blogged friday, a lot has happened!
Friday, we left the Descanso library late in the day, with the best of intentions of reaching Julian before dusk. However, as in the best of cases, we were sidetracked by the discovery of the phenomenal McClintock Saddleworks. I've never seen a master saddlemaker's workshop, and this place exuded my kind of guy-appeal. Saddles, swatches of leather, mohair ropes, wooden tools, all housed in the basement of a post and beam barn with exposed timbers, and things hanging everywhere from the low ceilings: I was in heaven. The proprietor, Gary McClintock, and his friend Ron, engaged us in friendly conversation and the time flew by. I asked if he knew of the Ashley book of knots, and both Gary and Ron spoke up instantly saying they were working through it too. We fell right in together. Gary was even kind enough to send us off with a nice swatch of leather with a beautiful stamping pattern on it.
Gary told us about a fantastic stream with a waterfall and pond which was just 0.7 mile off the road, that he'd camped at when he first visited Descanso in 1968. It sounded perfect, and free, albeit in a "day use only" area. This latter issue became a sticking point though as we entered, and had the luck to run into the park ranger. Figuring him for no dummy, we aborted our plan and biked another 10 miles on to Green Valley pay campground. It was a bit of a change to be in an industrial scale campground - it felt like a small commune, and you could hear conversations in any direction, but they did have showers. I figure there must have been about 300 people within 100 yards in any direction. As we unpacked and set up camp, Lydia discovered one of her packs was glowing from within, and the errant flashlight I thought I'd lost - the nice LED one I'd splurged on, and been feeling remorseful for losing for several days - was found. In general I'm glad she packs things up well... we just need to coordinate better!! Feeling strangely elated that what was lost was now found, we fried up onions and green peppers and tomato sauce, had a nice pasta dinner, and went to sleep.
By 8:15 we were rolling towards Julian on saturday, in what would be the most spectacular day of riding yet. The climbing up to elevation 4800 feet was slow and difficult, but the scenery was beautiful with lush flowering bushes, meadows, and a rippling stream (the sweetwater) following much of the way. Most of the growth is recent- all the trees larger than a foot in diameter are charred husks. There was a devastating forest fire here in 2003, and the hillsides are littered with deadwood. I wondered if the fire was put out or went out too soon though: surely letting these tinder trees burn fully would reduce the likelihood of another fire too quickly? The whole place looks like it'd go up in a towering inferno with the least sideways glance of an ember. There's resinous bushes, dead and brown grass, and these highly branching tinderlike trees everywhere, and its very hot and dry.
We rolled into Cuyamaca Lake, and had a nice leisurely lunch there of nectarines and fresh figs from the farmer's market in descanso: decadent! I changed my front brake pads, which had picked up some tree sap and chattered unfixably, then we went to look for a place to swim from. One ranger on the east end told us that around the west end of the lake we could swim; the ranger on the west end said we weren't allowed to swim anywhere, since it was a reservoir (yet there are fishing boats and fishermen, not to mention birds and fish doing unspeakable things in the water all day). We settled on wading in a bit in the middle of the lake, equidistant from east and west stations. We found a park bench in the shade of a tree and sprawled on it, reading a bit of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and testing out a water purification still I made from a found blue salad bowl, a plastic bag, a small metal cup, and two rocks. I successfully distilled a few tablespoons of water in about two hours: I think I need to revise my design if its to be of any real use as a source of purified water!!
We agreed it was too hot to ride, and so decided to wait out the hot hours until about 3pm in the shade of the tree next to the lake. Riding in hot weather at least gets you into a routine of regular siestas! I was amazed how rested and fresh I felt after an hour's nap in the shade of the tree. We got back on the bikes, and rode on towards Julian at a lively clip, even overtaking an unladen mountain biker spinning up the road. Certainly feeling a bit shamed by being overtaken by the bicycle equivalent of earthmovers, on a hill no less, he called out that he'd been mountain biking on trails and was just riding home, and his legs were "grenading". I pondered the linguistic implications of this verbed noun, coming to no conclusions, but imagining that the californian metamorphosis or back-association of the expression "my legs hurt" went something like this:
"my legs really hurt".
(Explosions really hurt?)
"my legs are exploding".
(grenades explode?).
"my legs are grenading."
...
We reached Julian around 4pm. We'd called ahead to all bikeshops within 60 miles ahead of us (all 4 or 5 of them) looking for a backup chain in case of further trouble along previous lines. Though the only bikestore in Julian was out of business, the number still reached the wife of the ex-proprietor at home. Through her, then her husband Rich, we got the name of "Dave" who might be able to help us find a replacement chain, and could be found working at the Julian Pie Company. Since no fewer than four people had independently told us we needed to try the apple pie in Julian (it is famous) we headed to the Julian Pie Company forthwith, and found a line of ten people out the door on a saturday at 4:00! Dave was readily located, and he said that while he didn't have a new chain, he would let us have the chain off of his bike! Astounding... an hour later, he returned from home and handed me a ziploc with an SRAM 9-speed chain in it, and refused my offers of money.
After refilling with water and visiting some shops along the way, we began the descent via banner grade. It is 7 miles of 7-9% grade, downhill from Julian. I was terrified the whole way - all the energy of lowering probably 350 or 400 pounds was being turned to heat in my brakepads and rims, and I was legitimately afraid of having a thermal failure of my inner tube, tire, or brakes. We stopped three times during the descent to let the rims cool. They'd be too hot to touch again in just a minute or two of descent. Lydia was giggling with excitement, and announced she'd never descended that much elevation before. But it only got better from there.
At the bottom of banner grade begins the Anzo Borrego desert wilderness, and people warned us it would be 120 degrees there during the day, easily. We reached it about 7pm, and it was about 100, with a dessicating, parching dryness that I've never experienced before. We had more than two gallons each, but we wound up not needing it all: The west wind smiled on us, and we had a 20-30 mile per hour tailwind for the next five hours! This, and shedding the remaining 2000 feet of elevation we still had at the bottom of banner grade, made for a giddy few hours. We were cruising at 20mph without pedaling, and with pedaling would cruise effortlessly at 32mph, for over an hour. Though we stopped to drink, admire the silence, cackle maniacally about how awesome this was, and take a few photos, I think we still averaged over 15mph for over three hours. I think this was lydia's first experience of such a magic carpet of tailwind and steady downhill grade. On top of my own exhillaration, it was a real pleasure to see her light up with the thrill of it all.
We arrived at the Salton Sea, the intersection of 79 and 86, around 10:30, and just south of us on 86 saw a large lit hangar with some vehicles in it. We decided to go over and investigate, and see if there might be a place to refill our water. It turns out it was a border control inspection station: every car going north on highway 86 was being stopped and inspected, some briefly and others more lengthily. We wheeled over and said hi to the officers, all dressed in green fatigues and armed, and one with a belgian malinois. They chatted us up and asked about the trip and offered us water, and within 45 minutes we left the station headed north for salton city: there being no spot to camp anywhere else. Salton City was 12 miles ahead on a north-northwest heading, and the tailwinds were now cross- or head-winds. We slogged through it, with diminishing reserves of energy, in the hopes of a camping site or simply some community building to set our tent in front of.
What desolation! there's just sand off the highway, and a barbed wire fence perhaps there to prevent people from off-roading. We felt like we were in a tunnel, and our growing fatigue also contributed. Against the headwinds, we finally made it, but after three more hours of headwind fighting... only to discover that despite being a large city on the map, Salton City is, in fact, almost a ghost town. Built in anticipation of the Salton sea becoming the next paradise resort area, it was laid out in grand style, but most of the lots are undeveloped, and there is not a single motel, hotel, or campground. the sherriff's office is in a small stripmall with four other businesses and is not manned even on a saturday night at 1am. We thought we'd ask them if they could recommend a place to stay. After calling dispatch, and waiting 15 minutes, we met Officer Lopez, who graciously agreed to give us and our bikes a lift to Desert Shores, 12 miles further up 86, where there was a small and seedy "sea and sun motel". We were the ONLY tenants. Across the street, inspected later the next day, were either vacant lots or derelict buildings for sale. We went on a tour late the next day, and found that most every access to the water is fenced off, with no trespassing signs. We're told that because of rising salinity levels, due to washing of salt from farmlands surrounding, and pollution from being fed by the two most polluted rivers in the world, the Alamo and New river, flowing from Mexico, there are hardly any species of fish surviving there. We saw only a few gulls, and there was not a single boat on the whole, many-square-mile sea in the middle of the desert. I've never seen such desolation.
It was 106 in the shade and the sun was baking down, so we tried to stay as long at the motel as possible. We made bacon and eggs on the camp stove, which I used to make a primitive but satisfying carbonara sauce. Lydia and I realized after the fact that we did, in fact, have "green eggs and ham"... these being the fresh eggs, some of which were green, that we'd picked up in Descanso on friday. we finally mobilized at 6pm and by 7:30 it was down to 99F. We fought the headwinds and arrived at Desert Palms (southeast of Palm Springs) around 2am.
Desert Shores, Desert Palms, Desert Hot Springs.... Desert Desert Desert. Its HOT out here. We're napping in the middle of the days, or blogging from libraries where available, riding in the early morning and late evening. (We were riding by 5:15 this morning). We're about to climb the Morongo valley and Yucca Grades up several thousand feet to Joshua tree, which is between the Colorado Deserts and Mojave deserts, but from Joshua Tree, thankfully, the next 120 miles or so to Lake Havasu city, on the colorado river, will be all riding east, with the wind, if we don't detour into the park. We may detour into the park though to do some bouldering and sight seeing, so we don't expect to arrive at Lake Havasu City until maybe friday.
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