Day 38 (ODT 6)

Day 38 (ODT 6 pt. 1): 27 miles

It really was a tale of two trails today. Well maybe trails isn’t the right word cause most of the day was cross country but regardless, there was a shift.

It was the first morning I got up in time for a sunrise which I enjoyed the glow from inside my tent. Within the first half mile, I began a 15ish? mile bushwhack. It was fun and felt really wild. Basically I would be in a desert bowl, climb up to a rim, and repeated that a few times. It felt cool to cover ground like that with NOTHING else around. Well I wasn’t totally alone.

I saw a light brown coat off in the distance of the vast green/gray sagebrush. I figured since I’m already bushwacking, I might as well make my way over to it. It didn’t see me for a while, so I got pretty close. When I was about maybe 30 yards away the thought cross my mind, what if this is a mountain lion? To which my counter thought was, “well I’m going to turn the tables on them and see how they like being stalked and hunted.” But I shortly got a good view of it and knew it was a horse. When it saw me, it scampered off quick and found a few homies to run away with.

But that wasn’t the end. Maybe an hour later, I was hiking with my umbrella on even though it was windy as hell. It wasn’t going well, and my view was heavily obstructed. When I finally raised my eyes to look ahead of me, there were 6 more horses just ahead of me. I was amazed. I did not expect to see any wild horses in this section. They then ran off and retreated to a team of at least 75 horses. It was incredible, and really felt like I was in the Wild West.

In addition to seeing all these awesome horses, I also saw a pronghorn! (The fastest animal in North America) this section was wild. (Area south of Christmas valley and north of Diablo Peak)

After all that wildlife on a long cross country stretch, I made it to a water cache maintained by @oregondeserttrail which was awesome. Although I did get aggravated and feel like an idiot. When I got there, I spent 15 minutes looking around for the cache with no luck. I then pulled up an email with clear instructions and found it. You could say the water cache was a ~watershed~ moment. Nothing was the same. The wind was really howling now. But I didn’t mind, it felt good to be at a comfortable temperature, at first.

After a few miles on the road, I began the cross country section up and on the Diablo Rim. It looked really high up, and with as windy as it was down below, I figured it would be worse up there. But I didn’t want to end the day early. So I decided I’d bushwhack up near the rim and camp on a shelf on the east side of the mountain that I could see. This should protect me from the wind since it’s blocked from the west.

I made my way up there quicker than expected and a couple things changed. I still didn’t want to end the day early, and it was still windy as fuck even though it was “blocked” by the mountain.

I had the thought process of “fuck it. There’s nowhere to camp and it’s windy as hell, so I’ll just keep going until I find a good campsite or until I can’t walk a more and then pass out on the rocks.”

So I kept going, making my way up to summit Diablo Peak. Once I got off that lower shelf I was on, and got on the actual rim, it was pretty wild. The wind picked up a lot. As I was climbing up to Diablo Peak, it was actually hard to walk. I had to really focus and lean my weight to my right to keep my feet. I’m a dense 200+ pound guy and I was actually worried I would blow over at times. Idk what the speed was but I’d guess at least 80 mph cause I had 70mph last year and this felt considerably stronger. When I was taking videos, I had to get in an athletic stance and fully brace myself to take the wind.

After that madness, I got off the peak and went back down to the rim where it was still windy as hell but not 80mph, maybe just 50. But now the sun was beginning to set and I had to find a campsite. Was basically running on this rocky cross country section looking for anywhere I could camp. After more then an hour, I found a little spot right on a cliff with a small wind block. Horrible spot, bad sleep, but got the job done in a land void of campsites with hurricane winds. Wind was still flapping my tent all night