Desert Trip Report

C

candlelight001

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Jun 3, 2008
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Got up into some remote mountains in Joshua Tree this weekend.

Left most of food in car by accident, key WSS lesson: you don't need to eat as much as you think, but it does lead to crankiness.

Took 2 gallons/water/person/day, that was about right, didn't have any extra. Key WSS lesson: your range in the desert is severely limited by how much water you can carry. Lots of fun, nice time of year out there.

pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jhwitt/JoshuaTreeMichael2010BPL?authkey=Gv1sRgCKnAo7-zqqDtwgE&feat=directlink
 
candlelight001 said:
Key WSS lesson: your range in the desert is severely limited by how much water you can carry. Lots of fun, nice time of year out there.
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Water...ya got that right and the weight, at least starting out, sure adds up fast. How much more would it take to retrace your hike in July?
 
That's a beautiful area and a place I'd like to visit some day...something about the desert mountain landscape that is just amazing! Thanks for sharing...oh, and food is a crutch, nice to see you were able to avoid that temptation:D

ROCK6
 
It looks like what I have seen of Afghanistan from the news and such.
I guess all deserts are the same, hot and sandy!
 
Joshua Tree is such a beautiful place, those are great pics. But yeah, as for water, you can never bring too much!
 
Stupid question, but please bear with me. Were there any springs that you could obtain fresh water at? Or at least water that you could boil, or purify?
 
silenthunterstudios said:
Stupid question, but please bear with me. Were there any springs that you could obtain fresh water at? Or at least water that you could boil, or purify?
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Not stupid, it's the logical question. There was nothing I could see on map or terrain. And even if there were, I don't know if I would have had the nerve to bet on it being ok when I got there.

I don't know how people crossed these deserts back in the day. If you miss a spring or tank, or it's dry, or there just isn't one, you are absolutely screwed.
 
silenthunterstudios said:
Stupid question, but please bear with me. Were there any springs that you could obtain fresh water at? Or at least water that you could boil, or purify?
Click to expand...

You guys can google around and find some maps of Joshua Tree.

For many desert parks, reserves, etc.
Rangers would probably prefer that you bring your water, because they do not want a lot
of people converging on water sources, using them up, and scaring-off animals.
Joshua Tree does have some springs, and very intermittent (mostly dry) streams.
At one time they did have a "bring your own water" rule; but I have no idea if it still exists,
or how well it is enforced.

I wish I had done more water-finding experimentation, when I lived in the desert.
I did have a very unpleasant surprise regarding digging in "soft sand".
A soft sandy ground surface may look easy to dig, but often there will be a
sub-surface hard-pan about 2 feet down.
 
candlelight001 said:
Not stupid, it's the logical question. There was nothing I could see on map or terrain. And even if there were, I don't know if I would have had the nerve to bet on it being ok when I got there.

I don't know how people crossed these deserts back in the day. If you miss a spring or tank, or it's dry, or there just isn't one, you are absolutely screwed.
Click to expand...

The heat can be almost unbelievable.

There is a historic trail (in the Mojave) that I read about: wells/stations were spaced one
days journey (by horse, I guess) apart. That would probably be 10 to 15 miles which is
very close for a man on a motor vehicle. I do not know if any of those original water sources
are still viable, even with a little work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Road
 
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You can usually dig for water at the base of any large hill/mountain in the desert. Look carefully at the base of the higher ground for dried up brush and so on just waiting for the next rain storm to leaf out for a while. Dig a few holes and you'll usually find water. Another trick is to dig a hole in the sand, cover it with a cotton cloth held with sand or stone around the edges and a container in the bottom of the hole at the center of the cloth. Overnight dew will wet the cloth and it will drip into the container. You can usually get from a half pint to pint from each hole and several of them can provide a surprising quantity of water.

In the early 80s I was an advisor in the Republic of Sudan (east Africa) and with their army on a patrol boat and on the White Nile about 100 miles south of the Egyptian border. We made a landing on the west bank and hiked up the steep hills to a small Arab village about ten miles from the river. The old mullah in the village mosque was a great old guy and I talked to him for a couple of hours through my Sudanese interpreter. The village had basically been in that spot for something like two thousand years. The records the old mullah preserved in the mosque recorded the last rain at 800 years ago! Really! Okay, we're drinking Arab coffee and I'm looking down the perhaps one block long main street of the village to a couple hundred cultivated acres just below the village. There was mealy'meal, maize, fruit trees, melons, and so on. I asked the old boy where did they get their water? He walked outside with me and pointed up at the higher hills to the west and to a huge bowl in the face of one of the hills (or low mountains). The bowl was probably a half cubic mile or more and in the center of it was a gigantic rock which was probably the top of one of the hills cracked or broken off in ancient times by an earthquake. Anyway, eons ago, someone discovered that that huge rock collected dew every night and formed a water hole under it. So when the village was first established, the people enlarged the bowl and the storage area under the big rock and rolled lots more smaller rocks down from the hillside. I don't know what you call such a setup, I guess a solar water collector but they got several hundred gallons per night. They used to use very narrow irrigation channels covered with leaves, rocks, watever to retard evaporation. In recent years they had acquired or the government had provided drip irrigation equipment using plastic tubing and so on and they were able to increase their crop land. So there they were in a place where their records claimed no rain in hundreds of years and a couple of thousand feet above the Nile raising crops and livestock using dew water. I can still picture that old black Muslim cleric in my mind, he was a neat old man.
 
All deserts are not the same. Even parts of the Mojave are unique. Joshua Tree has much more vegetation than most of Iraq or Afghanistan, although it has a lot more thorns. Iraq is ultra fine clay silt. Like you would find on a dry lake in the Mojave, but without the alkali and deep enough to make miles of sand dunes. Most of the vegetation I was there was grassy compared to the shrubery and cactus of the American SW. Afghanistan is more rocky, with hard granites; kind of a combination of the eastern Sierras and New Mexico without the flat land. I've spent 30 years in the Mojave Basin, and the Mid-East and Asian Plateau are more different than alike.
 
Agreed on wide variety between and within deserts. Even the north, east and south parts of Joshua Tree are very different from each other.

Re: the myriad ways to make/find water, the question in my mind is would you bet your check on being able to make those work? Will have to experiment w/ those, and solar stills, etc, on a future trip.
 
Both NPS and BLM rangers will tell you to not count on nor use natural water sources for potable water uses.

The reasons are two-fold: First, liability. If they say some natural water source is potable, then they now are required to go have the water periodically tested for potability. The second reason is that some water sources are seasonal. Imagine getting 10-15 miles into the Death Valley back country and the spring you were counting for water is dry that year.

Having said that, my son and I spent four weeks each summer in 2006 and 2008 in the DV and NV deserts. We never had trouble finding water sources. Whether they were potable or not is another matter. Since we carried upwards of 20 gallons with us, it didn't matter.

See my sigline for where I'd rather be....

Al
 
Albin said:
Having said that, my son and I spent four weeks each summer in 2006 and 2008 in the DV and NV deserts. We never had trouble finding water sources. Whether they were potable or not is another matter. Since we carried upwards of 20 gallons with us, it didn't matter.

See my sigline for where I'd rather be....

Al
Click to expand...

I take it you were not on foot? Sounds like fun.
 
candlelight001 said:
I take it you were not on foot? Sounds like fun.
Click to expand...

Just saw your question today. To answer it, no, we were in my '85 Toyota rock crawler, outfitted for long range desert exploration:

- +45 gallons of fuel
-+20 gallons of water
- Two full size spares plus on board air
- Spare parts, liquids, tools etc.
- CB and 2m ham radios

Some pics from our 2008 Desert Summer trip:

Geologists Cabin, Striped Butte Valley, DVNP; July 2008 there was running water just below the cabin:

07-14-08-12-59-06___IMG_0444_Albin.JPG_s.jpg


Warm Springs Cabin, Warm Springs Canyon DVNP; you can't see it in this pic, but there is running water coming down off the mountain in the background to the right of this cabin.

07-14-08-11-35-06___IMG_0731_Al.JPG_s.jpg


Barker Ranch, now burnt down, SW DVNP. 4runner plus the family's chief Jackrabbit Killer shown in the pic:

07-14-08-14-31-50___IMG_0794_Al.JPG_s.jpg


More here: http://www.rocketcityrockcrawlers.com/pubpics/2008_Summer_Desert_Trip/2008_SDT.htm

Thanks,

Al
 
As for water, you CAN bring too much. Sometimes you'll sweat out more in the effort of packing water than the amount of water you bring. There IS some sort of balance when carrying water, and it is all relative to the person and how well they've climatized, their salt intake, etc. Even in the high desert around here you can find sources of water-you may have to dig for it, but you can plan a backpacking trip from water source to water source even in the desert. And exposure prevention has a HUGE affect on the extent of your range in the desert-a good hat, shemagh, long sleeve shirt or jacket and pair of sunglasses are entirely necessary. The Aussies know their gear when it comes to desert living, I've picked up a ton of Kakadu stuff over the last year for brush bumming. Awesome 4Runner :D
 
Thanks for the link to your pics candlelight. Must've been a great time.

When some buddies and I took off on foot through some sections of South Dakota's Badlands, we carried about a gallon each per day. I believe we each had 30 lbs of water in Nalgene containers filling the bulk of our backpacks. This was enough for three days and a little extra. It was enough even in the summer and it was absolutely necessary because the silt and sulfur in the available water holes was waaaaaaay to funky to purify. They also were full of buffalo dung and not at all tempting.

IMG_1316.jpg


The nice thing about carrying your own water is that your pack is considerably lighter at the end of the trip!
 
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