Desert Trail Thru-Hike: Mexico to Canada (youtube slide show)

[Colter]

This year I spent 4 1/2 months hiking 2,223 miles from Jacumba, California to the border of Washington/Idaho/Canada on the little-known Desert Trail.

If you appreciate adventure and beautiful outdoor scenery, you'll enjoy this video. Please check it out!

[Mags]

Thanks for sharing as always. I enjoyed the FB posts of your trip. Looks like WILDERNESS with all caps for sure. Off to watch the video!

[imscotty]

Wow, just beautiful, thank you for sharing.

[map man]

That is a great slide show and amazing hike. Did you have to set up a lot of your own water caches before you started the trip?

[Colter]

Thanks Mags!

I appreciate that imscotty!

Map Man, I set up many caches. There were very few dependable water sources along the first half of the trail. I put in about one food/water cache for every day or so on the trail as I drove south from Lovelock, Nevada to the border. That took several days. After using up all those caches, I bussed it back to the border and picked up my empty caches, then laid out another set northwards. Usually I buried ammo cans to store cached food, and just buried the water jugs/bottles next to them. That worked well. I went back and picked up everything later.

Once I hit the Oregon border I didn't have to use many caches. When I got into bear country, I hung the few remaining caches. In northern Oregon, I stopped caching altogether and used local water and hitched or walked into towns for supplies, all the way to Canada.

[map man]

You know, I think any time from now on when a WB member is trying to figure out the logistics of water and food on a long distance hike they should just PM you. Did you have any tricks for remembering where all those caches had been placed?

In the little bit of desert hiking I've done up until now I've found the desert to be a humbling, but beautiful, place to walk, but I have a hard time explaining it exactly to those who haven't ventured there.

[Colter]

One of my tricks was redundancy. I really, really needed to find those caches! I primarily used my iphone with GPS, but had another GPS as backup. I took a photo of each cache site, and kept paper notes of the cache contents along with a written description of where the cache was.

I had a system of marking the buried cache with stones, in such a way that I could recognize it but it wouldn't draw attention. I chose spots near recognizable points, say near a big boulder where the route crossed a road.

I found every cache site. With two of them, someone had inexplicably moved my marker stones. With one I recognized where it was anyway, and with the other the GPS was invaluable. Most places I could walk right to them without any technology or notes.

[The Solemates]

very nice. enjoyed the video. looks like you had a blast.

[Dogwood]

SCHWEET! Great video. You put that together exceptionally well. I think I shed a tear watching that Colter. You have a very nice mix of hiking adventures.

[fiddlehead]

AWESOME!
Great job.
Looks like a great trail.
As with so many of our trails in the US, the northern terminus looks like the best part.
But, really, I do like desert hiking too.
The logistics must have been a real challenge.

[tiptoe]

I really enjoyed this. Beautiful photography and nice editing.

[Colter]

Thanks, Solemates, Dogwood, fiddlehead, and tiptoe.

I truly did enjoy this trail. The logistics were more complicated than the other long trails I've done, and a big part of that was figuring out most of the resupply/caching issues on my own. I hope other people will do this trail, and I'll be happy to help them with their planning.

The desert is awesome. I especially enjoy the morning and evening light and how the landscape and ecosystems change. This trail is off the beaten path, for sure. A good indication is finding (and leaving) arrowheads and spearheads right on the route. I only saw backpackers once all summer long, except for the very last day when I ran into about five.

Variety adds so much to the experience. It was really fun to first get into aspens with frequent little brooks in the Pueblos of southern Oregon. The Blue Mountains and the Selkirks were also a world apart from the desert country. The finish, as you said fiddlehead, was especially dramatic.

[Dogwood]

I've enjoyed hiking in the high desert in CA, NV and UT. It's a wonderful place that is surely not deserted, as your slide show amply demonstrates, but it certainly has its challenges just two of which are water and resupply. For example, NV is the most arid state in the U,S. and is adamant about not allowing hitch-hiking. Hitchhiking is illegal in NV. I've been stopped nearly everytime I've attempted to hitchhike there. Law enforcement is anal about it! And, in most of NV, including where much of the DT is routed, law enforcement is not accustomed to seeing long distance backpackers so are very suspicious of anyone with a backpack much less hitch-hiking! The DT is what it is, but I think it misses the BEST of NV hiking around Tahoe, Great Basin NP, Toyaibe Crest and Ruby Crest, Arc Dome areas, etc. Did you hike through/near the Mt Charleston area near Las Vegas? Does the DT use the Centennial Trail in ID? I ask because I haven't been able to find a clearrly diescribed route description for the entire DT.

I've only heard about the Desert Trail a few times. Maybe others have thru-hiked it as it seems you have but I don't know of anyone that has done a thru-hike of it, as you have. Congrats! Must have been a GREAT adventurous trek offering oodles of solitude. Colter, correct me if I'm wrong. After doing a little more research, including looking over the Desert Trail Association(DTA) site, the DT is VERY MUCH still a work in progress with no actual official trail constructed yet in some(many?) segments and consequently no maps even exists for some(many?) segments. Was there much road walking involved? Can you give an estimate of the amt of road walking? It looks as if, even if doing HUGE MPD, a thru-hiker or long section hiker would need to be supported or have mandatory caches or be faced with long hikes out to resupply. Would you agree? What was your plan for finding water? I know you said you had a GPS, which would probaly be wise on the DT, but what did you do for maps(the short version. LOL)?

Thanks for sharing.

[Colter]

Hi Dogwood,

Thanks for the interest and your insight.

Yes, water and resupply is a big issue. I solved most of this issue with numerous caches. I think I only actually hitched 3 times, in and out of Hawthorne, NV, and into Burns, OR, where I got a ride back to the trail with friends. It's interesting after seeing your comments because a policeman in Hawthorne parked a short distance away for about 15 minutes while I hitched out of Hawthorne!

In addition to caches and those few hitches I walked right through a few resupply points, like Mecca, CA; Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley; Luning, NV where there are no stores but a mail drop is possible; Lovelock, NV, a good resupply town; Fields, OR; Dayton, Spokane and Newport, WA.

There is very little constructed trail along the whole route. The only specifically constructed trail of which I'm aware is in the Pueblo Mountains. There are some Forest Service trails near the Canada border. Otherwise it's a route, not a trail. It is an officially planned route from Mexico to near Burns, OR and there are guidebooks or maps for that stretch. I planned my own route from there. The Desert Trail Association is trying to bring that last segment to a vote to designate it as the official route. North of the official part of the route where there are no maps I used mostly Forest Service maps and the .kml route as laid out on my iPhone and GPS.

There are many, many miles of cross-country walking, wash walking, ridge walking. That probably comprises most of the Desert Trail. There is a lot of jeep road walking (and from the Blue Mountains north Forest Roads,) but it's mostly a good kind of road walking, usually with little or no traffic. For example, on one day of almost all jeep road walking I saw one vehicle, and I later found where I mountain lion had just dragged a horse across the road to feed in the big sage! In the Blue Mtns I walked for two days straight on Forest Service Roads without seeing a vehicle. I did see elk, coyotes, deer and a bobcat though. Of course in some places there were gravel roads with some vehicles, but that's just part of the game on the Desert Trail. The longest stretch of paved road walking is probably the section into and out of Newport, WA, about a day's walk.

I have the whole route roughly plotted on Google Maps, including dozens of actual camps and points I visited along the way, with notations.

For a better feel for the trail, folks might want to check out my journal from the Desert Trail hike.

[handlebar]

I enjoyed the video and am about a month into your blog on postholer. Sounds like it was a great adventure.

[The Will]

Thanks for sharing. I had not heard of anyone doing this route before. As an aside, I believe we may have met on your 2010 PCT hike. I think I gave you a ride in the Lake Tahoe area. When learning of your PCT hike and trans-Alaska hike I believe I disclosed my AT thru-hike and a 4,600 mile canoeing-cycling combo trip through western Canada. Does that sound familiar? I was driving a blue Subaru Baja with a kayak in the back.

[SCRUB HIKER]

Thanks for sharing that slide show, along with the map and your journals. I have to say that I love Oregon's and Washington's High Desert mountains more than any other landscape I've seen in the world so far (although as soon as I say that I'm starting to think of competing loves, but that's neither here nor there). Did you approach the Steens summit from Wildhorse Lake/Canyon in early June? How steep and snowy was that? I was there in late June of this year and had a bugger of a time trying to get down to the lake (and back up the next day).

What were the nature of your wildlife encounters? Rattlers must be present the whole way, and you mentioned that mountain lion, but was there anything else that unnerved you or impressed you? Anything that you saw that would be considered rare even by desert standards?

I'm intrigued by the possibility of one day attempting this trail, but certainly later on once I'm confident in my ability to confront solitude. The fact that you've shown that it's possible means I'll be keeping it in the back of my mind for awhile. Thanks again.

[Colter]

...Did you approach the Steens summit from Wildhorse Lake/Canyon in early June? How steep and snowy was that? I was there in late June of this year and had a bugger of a time trying to get down to the lake (and back up the next day).

What were the nature of your wildlife encounters? Rattlers must be present the whole way, and you mentioned that mountain lion, but was there anything else that unnerved you or impressed you? Anything that you saw that would be considered rare even by desert standards?

I'm intrigued by the possibility of one day attempting this trail...

Hi Scrub Hiker,

Yup, I climbed Steens from Wildhorse Lake, hitting the ridge just west of the summit. You can see a photo and a description of the climb in my journal. 5:52 to 6:07 in the video posted above is on Steens Mountain. It was steep, and snowy, but doable.

I had lots of wildlife encounters. Only saw about 3 rattlers all summer which is hard to believe, and no close calls. Only saw one bear, too, I think, and parts of northern OR and WA were "bear rich." For the first time ever I had one black bear figure out how to get one of my hanging caches down. He apparently climbed the leaning tree it was hanging in and either pulled the rope up or somehow reached far enough to hook it with his claws. I saw many desert bighorns which was fun. Lots of wild burros and wild horses. I had a gray fox tag along like a dog for about an hour. Perfectly healthy, and acted as if it was no big deal. A little kit fox tried to steal some of my food from next to me one night in death valley. Had a bobcat trot down the trail towards me once, and the same day a coyote and a snowshoe hare did the same thing, the hare coming within a few feet of me! In camp that same night another hare ran right past my feet and I looked over to see a cow elk looking at me as short distance away.

[Colter]

As you said, you gave me a ride from the PCT into South Lake Tahoe. We both knew Strix and Sharpshin, whom you knew from the AT and I knew from the CDT. I'm kind of amazed that when we exchanged hiking stories that we didn't recognize that we'd exchanged PMs at some point in the past about those very adventures. (You canoed to the Arctic Ocean and biked back to Alberta!) I guess it was because it was out of context in some way and we both naturally assumed we must be total strangers. I figured it out later at some point and I kept meaning to get back to you on it and never did.

[garlic08]

Simply awesome. Congratulations and thanks.

It looks like your end point is in or near the Salmon-Priest Wilderness. I hiked through there on the PNT in '09. (I saw caribou sign there, but no animals.)