Hiking near Trona

A group that Rocket Boy belongs to had planned a day hike in the hills near Trona for Saturday, so we decided to go along. Of course, the group was meeting at 7:30 am, and we live half an hour away. At 7 am on a Saturday we... aren't up yet, to say the least.

Long story short, we got there somewhat late, as in hours late. But we figured we'd meet up with the group eventually.

We took the Trona Road past Trona. About a quarter mile past the turnoff to the golf course we turned at this sign,

and headed up that little wiggly white line of a road into the hills. We were headed toward Great Falls, where they used to get water for the Trona plant.

After some looking around we found an open area with some parked cars, and Great Falls itself, so we figured the trail was somewhere near there. Fortunately we also found a nice woman who had stayed behind, and she was able to point us in the direction of the trail. She told us that it was too much for her now, but in the old days it would take her about 40 minutes to get to the top, after which it gets easier.

Here we are, ready to start hiking.

And here we are on the only part of the trail that looked like a trail.

Most of the trail was just a rocky path, so narrow that we could barely squeeze past the cacti. In some cases we couldn't even do that. Baby B put his hand on a cactus at one point and I had to tweeze the spines out. Later that night we discovered that Baby A had spines in his hand too, that he hadn't told us about. Cactus spines are a real pain to get out of little hands.

When the hike was over, I looked back up the hill at the trail and couldn't see it. It just disappeared into the side of the hill.

On and on it went, on and on we climbed.

Finally, after almost exactly 40 minutes, we reached the top, and went over, and then it did get easier. We walked a ways further without seeing anyone. Of course, the rest of the group was hours ahead of us. But supposedly they were going to stop somewhere and dig for crystals. Rocket Boy decided that the best plan was to leave me and the kids in a sheltered area, since we were tired, and then he would go look for the rest of the group.

This is where he left us.

It was OK. There was a shaded area where we could crouch against the rocks and eat the snacks we'd brought. And there were little areas nearby to explore, with lots of wildflowers just getting started. This little carpet of flowers will probably be beautiful in a week or two:

But he was gone a long time. Over an hour. And that gave me plenty of time to think about something really creepy that I had recently read, about a group of German tourists who got lost in Death Valley in 1996 and whose remains were finally tracked down in 2009. It's here if you'd like to be totally creeped out too: http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/

Now granted, we were about 45 minutes from our car, which was about 15 minutes from the Trona Road. And a bunch of other people were on the trail too. And it's March, not July, and we were in the Searles Valley, not Death Valley, etc., etc., etc. We were not in danger. But we were in the desert and it felt really remote, and I could not stop thinking about the German mother and what she must have felt, dying in the desert with her four-year-old son. Seriously disturbing.

So when Rocket Boy returned I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Fortunately, he didn't want to stay much longer. He had found the other folks and they were ready to pack up and go, not having found many crystals. We packed up too and headed back down the trail, which was even harder to go down than it had been to go up. Rocket Boy was very sweet and patient with me, letting me hold on to the back of his pack as we crawled down the trail (the twins ran on ahead). "It's like old times," he said cheerfully.

Here we're looking down from the trail to where the cars are parked, and if you look closely you can see a little spot of blue and green about halfway down which is the twins (they ran on ahead).

When we finally made it down, we drove back to Trona and had a late lunch/dinner at Esparza's.

And then we drove back to Ridgecrest where we found a very happy surprise: our other tortoise was sticking his nose out of his burrow for the first time this year. I pulled him all the way out and kissed him, which I'm sure he didn't appreciate, and then put him down next to some little green weeds growing in his pen. He was not ready to eat anything yet, too sleepy. But he was very much alive.

Life in the desert. Gotta love it.