March 23
Mileage: 4
89 miles hiked

I wake at midnight. Fuck. Fuck!!! I yank open the zipper on my sleeping bag, run barefoot out of the cave into the black, wailing night and scratch a cathole in the sand at the last possible second. Why did I drink those three liters of alkaline water, I think, as my guts cramp and the dogs at the ranch next door go wild with their barking. I’d read other hikers’ blogs, I knew what would happen if I drank that dang alkaline water. Why why why. After I’m exhausted and empty I crawl back in my sleeping bag and lay there in the silent cave for a moment before- fuck! It hits me again. I fight my way back into the wind, walk around the mountain to the campground with its bathroom building, and find myself a warm stall where I can sit on the toilet and just chill. I stay sitting on this toilet until after one a.m. On the plus side, since I brought my phone, I get all of my photo editing done.

When I wake in the morning I feel like absolute hell. Like I’ve been run over and dug up from a riverbed. And the weather is still cold and stormy- they say it snowed higher up in the mountains. We have a slow morning doing our resupplies and by the time we hike out of Needles outpost it’s nearly noon. Two miles up a winding wash in deep sand and I realize that I just. Cannot. Fucking hike. Today. Dan is nice about this. Dan is always really nice. He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I am so grateful for him, today. We sit in the dirt going over our options- I can find a place to lie down for a few hours, and then we can start hiking again. We can go back to the cave at Needles and spend another night. We can hitch to Moab.

Really, I just want to be warm. Warm and close to a toilet. My van is in Moab, I can be warm in there. Moab has toilets.

Hitching to Moab takes a really long time. It’s 5 p.m. by the time we reach my van. All is better, though, once I’ve consumed a massive plate of nachos, and Dan a burrito, at a taco place. That oughta stop me up. Then errands, laundry and the gear store, where I find a shirt that hopefully won’t get stiff with salt and chafe my back like my white desert shirt. We find a quiet place to park that is also magically near a bathroom. And then, rest. Finally.

Photos on instagram