June 17th – McIvers’ Spring Jeep Road to Spanish Needle Creek

Woke up dry, but with a wet tent. However, the sun was shining with blue skies so we were pretty confident that we would eventually be able to dry out our tent. Headed through the burned out area on a rolling jeep road. We noticed fresh bear tracks walking past our camp. Guess we had a bear visitor last night…but luckily we didn’t hear him and he didn’t go hunting for our food.

The trail was pretty boring – just rolling hills through quite a bit of burned area. Kind of reminded me of a logged out area. I was glad we hadn’t pushed further since the rolling jeep road was hard on the legs.

Cruised through the 10 miles pretty fast toward Walker Pass since the terrain was relatively easy. We ran into some day hikers just a mile or so before Walker Pass. They were excited to see “thru-hikers”. They told us about a lady sitting at the trailhead with cold soda pop in coolers and a sign pointing toward “Trail Magic”. Our eyes lit up…and we really started cruising down the trail. We hoped that the trail angel would still be there when we arrived.

Right before Walker Pass we see the florescent poster board sign pointing toward “Trail Magic” down at the campground. We raced down to the campground and sure enough, there was a large canopy set up with a table, camp chairs, several coolers of beer and pop, chips, fruit, Pop Tarts, and pretty much any other imaginable goody. Trail angel Okie Girl introduced herself. We were so happy to meet her and finally have some in-person trail magic. Turns out she had been hanging out at Walker Pass the last 2 weeks handing out trail magic. She’s hard core…what an angel. I downed 2 Sprites and Tom had 2 beers. We chowed on just about every food item available. It was fantastic. I think we stayed over an hour.

Unfortunately, it was only 10:30am and we still had many more miles to go that day. We eventually pulled ourselves away from the trail magic and headed up for another big climb. It was getting hot and our bellies were bloated and full. Somehow we still plugged up the mountain…and managed to eat lunch an hour later. It’s amazing how much food we can put away when hiking!

Ran into a group of older section-hikers who gave us the scoop on water further down the trail. Once again, they were excited to meet thru-hikers and had lots of questions and wanted to take our pictures. We felt like celebrities on the trail. Strange to be on the other side since I used to be one of those people ooogling the thru-hikers.

After a brief chat with the section hikers, we were on our way down the trail. We came across a big ol’ rattler strewn out across the trail. I called on Tom for snake duty. He first tried throwing some sand to scare off the snake. Didn’t work. Then he threw a couple of small rocks…didn’t work…just caused the snake to start rattling. I was excited to finally hear the famous snake rattle. Amazing walking nearly 600 miles through desert and not hearing a snake rattle. Well, I finally got my wish! But we were standing there, with a mad rattlesnake who was refusing to move. We were on steep terrain, making it tough to walk around the snake. Eventually the snake moved to the bush right by the trail, but was still rattling and definitely within striking distance. Tom started throwing bigger rocks which made the snake rattle even more. We eventually had no choice but to scramble up hill to avoid the snake.

The next several miles were beautiful. We were hiking high – about 7000 feet elevation – traversing rocky cliffs. We finally were feeling like we were getting closer to the Sierras. But the hike was hot and exposed. We had an early dinner atop on of the saddles and then headed for another descent and ascent. The section hikers had promised of water at one of the Spanish Needle Creeks. We were cutting it close – Tom ran out of water and I was on my last drops. We kept coming to dry creek beds. Just as the sun was beginning to go down and I was getting really nervous, we hit the one spring-fed creek. It was a beautiful, trickle of cool, clear water. We rejoiced and quickly filled about 6 platypus bladders full of water. Weighted down with water, we searched for the first camp spot. Luckily, there was a lovely grassy bench just above the creek with lots of flat spots for camping. Although it looked like prime bear territory, Tom did an excellent job scaring off all bears in the near vicinity with his crazy bear hollering. I was just glad there weren’t any other campers around because I am sure he would have scared them off as well!