Day 17: Lake Fire Detour - Part One

Whitewater Preserve campsite - Yucca Valley America's Best Value Inn hotel
Mile 219 - 221 of PCT + mile 0 - 24 of Snowman's Lake Fire detour
Total 26 miles (another crazy maraton distance!)






I started walking shortly after midnight. It was the two aggressive raccoons who wanted to eat all my food who forced me to leave the camp at this unusual hour.
Walking the PCT at night was a new experience. I walked much slower, carefully watching every step. Around 2 AM my steps and headlamp light woke up the German hiker Bluecheese camping in a little  valley just off-trail. I hope I didn't scare her too much. She is walking until the end of the open PCT section to the southern edge of the fire closure, and then walking back to Ziggy and Bear and after that taking a bus to Big Bear and again walking to the northern edge of the closure. A very strong and brave hiker!
At mile 221 I leave the PCT following the directions of "Magician's Lake Fire" detour. A sign "Mission Creek Stone House 2 miles" shows the way. Around 3 am first birds started singing. At the stone house there should be water and a toilet. The door of the toilet building was closed so I walked away behind a bush to dig a cathole. In the rush I left my backpack under another bush and I couldn't find it! After a very long search in pitch dark finally my backpack appeared. Only then I found out that there was an open door at the other side of the toilet building ...
2 miles west along Mission Creek Dr the sun finally showed up. What a relief to see the daylight! And another brave hiker doing the detour greeted me as I was sitting on a rock and checking my blisters. He's doing the Facebook version of the "Magician's Lake Fire" detour. Me being crazy and trying to be different, I decide to try out a longer variant of the detour with more wilderness walking and less highway walking. If everything goes well we'll meet again in Yucca Valley!






Around 6 am I cross the highway 62 and continue straight ahead on Mission Creek road (detour mile 5). The road becomes an unpaved dirt track.








There are tons of rubbish along the tracks. Not only us Czechs think the nature is a trash dump. The Americans are just as ignorant as Czechs :-(

There are some side tracks. Fortunately my Google walking directions work well and direct me to a track heading due east along a powerline.








The track changes into an abandoned road. To my right are remains of an abandoned residential housing subdivision construction site in the middle of the flat desert valley. Probably it was abandoned after the 2008 real estate economic bubble bankruptcy.






The track crosses a dry river channel. After crossing the river bed I can see traffic lights at the intersection of Mission Lakes Blvd and Indian Canyon Dr.
And I meet the first human being in this spooky desolate area: The artist is from Hungary and she is decorating the gray concrete wall with a beautiful painting.




The next section of the detour goes through a residential area and next to a golf course "Mission Lakes Country Club". The residents show good effort in conserving water in California's ongoing four year drought. All the gardens have drought tolerant plants and no grass lawns. But the golf course seems to be wasting tons of water, its grass dark green and its irrigation sprinklers turned on at full volume.








The restrooms of the golf course clubhouse are open and I think hikers can take water here to get through the upcoming hot and dry desert section: Little Morongo Canyon.






The entrance to the canyon is spooky. There are car wrecks and abandoned concrete mill buildings. Luckily I meet a very kind man walking his dog. We walk past infamous American signs "private property" and "trespassers will be prosecuted" and he tells me don't worry, local people walk their dogs here all the time and 1 mile up the road is all public BLM land.








A security vehicle drives by and the driver just smiles at us and says nothing. In a few minutes I enter public land. I'm safe. The dirt road is soft and sandy with deep tracks of motorbikes. It is extremely difficult to walk on. I have sand everywhere in my shoes and socks. It is hot and dry and the sparse shrubs provide zero shade. This is a real desert. Every step forward is painful.








After a long slow walk I finally find a little bit of shade under one of the exotic "Joshua trees". This is a tree-like form of the yucca that grows up to 7 meters high. The famous Joshua Tree national park is only a few miles away.








After a much needed long break under the joshua tree the road climb becomes steeper. The surface is still deep unforgiving sand. Looking back I can see the San Gorgonio and San Jacinto mountains. On steep slopes below the road switchbacks there are more car wrecks.








Finally I'm on the top of the hill. Yucca Valley is only 3.5 miles away.






The city of Yucca Valley is a small desert town. A few other hikers are staying at the America's Best Value Inn hotel. A superb and inexpensive place to stay with outdoor swimming pool, hot tub, big spacious rooms and laundromat across the street. The lady at the reception has hard time recognizing my face on my ID card. Did my beard really grow so long? Finally she let's me in, I take a shower, eat delicious Eggplant and rice at Panda Chinese restaurant, get a much needed foot massage from a skilled Chinese guy, and for the first time in more than 2 weeks enjoy sleeping in a real bed.
Today was definitely my hardest day on the PCT!