Heat

When I was younger the sun was a beautiful thing. Radiation, Desiccation, Dehydration, Carcinoma: they meant nothing to me. Nothing to the point that I would spend 1978-79 riding my bicycle around Europe and Morrocco without hat or sunscreen, roasting my lumpy little nose until the skin there toughened to a red crust that flaked and hardened and lifted away from the subdural structure and it felt like I was wearing a mask. I get queasy thinking about it.

Information has made my relationship to the sun has more complex.

Nonetheless, we left Phantom Ranch too late and with insufficient water, and we didn’t figure that out until it was too late to turn back. We wasted precious and cool morning hours as I dealt with my disastrous blisters and tried to decide whether we should postpone continuing for a day. Then, an hour into the hike, after climbing the 1200 feet out of the shade and onto the Tonto platform, the sun hitting us like a fever and already well into the first water bottle, we found two bottles we had forgotten to fill. A couple of cute girls distracted us as we were filling up at the communal pump before the hike, pathetically confirming all of your male stereotypes. You’re welcome.

No Shade (The Tonto Platform) photo: David Boothby

The 9 miles to Clear Creek Campground were advertised as shade and water-free, and that was very close to the truth. The heat slowed us down and wiped us out. A couple of large boulders along the way offered shade and kept us going for several hours, but we finally collapsed under a tiny overhang in a dry wash, literally digging ourselves in, still miles from our destination and with less than a pint of water each. David’s assessment: “We are FU#K%D”.

He’s rarely so pithy.

Sitting still meant drying up, but the withering fatigue paralyzed us. We moved our stuff under a rocky overhang further down the wash, and slept some, and ate, and lethargically debated exactly how far we had to go, and whether we should wait for nightfall. We wondered why, exactly, we hadn’t brought a map. Something about just hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and taking a right…What little shade we had managed shrank as concern and dehydration argued for action, and finally we dragged ourselves up, and hit the trail. My legs quivered, and though I tried to ration my last bit of water it didn't last long. I guess we were 52 year old guys who hadn't quite gotten the hang of that yet, relying on what we knew about our younger selves, reaffirming any other masculine stereotype you were hanging onto. Glad to help.

Lucky I had blisters from yesterday. Big frigging blisters with a lot to say. Nagging blisters. BITCHY blisters. Mountains of throbbing pus all over my aching feet blisters.

Useful distraction from the lack of water.

The conversation with my feet went on for an hour and forever, the sun really got down to business, we saw no more large boulders, but we did not stop until we finally looked down on Clear Creek Campground and found another little hole to crawl into. No more water, and two miles down off the plateau to the creek: at our pace it would take us an hour or more. 20 minutes of further dessication and we started down, two raisinettes in boots and blisters, down a steep and narrow set of switchbacks across dark red dirt on a south-facing slope that had been baking all day.

Clear Creek Campsite

Clear Creek Campground, United States