Good night sleep- our first time sleeping "cowboy" on the trip (no tent, just on the sleeping pad, in your sleeping bag). I woke and saw the moon rising over a city in the distance. Up and hiking by 0615, lots of flat mile ahead of us this day. Many clouds in the distance hovering around some mountains we were to climb later. Met up with "The Brothers" (Brit, Water Buffalo and Chunks) and before long...it started to sprinkle! Wow- our first rain the whole trip! We put on our trusty precips and away we went. The sprinkles turned into rain, ummm, yuck and with no rainpack covers, our packs soon were a bit heavier than we really wanted. Everyone said, "Oh, it never rains in the desert, and if it does, its only for an hour- then the sun comes out again." Well, the rain turned into HAIL and then thunder! This is not what we expected for the Mojave Desert, that is for sure! Wet shoes, wet packs, wet everything! Yuck! We kept hiking and came upon a couple hikers who had started a small fire to stay warm by! Yeah- Neighbor, Chief, Wasa and I all huddled around and it felt great! The hail stopped and the sky started to brighten, so we decided to make a run for it- another 3 miles to a spot where we could camp. The trail was so waterlogged at this point, rocks started sliding down the trail, eek! The hail started up again and then the thunder- so we got to the canyon- we set up the tents and climbed in to get warm. Only 3pm, but we were at 4,000 ft and had 13 miles to go until we got to the road to Mojave and the trail goes up above 6,000 ft and we didn't want to mess around with the cold winds, hail, and being soaked and have to camp in the snow. Cooked 2 meals for dinner and went to bed by 6pm!
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