As I mentioned in the last post, a slight mistake in routing led to a fairly excellent offroad adventure to the best campsite I’ve ever been to: Cottonwood Creek. Maybe it’s just the amount of desert dust we’ve been breathing all day, but this place felt like a desert oasis with its tall trees and natural springs. I was tempted to string up my hammock between the trees and spend the rest of our trip right here!
It was still fairly early in the afternoon so we gathered our water and backpacks and headed up into the hills. Jason likes to hike to the top of every single peak he sees, so we made it to the top of the first rock outcropping…and then I realized I was in trouble… there were a few gorges that ran allll the way up to a set of giant peaks in the mountains. That was, as usual, where we were going… No trails this time. We started out walking up the creek beds, but I get paranoid when I think animals can jump on top of me (legit concern, IMHO) so we hiked back up on top of the ridges and followed that for the rest of the hike. We didn’t make it to the tippity top due to fences, terrain, tiredness, and some shady looking mountain goats… but we got darn close! The pictures hardly do it justice. (They were with my iPhone)
Since we were one canyon over from the real petrified canyon, I still found quite a few interesting rocks. (Still using my Google-Fu to identify most of them.) I’ll have to report back later after I toss them in my rock tumbler…
Another interesting feature of these mountains is that they have regions of what feels like concrete that’s been weathered away. Almost similar to the slickrock in Moab, UT. I really wish I knew more about geology.
As you can imagine, the sunset over the desert from our elevated campsite was spectacular. Jason and I stayed up pretty late taking photos of the sunset and of the night sky. It was the clearest I’ve ever seen it with the milky way directly overhead and no moon at all. I wish my photos could do it justice…
The Black Rock Desert is awesome. It’s so beautiful and desolate. Rugged but serene. I want to come back here as soon as I can and explore more of the trails and mountains in the area.
