The Prius didn’t make it very far, maybe 100 yards off of the pavement. Within seconds of having dirt under our tires, KB was yelling at me that the bottom was scraping and we had to turn around. There was nowhere I could turn around. Shelby and Ben stopped talking. Every time the gravel scraped the bottom of the car the tension was turned up a notch. Finally there was a turn out and I was able to stop.
At least the car was out of view.
Every so often, one of us either posts a picture of Yosemite or makes mention of that momentous trip. This was the case about three weeks ago. Shelby posted a picture with the comment that he couldn’t wait to get out there. Ben and I replied that the feeling was mutual. And even more so, that a closer, sooner trip was in high order. A few text messages, some schedule rearranging and a BING search to find somewhere to go and it was set. We were going backpacking in January.
I was given a couple of parameters to work with. 1. It had to be warm enough that no one would have to purchase a new sleeping bag. 2. We only had 2 days for travel and hiking, so it had to be relatively close. For it to be warm, I knew I needed to go South. The first thing that popped into my little brain was Black Canyon City. Unfortunately, that is too far away and Ben doesn’t have a bike. What about Lake Mead?
KB and I had done a day trip down a canyon to the Colorado just below the dam to some hot springs. It was a pretty hike. It was warm and it was within driving distance for an overnighter. We had noticed some camp spots on the bank of the river and had conversed of the possibilities of a return trip, maybe with kayaks and such. As I began to research the area, there were a few possibilities that presented themselves. The best two were the hot springs and Cleopatra Wash.
Cleopatra Wash is the Willy Wonks’s Chocolate Factory of washes. The entire wash is littered with geological oddities. As an added bonus, it gets narrow, has several dry falls and ends at Lake Mead. Search after search returned similar results, not a lot of people going down there and most of them were old, retired looking folks. There was also some before and after shots of one of the falls that suggested that ropes might be needed. We discussed it and decided that the fact that retired folks were making it, we probably could. We would throw a rope in just for good measure. The only real concern was whether or not we would be able to find wood for a fire. We threw in a few fire logs to take care of that.
The four of us loaded into the Hybridized Mooseknuckler Mobile and headed toward the lake. KB and I had already grabbed a couple of fire logs, but it was determined by the group that a couple more might be needed. We also found out, after we had left St. George, that Ben still needed to fill his flask. So we stopped at the Smith’s in Mesquite. Ben grabbed some Heiger and Shelby bought a log. Everything was going pretty much perfectly until the low clearance road that we were going to drive down for a couple of miles, turned out to require a bit more clearance than what we had available. No worries, we came to walk.
We had hoped to be able to drive the three miles from the pavement to where the wash broke off of the road and headed toward the lake. However, we weren’t opposed to getting a few more miles on the legs and the plan had been to drive as far as possible and then hoof it. Hoof it we did. We knocked out the first three miles of our adventure in just over an hour.
Cleopatra Wash blew me away. I’m always surprised by how cruel and beautiful the desert can be all at the same time. We were awed by the towering spires, the changing colors of rocks, the giant holes in walls that appeared to jut straight out of nothing and even a few stone formations that we weren’t entirely sure how the fuck had formed.
And then of course, there is the cruelty. This was yesterday. So it was January and when the sun hit us, it was hot. Despite our worries about firewood, there were numerous mesquite trees along the way down. I fell victim twice before I started making sure I didn’t get too close. Ben was full on attacked by one, walking straight into its grasp and only realizing what he had done when its claws began to impede his forward motion. The group was needed to extract him from the bush. KB took advantage of the situation and pulled one of the branches the wrong way, digging the spine into his arm.
We made group progress and enjoyed that the dry falls broke up the monotony of walking down a wash. All of them went except the last two. The penultimate could go by dropping pack and down climbing, but there was a pretty easy walk around that we used instead. The last 1/4 mile of the wash drops into a slot about seven feet wide. With some proper equipment it could be sent. Seeing that we had a short rope and no harnesses or anchors, we used the hike around which consisted of about a 200 foot climb followed by a 600 foot descent to the gravel beach at the head of Cleopatra Cove.
We set up camp, wandered around the cove and began to consume the food/booze that we had brought. The cove is East facing. This meant that the giant ball of warmth dropped out of our view early, at about 4. We started the fire around 5 and were plenty glad we had dragged the fire logs down with us. Sure, there was some wood that we did burn, but certainly not enough to keep us warm for about 5 hours. The conversation got deep and then shallow and then deep and then shallow. And then we went to bed.
The sun broke early (see above for reason), we were able to get a small fire going until the cove warmed up. We broke camp and followed our tracks back up the wash to the car.
And that was my weekend, what did you do?
P. L. and R.
