Beyond the Setting Sun

Operatic Skateboarding in the Valley of Death

'Into the Valley of Death rode the gallant...'  The gallant who?  The question was going through my hung-over head, when a sudden twinge of pain came from my bowels.  I slung my pack down and searched for toilet roll.  With mounting anxiety, I searched through the whole pack... and came up with nothing.  The dull ache inside continued and I knew I was going to explode at any moment.  Walking around with clenched buttocks, I searched the flat scrubby desert looking for paper.  There were wrappers from chocolate bars, cans of beer and styrofoam cups, but no paper.  I waddled around a bit more and found a pile of Polaroid photos of naked women.  All glossy, they were of no use.  I tried to stay calm.  I looked around at the cacti by the roadside and there, blowing in the wind and caught up on a prickly pear, was a length of tissue paper.  With a big smile, I waddled up, grabbed a hold of it and dropped my trousers.  In moments I was done and a great feeling of relief came over me.

I was in the Pahrump Valley.  Pahrump was where I would leave Nevada and enter California, the final State on the journey.  That morning, though, my head hurt from the Tuaca whisky, my stomach rumbled and I didn't feel at all good.

As I walked on the hung-over feeling slowly passed and as night fell the lights of Pahrump City showed up ahead.

At Pahrump I gave interviews to the 'Pahrump City Times' and 'Death Valley Gazette' newspapers.  All was well.  The temperature was now in the eighties, as the wintery spell was over and I had dropped to an elevation of around 2,000 feet.

It was Saturday, 11th February and I wore a 'Mountain Springs Bar' baseball cap, sunglasses, a bandana over the back of my neck, a Nathan Adelson Hospice T-shirt and a pair of shorts.  On my feet was a pair of Nike running shoes that a local store had given me.  My other shoes had just about fallen apart and had been binned.

Just a month ago I'd been 7,500 feet up and the temperature had been minus 29.  Ahead was Death Valley, where I would descend to 280 feet below sea level.  In summer the temperature could go as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.  You could fry eggs on the rocks, or so the story went, but now, before spring came, the temperature should only be in the eighties or nineties.

My two-pint container of water was full and the sun was bright and warm.  After the hangover of the day before I felt much better.  The walking was flat and easy.  At Death Valley Junction my mileage would be 4,393.  Death Valley, The Sierras, Yosemite and San Francisco: all would come in the next 600 miles.  In a month I could be done, if I could get through The Sierras.  If I couldn't, it would mean a detour of another three or four hundred miles.  Somehow I had to get over the mountains.

Darkness fell as I walked on.  I was on the Bella Vista Highway, which started off as tarmac, but ended up as loose gravel as I pushed deeper into the desert.  I tried to tune to a local radio station.  For a second I got a blast of The Doors' 'Break on Through to the Other Side'.  Static drowned it out; then I managed to pick up The Eagles singing 'Hotel California'.  The words came to 'you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave', when the sound subsided into a hissing.  I figured I must have reached California.

Far off to my right the lights of Amargosa Valley twinkled.  That was the nearest town.  The valley I followed was flat-bottomed and formed the bed of the Amargosa River... that was when there was any water in it.  Usually as dry as a bone, it only ran once in a blue moon, when heavy rains came.  Virtually all the  rain fell on The Sierras, with hardly any reaching the soil of this part of the arid South-West.  It felt like a land where life had forgotten to begin.

The road was now just a trail of dust and loose gravel.  In the dark of night a fork in the rough trail came up.  I had been told to stay to the left.  I took the dusty left fork and the track became smaller still.  It looked like very few people came this way.