Just returned from a 3 day backpacking trip on the CRHT Nov 8-10.
We started hiking around noon on the 8th and finished around noon on the 10th, so basically a combined two full days of hiking.
We had two cars and ended up running our own shuttle. Leaving Cathedrals City and doing all the water caching took us almost 4 hours.
We started at Black Rock and cached water at Upper Covington Flat (~7.5 miles), Juniper Flats(~18.5miles), Twin Tanks (~29 miles). We wanted to use Geology Tour Road cache, but it was washed out from flooding and inaccessible.
Day one we covered about a mile past the Covington cache at about 8.5 miles. There was more uphill than I expected even though I had looked at elevations. We were starting to run out of daylight as the sunset was around 4:30 pm. The scenery was gorgeous.
The stars were amazing, and the camp was actually colder than I had expected. I had a fleece, light puffy and hat and was still chilly enough to retreat to my 15 degree bag before 7:30pm.
Day 2 was our big day. We covered 17 miles, stopping at Juniper Flats to resupply water. We left a gallon a person at each cache point and that was sufficient. I was carrying a 3L bladder and a Nalgene bottle. I made sure to camel up as much as possible before hitting the cache and drank excess water.
Day 2 required us to hike about 6 miles after our cache before camp, then another 3 the next morning. We had to be a bit more thoughtful about water consumption, but it worked out just fine.
We covered a lot of ground and saw some gorgeous areas of the park, but I was beat after carrying a pack 17 miles. We camped about a mile past Geology Tour Road. It was noticeably warmer at this location. I sat out in my puffy and admired the stars for quite a while.
In the morning, we were treated to a song from a nearby coyote who was putting on quite a show.
We hit the trail fairly early and caught the Twin Tanks cache after 3 miles. We added each only carried about 2L from the cache point and used the trash’s cans at the location to get rid of our empty water jugs and camp trash so we didn’t have to schlep it the final 7 miles.
The last 7 miles were mostly a gentle downhill and the easiest miles of the trip. There is a little “fuck you” uphill section the last half a mile, but it makes the parking lot a welcome sight.
Great trip and highly recommended!