Huff and Puff and Blow Your Tent Down

Thursday, May 22nd. I started hiking on a cloudy and windy day in the Mojave desert and by noon it was raining hard. I used my pack cover and my rain jacket to keep my gear and upper body dry, but my pants got soaked, it was very cold, and the wind made it feel even colder. Around 2pm I reached a water cache and enjoyed meeting the older gentleman who stocks the cache with water for hikers. As I was leaving, it started raining again and this time there was lightning and thunder so I decided to get off the ridge and setup camp ASAP before I got soaked again. I found a sandy knoll to set up my tent and things were fine until about midnight when the winds picked up and all the stakes that held down my tent pulled out of the ground and the only thing holding my tent down was me! Everything was flapping and flailing in the wind so I got my wits about me, dressed, put on my headlamp (thank you Eva) and stepped into the darkness to fix the problem. The sandy ground was too soft to hold the tent stakes properly and there were no rocks to pile on top of them, so I decided to ditch my rain fly (the cover that goes over the tent to keep rain out) and just stake down the tent itself. It is mostly bug netting with a waterproof bathtub floor, but since I could see stars, I knew it wasn't going to rain any more. The stakes held, but it was very windy in my tent so I had to bury myself inside my sleeping bag to keep warm. Eventually I fell back to sleep and when I woke up around 6am on Friday, the sun was shining! I ate a quick breakfast of granola and packed up my tent and gear and began hiking to Highway 58. For most of the hike, I was in a wind farm again and the wind was gusting furiously. It's hard to describe or explain how much harder the wind makes hiking, but it's not an exaggeration that I felt beat up by the wind.