A Helping Hand and a Light in the Darkness
It was a beautiful day in the California desert last November when I set out for a solo hike in the Mecca Hills Wilderness. My time frame for the 6.5-mile Grottoes Trail was a little tight but I came well-prepared; I had done my research and downloaded the AllTrails map.
The trail wound through a gorgeous desert landscape of hills, ridges, and canyons. Rugged badlands stretched out for miles. Vertical canyon walls stood majestically and desert fan palm oases seemed to appear out of nowhere. There was hardly a soul in sight. It was desert hiking at its finest.
As I began the more difficult back loop section, I saw a much older man sitting off the trail in the shade, looking totally dejected. I stopped to chat with him, inquiring if he was OK and if he was doing the Grottoes Trail as well. He was physically fine but had been warned by other hikers that he should turn around if he didn’t have a headlamp for the grottoes further ahead. This retiree, Len, didn’t even have a map and was on the wrong trail altogether; he was about to retrace his steps in defeat back to the trailhead.
When I offered for him to come along with me on the trail and share my headlamp, his eyes immediately brightened and it was as if he came back to life. I reassured him that I didn’t mind at all and that, if anything, there'd be safety in numbers out there. Len was extremely grateful and we set out, but soon the trail seemed to disappear.
We were in for a lot of challenging route-finding, as the AllTrails map often proved unreliable. To his credit, Len did really well on the steep uphill sections, and he was a good sport even when we had to backtrack. We shared a bit about ourselves as we hiked: both of us were from the eastern U.S. but were drawn to the desert and the unbelievable variety of our public lands.
Len and I at last descended to the trail’s namesake grottoes, where the sheer sandstone canyon walls mean there’s only one way forward. The grottoes are essentially slot canyons where giant rocks high above blot out the sky. They start out short enough so that daylight is visible at the other end, making for mysterious, alluring passages. But the later ones are so long that they’re pitch black inside, sometimes with tricky internal ledges to scramble over.
We worked out a system: I’d go first with my headlamp, making sure that the route was doable for us. Then I’d backtrack to hand Len the headlamp or stay further ahead but shine the light toward him so he could see the obstacles in his path. The grottoes became so narrow in some parts that we had to crawl on hands and knees or inch along sideways. It was slow going but thrilling. In times like these Len found it very helpful to hand me his hiking poles and pack prior to squeezing through. The same held for each of us when we had to descend a rickety-looking ladder in a better-lit grotto.
When we finally emerged into the sunlight from the last of the grottoes, we were both laughing that this had been an absolutely fantastic hike – a more challenging adventure than either of us had anticipated. We had made it through with no mishaps. I was late though, and would need to jog back to the trailhead to catch my flight home. So I parted ways with Len then, once I made sure he was on the right trail back. To keep that magical feeling, we didn’t exchange contact information, just our first names; our bond was then and there, that day when two strangers teamed up in the desert and had the trip of a lifetime.
