I’d finished off my last water bottle a while ago. The Sisquoc River was in my rearview mirror, and the sweeping Salisbury Potrero beckoned, its rolling meadows and sandstone pinnacles a dreamscape among the living. I was in the midst of connecting the Los Padres National Forest to the last of California’s grasslands on the Carrizo Plain National Monument — two mountain ranges down and one to go.
But I desperately needed water, and the available springs weren’t proving fruitful. Fortunately, it snowed recently atop the Sierra Madre Ridge, so while I walked west toward the Montgomery Potrero, I found some shade along with patches of crunchy snow.
