Shawn Gillard & Kirk Baddley
Two hikers retrace the steps of the Donner Party across the Salt Desert
The Long Drive, Step By Step, or,
What Could Be More Fun Than 90 Miles of Bad Road?
by Shawn Gillard & Kirk Baddley
Charles Kelly made us do it. The chapter "Trailing the Pioneers" in Salt Desert Trails sounded like so much fun that in early 1982 we hit on the idea of being the first people in modern times to walk the fabled Long Drive, from Iosepa on the east side of Skull Valley to Pilot Spring at the base of Pilot Peak.
Like Kelly, others had covered most or all of this distance in cars or trucks. Dr. Henry J. Webb, who led "Expedition Mirage" across the salt flats in 1962, had used tracked vehicles, and crossed only a portion of the trail--about 25 miles out of the total 83. We would be the first to recreate something like the pioneers' original experience by walking the entire way, from east to west. For further authenticity we planned the trip for early September to coincide with the passage of the Donner Party in 1846.
Our preparations took three months. We spent the summer scouting out the old passes and getting into better walking condition. Having no pack animals, and not caring to tote gallons of water and pounds of food, we buried caches of supplies at four places along the way. In this way we got a pretty good idea what to expect on each leg of the trip except one, the longest, most remote, and in many ways the most interesting. This was 25 miles across the true Great Salt Lake Desert: featureless, lifeless, and eternally muddy just under its salt crust. Topo maps suggested an area on the western edge of the desert was the lowest and so possibly the wettest. It was accepted that we might walk about 20 miles on this section only to be turned back by mud or standing water. Kirk's father, Harold, offered his assessment of the plan based on years of knocking around the desert. "You're crazy," he explained.
Crazy or not, on the afternoon of September 7, 1982, our friend Joe Gustafson drove us in his van to Iosepa. We started late to avoid the heat of the day, and it was 5:10 when we stepped out into the dust and weeds of Skull Valley, heading for Hastings Pass in the Cedar Mountains about 15 miles to the west. At 6:00 our little thermometer showed 80 degrees and although a small thunderstorm clung to a peak in the southern part of the Cedars, the blustering clouds never gathered the courage to venture into the bright blue skies above the valley.
Skull Valley is cut every which way with jeep trails, but on a beeline from the spring to the pass we soon found ourselves bushwhacking through unrutted sage and greasewood. We could find no visible sign of the emigrant trail. A couple hours out, we came to something like a dry wash, 150 yards wide, extending north and south as far as the eye could see. The banks dropped about six feet and were so sheer that we could not understand how and where the pioneers got over the stock and wagons. Later it occurred to us that the wash may have been the result of overgrazing or other changes in the valley after 1846.
By midnight we were in the Cedar Mountains. When we topped Hastings Pass at 1:50 a.m. the higher elevations of the mountains, with their jumbled peaks and scattered juniper trees, seemed very scenic in the moonlight after the flat and barren valley floor. The pass is fairly narrow and we were alive to the fact that here, if nowhere else, we could be sure we were walking virtually in the tracks of the emigrants. Our imagination in gear, we easily convinced ourselves that we could almost see the shadowy figures of the pioneers and hear the creak of passing wagon wheels in the semidarkness. A coyote yipped and yodeled loudly, very near.
We reached the site of our cache on the western slope of the Cedars at 3:25 in the morning. Tired after walking 17 miles, we threw our plastic ponchos down beneath a juniper, and as we laid aside our eyeglasses to sleep our last impression was of the dual river of car headlights on Interstate 80, red on the right, white on the left, the seamless conveyor belt ceaselessly transferring money from Salt Lake City to the casinos of Wendover, Nevada.
An hour later we were awake. We'd brought no blankets, mistakenly thinking them an unneeded burden in the late summer heat, and now we lay, too tired to get up and too cold to go back to sleep. After dawn we warmed up and slept soundly, but a couple of hours later the sun's direct rays came over the mountains and scorched us out of our beds. We eagerly unearthed our cache and sat beneath our juniper, savoring a tin can breakfast of mandarin orange slices, pork and beans, and Vienna sausages.
The rest of our journey now lay open to view like a map someone had neglected to reduce to scale. Steep shouldered and flat topped, Pilot Peak dominated the horizon 60 miles to the west. Below Pilot Peak and a few miles closer lay the Silver Island Mountains. Below them and closer still stood the first high ground to break from the western edge of the salt flats, the lonely little mountain called Floating Island. Much nearer, on the eastern side of the flats, was the small range of the Graybacks. Toward these we set out about 10:00 A.M., crossing to the north side of I-80 near the scenic viewpoint where a placard now commemorates the Donner Trail.
Frankly, this part of the trip was not the most fun; it was hot, bright, and dry, and we were never out of sight of the highway. Ripple Valley seemed interminable as we stumbled through the brushy flats, and our eyes burned from sun and lack of sleep. Shortly after 6:00 p.m., however, we topped the Graybacks and were rewarded with a truly inspiring view: from this place in 1846, Edwin Bryant had noted the surprising illusion of breaking waves, as if the desert were an ocean, and so it appeared to us. A few miles out lay a stretch of sand dunes, sloping on the west side but with steep faces 15 feet high on the side facing the hills. The resemblance to rolling surf was unmistakable, and the illusion was reinforced by zigzags of sand that cut through the short brush at the foot of the hills, giving the appearance of shallow waves washing up on a low shore.
We had previously walked the Graybacks from end to end in an attempt to find the place where the emigrants crossed over. We saw nothing of the litter which, according to Kelly, had bounced off the passing wagons as they descended the western slope, but we believe we picked up the trail where black volcanic rocks up to the size of a bushel basket had been rolled aside to clear a path. Ages of sitting in the alkaline soil had turned the bottoms of these rocks white, and the overturned boulders still gave the eerie impression that the pioneers had passed only a short while before us.
We stopped for the night at our second cache a little west of the Graybacks. The temperature was 86 degrees at sunset. We had come only 14 miles from Hastings Pass, but we were almost too tired to care when, later, hundreds of moths crowded in for a chance to drown our dinner of hot Campbell's soup.
We loafed around camp the next morning, planning another late start. It was about 27 miles to our next cache, and nearly twice that if we got turned back by much or standing water on the far side of the flats. About 1:30 p.m., with the thermometer at nearly 100 degrees, we shouldered our packs and made tracks for Floating Island.
About three hours walking put the dunes behind us. Here the trail enters the Great Salt Lake Desert proper. The dry grass disappears, the stunted bushes stand farther and farther apart, and soon you are deep in the middle of--surrounded by miles and miles of--nothing. Pure, free, open, uncluttered, calming, exhilarating--nothing.
The distant mountain tops all seemed to lean away from us, making the curve of the earth readily apparent as we emerged onto a great white disc, the rim of which was the horizon. Without so much as a blade of grass or a single pebble to mark our progress, the feeling was that of walking on a treadmill. Our feet and arms moved but we remained fixed at the exact center of the disc, encircled by a horizon that seemed to move along with us. Far off to the north the Newfoundland Mountains seemed to revolve past us as slowly as a constellation circling the night sky.
Walking on the salt flats is not as easy as it first appears. The surface is smooth and level, perfectly so, but a fleshy softness under the thin crust forces you to adopt a slightly unnatural gait that eventually wears you down. We navigated by simply keeping Floating Island dead ahead. An experiment at walking with out eyes closed--safe enough on the open flats--showed that we had turned a full 180 degrees in a little more than 100 paces. If fog or rain cut off our view of the mountains we might be trapped as effectively as by prison walls, because we would not be able to walk straight enough to get anywhere. Far away, in seeming miniature, a dust storm began to obscure Silver Island. Behind the dust, pushing up from the south, was a rain storm.
Occasionally we saw the tracks of a wandering coyote, but the barrenness of the desert was brought home to use when in the late afternoon we came upon a small dead bird. The desiccated body would have been unremarkable elsewhere, but here, crusted with salt, it struck us how very far from a drop of water, a bite of seed, or a twig to sit on the little creature had fallen.
The sun was getting low that evening when we paused to smoke a cigar on a large dune which rose unexpectedly from the middle of the flats. In the softening light the mountains to the west looked much nearer, and the clouds above them were soon lit by a Charles Russell sunset, all pale reds and yellows and silver. It was beautiful, but we had a long walk ahead of us. "Let's go," one of us said, and we hurried on.
At dusk we entered forbidden territory, the USAF bombing range. Much of the Great Salt Lake Desert is off-limits to civilians, and the 10 or 11 miles of the cutoff which lie behind the military boundary constitute one of the most intriguing parts of the trail. It's here that the old trace is actually visible on photo-topo maps, and aficionados of "true west" and "treasure hunter" literature expect to find the towering nests of the giant Bannock Behemoth Bird and covered wagons still standing untouched in the salt.
A friend of Kirk's who had explored here years before would ride out on an old Totegoat, and if a plane flew over he would throw a bed sheet--effective camouflage in the white salt--over himself and his bike.
Knowing we weren't supposed to be there, we sacrificed vision for invisibility and crossed by the dark of night. Luckily all was quiet, but about midnight we were startled by a strange orange light that hovered silently over the flats between us and the Newfoundlands. After several minutes it disappeared, leaving us nervous and clueless.
Gradually the mud grew softer and stickier, and as we grew wearier the occasional breaks sitting on our ponchos became long recuperations between ever-shortening walks. It seemed finally that we might soon be unable to go on at all, but sometime in the early morning we left the bombing range, gained better footing, and climbed into the sand dunes at the north end of Floating Island. We had been walking for thirteen hours.
As if by magic the mound of dirt over our third cache appeared at our feet. We had chosen this spot, the first dry land after the flats, to bury our supplies in because the island itself is too rocky (historical archeologists take note) but we were afraid to sleep in the dunes because of rattlesnakes and retreated to the flats to lie down for the night. We were soon awakened, however, by a light rain which began to soak through our clothes, and when we could ignore it no longer we climbed once again to higher ground to sleep fitfully until dawn in a shallow, rocky cave.
Friday we woke stiff and chilled. After a cold breakfast we walked the five miles to the east side of the Silver Island Range, then several miles north to Donner-Reed Pass. We were moving pretty slowly by then, and felt more stiff-jointed after every step. Clouds covered the sun all day and a damp wind grew steadily colder.
Donner-Reed Pass is low and broad, with a hard floor of desert pavement--flat pebbles scoured smooth by the wind and given a black patina by a chemical reaction to the baking desert sun. Our initial scouting left us uncertain where the wagons had crossed the wide pass and we had chosen the southern end to hide our last cache simply because it was the closest.
Our friend Joe did not know when or if we would each the pass, but to our joy we found him faithfully awaiting our arrival. That night was so cold we all slept in his little white van, which we reminded ourselves, did somewhat resemble a covered wagon. It was interesting to remember that, according to Virginia Reed's account, the Donner Party experienced a similar shift of the weather one night in the desert which added greatly to her family's suffering.
Saturday, the final day, was anticlimactic in many ways. All that remained to do was walk the nine mile stretch of flats west of Silver Island and formally end our journey by visiting Pilot Spring, now called Donner Spring. Joe would drive approximately 20 miles south, cross over to the Pilot Range, then drive an equal distance back north to wait for us on the other side.
Morale was high despite the icy wind still sweeping the flats when we left the van around 7:30 a.m. The tall cottonwoods near the spring looked very close--deceptively so--but we made good time and by mid-morning could distinguish the roofs of buildings which marked our destination. Incredibly we were almost there, but our pace was slowed as we tired and it was almost noon when we plodded up to the T-L Bar Ranch.
Mr. Dean Stephens had watched our progress across the flats from the back porch of his large log home with our comrade Joe. Mr. Stephens congratulated us warmly and gave us a can of soda pop, but added casually that he had recently observed someone else cross the desert. About 1981 a woman walking alone and carrying all her supplies with her retraced the entire emigrant trail from Missouri to California. So much for our delusions of grandeur.
So we weren't the first to walk the Long Drive since the 1800s, and unlike Dr. Webb, we don't suppose that it was the last time either. It may be the last time for a good while, though, because the bad weather that set in toward the end of our trip proved to be the beginning of a wet spell that brought the Great Salt Lake to record levels. In 1986, to alleviate the resultant flooding, the state built giant pumps on the south end of the Hogup Mountains to move the water out of the flats. For the foreseeable future the trail will remain under a strange artificial lake, only inches deep but miles across. The place below Hastings Pass where we made our first camp now overlooks the site of a large, garishly lit toxic waste incinerator, and just north of our camp on the west side of the Graybacks is a huge toxic waste burial facility.
No modern person can ever really experience anything like the Long Drive of the pioneers. To do so you must be many weeks of hard travel away from any help, your babies and old people and all your worldly possessions sheltered only by a canvas-covered wagon, totally dependent on a team of tired oxen to pull you through.
For us the Long Drive was a lark; for the emigrants of 1846, for whom we've learned the greatest respect, it was truly do or die. Looking back, perhaps the best we can say for ourselves is that we were probably the last to cross, like the pioneers, without cellular phones.
