Making morning coffee at Keystone Canyon

Beautiful morning, beautiful location. It was cold overnight, so the warmth from the morning sun shining on the tent felt good. I was up early, around 7h, but managed to fall back asleep for a while.

Today's day hike will take me to an old mine site not far away, below the crags of New York Mountain in the distance at right

Breakfast is two cups of strong coffee, Maryann's "rice and tofu in a ginger-miso broth" (delicious), granola, tamari almonds, dried apricots, dried pears and chili-lime cashews. I'm glad to be eating backpacker food again.

First, I go for a short walk around my Keystone Canyon campsite

A rocky road behind my campsite, which I didn't notice last night, leads to another campsite in a hidden hollow just behind the juniper trees.

I prepare my supplies for the day and begin the hike up Keystone Canyon

My day pack includes flashlight, water filter, epipens (in case of yellow-jacket sting), sweater, three 1.5-litre water bottles (one full, two empty), camera batteries, energy bars and dried apricots. I'm also wearing my two-litre Camelbak, full of water.

White primroses and orange desert-mallow flowers along Keystone Canyon Road

I listen to the sound of my footsteps as I walk, one of the few sounds here, other than the occasional flitting of a bird.

I come across another campsite with a fire ring near the road

I didn't walk up the road quite far enough yesterday to find this one, but I think I prefer my campsite anyway.

The road shares Keystone Canyon with a wash and crosses it several times

Consequently, the road is generally washed out and requires four-wheel drive and high clearance.

Along this stretch, the road is actually in the wash

I'd probably not think that this is a road if it weren't for the tire tracks here, and the fact that my maps show it.

Road users have placed rocks in this gully to facilitate passage over it

One of my older maps shows this part of the road as being inside a Wilderness area and therefore closed to vehicles. However, the new map that I purchased last week at Kelso Depot visitor centre corrects that error.

I'm delighted to discover the moist remnants of a recent trickle of water in the middle of the road

I'm still at least half a mile away from Keystone Spring, so this is a positive sign that there may be water at the source itself.

The road is almost non-existent in this part of Keystone Canyon

Tire tracks climb over the earth along the wash to avoid the big rocks.

A fork in the road!

The right fork rises up a hill toward Live Oak Canyon and Bronze Mine Spring, while the left fork (my route) continues toward Keystone Spring and New York Mountain.

I spot an old cistern along the road

Keystone Spring is up the hill a quarter mile or so, so I'm guessing that the broken pipe leads to the spring.

Another fork in the barely discernable road

The right fork heads up toward New York Mountain (which I'll follow shortly), but the left fork leads to Keystone Spring, where I hope to find water in a few minutes.

Ah, there's the pipe that presumably leads up to Keystone Spring

The road here is faint in places, so it's occasionally easier to follow the pipe than to look for the road.

I stumble across these little red flowers that I'm not familiar with

This might be a scarlet gilia (ipomopsis), not sure.

The old pipe continues along the ground along the old road to Keystone Spring

There's really not much left of the road!

Keystone Spring?

I've read that Keystone Spring sits in a meadow, so this water dripping out of a pipe must be it. It's really not much. I'll walk around a bit to see if there's more water than this.