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Santiago Creek Bike Trail, 9/20/2025

Last Saturday, a prior engagement kept me from the trail. I know, I know: one week hiking, then one week off, is Not Good for building trail legs! But consequently this week, instead of building to a tougher hike, I stayed mild, with the Santiago Creek Bike Trail. Specifically, starting out by Santiago Oaks Park (in Orange), I followed it west to its end at the 5 (by the Discovery Cube in Santa Ana), crossed the 5, then continued on to the Santa Ana River (by Edna Park). Just 10 miles, over fairly flat terrain. Some complications: as a bike path, it’s paved so it’s harder on the legs, and I hiked it in the afternoon at the height of the heat. But still, a pretty mild route. Where I picked it up--in the residential sprawl by Cannon Street and Taft Avenue--Santiago Creek Bike Trail actually departs its namesake. This is because Santiago Creek flows into a Recharging Basin here: a series of monumental manmade pits, cratering the neighborhood, about 3 stories down to water’s surface. While...
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Wood Canyon Trail, 9/6/2025

Wow, has it really been a month--over a month!--since I’ve been on a trail? What happened? Injury. After Copter Ridge, my left leg was hurting: the knee, which felt twisted (for example, just sitting figure-4 cross-legged with my left leg on top produced warning pain around the kneecap); and the hip (which was sore in the mornings). I rested the following week--no hiking--then again the week after when I was on travel in Half Moon Bay. But even after two weeks, it still felt fragile. The pain only flared at the extremums, but it was sharp enough that I worried if I pushed it, it would convert to persistent. So I didn’t hike. And didn’t hike. And didn’t hike. I’d like to say some resurgent desire broke the inertia, but nothing so heroic: it was obligation. I’d volunteered for trail work last week, and if I said I’d be there, I gotta be there! It was trail assessment work--no tools, no decompacting or shovel or tamping, just walking and observing--but it forced me onto a trail. And the l...
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Post-trail: Week 2, Irvine

And so, finally, I was back home. So one of the questions I've consistently gotten since returning is: how has it been integrating back into normal life? Is it strange being back home? Is it difficult readjusting? And for this week at least, the answer has been: it's not that bad. And maybe it's because I don't have a job to rush back to, or some other external deadline encroaching. Rather, in a lot of ways it's been the same as it was on the trail: it's still just me dictating what happens every day, just the setting has changed. And I admit that the scenery of my apartment doesn't compare to that of the PCT; I don't deny that the setting is important so changing it *is* significant. But I will say about being at home setting: fundamentally I think of myself as an Indoor--rather than an Outdoor--person. Even when I was on trail, I would dream of being ensconced in a library carrel, hidden amongst the stacks, working away at some technical problem with p...
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Saturday: Los Pinos Peak via Bell View Trail (10/9/2021)

When I touched the Northern Terminus of the PCT, I died as a thru-hiker and was reborn as a day-hiker. Well, today I fully resumed the latter, resurrecting my Saturday hiking habit by heading out into the Santa Ana Mountains and Cleveland National Forest. For this hike, I headed to the top of Los Pinos Peak via the Bell View Trail. This hike has been on my list for a while, but that area has been closed for fire recovery for at least the last year (if not more). So when I got back and saw that the way was now open, I figured I had to take it. Plus, it's a considered a tougher trail--it's a ridge trail that goes up and down lots of local peaks on its way to the top, and it's pretty overgrown for the last couple miles to boot--and I figured I'd better make use of the remnants of my PCT fitness before I lost it all! But as I started the hike, I immediately realized that I had basically forgotten how to hike. On the PCT, towards the end, it would take me 20-30 minutes to wa...
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Post-trail: Week 1, Seattle

And on Sun's Day, we arrived into Seattle well into Night, from a road Rainy and Foggy and Long. And as it was so Late, we sought Refection on the Road at a 24-hour Golden Arches. And I sought their famous Apple Pie because that's a tradition in my family (and yes, I am being Serious about that), and they told us it would be 8 minutes before they would be Ready (although this turned out to be Not True), but we were willing to wait. And I also sought a chicken sandwich Meal, but was told they were out of Meal 4D, then out of Meal 4C, then out of Meal 4B and at point I gave up and went with whatever chicken thing the guy on the intercom said and it ended up being comparable in size to a hamburger and by the way when was the last time you ate a simple McDonalds hamburger because let me tell you those things are small and (especially to a hiker) are basically flattened sliders. But Something is better than Nothing in this case, and we took the Foodstuffs to the hotel and ate them w...
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Post-trail: Week 1, The Coast Starlight Train

How do you get home after a thru-hike? I think the majority of folks will take a flight. Which makes sense: it's fast, it's efficient, and it can go pretty much anywhere, including overseas. But for me, I always figured I'd take a train. And I admit a large part of it is an overly romanticized notion of looking out the window, watching the world go by, and just feeling that sense of perpetual movement that you don't get from a plane (a plane is too far from the ground, so that while I know intellectually that I'm moving--and moving fast--and technically can see it, I can't viscerally feel it).  And another large part was so I didn't have to check-in my backpack: just the thought of the straps catching on the carousel makes my skin crawl. (So there's a solution to that, which involves putting your backpack in a large compactor bag and properly sealing the top but still, why risk it?) And so it was that I found myself aboard Amtrak's Coast Starlight, o...
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Post-trail update on this blog

Well, I'm here in Seattle, in the heart of civilization, with the trail behind me and done. (Well, until I go back and grab all those sections I missed due to fire or otherwise, but that's for another time.) And I admit the ending of the blog is rather anti-climactic, but as I said to Apocalypse, the terminus itself is pretty anti-climactic, but it's still pretty awesome. And I will say that, after having made my peace with the blog and defining it as part of the trail for me, I feel that writing an entry for every day on the trail is as much an accomplishment as finishing the trail. They're both grinds that wore on me day after day, and they both had their times of put-your-head-down-and-get-it-done, but also their times of sheer wonder. But now that the trail is done, what's the future of the blog? Well, thinking about it some, I have ideas! First, I figured I'd do a question-and-answer thing: let folks (i.e., y'all) submit questions, then answer them in a...
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