Day 11: Mile 119.6 - 137.0

Man alive, what a day!

In some earlier post, I had said how lucky we've been with the weather--very mild, very comfortable southern California weather (well, as mild and comfortable as one can be in the desert).

Today, that luck ran out.

Today was a cold and wet day on the mountain. To be fair, Matt had checked the forecast on his inReach last night and that said a high of 47 F and 20% chance of precipitation. Well, we got that!

I got up early and looking down at the valley below, saw the clouds billowing up the hillsides. So I got my stuff together and headed out early. (Although I was still the second one out: Uno--who had incredibly cowboy camped last night--got out before me because her bag was getting wet. A wet sleepin bag?: *that's* a motivator if ever there was one!)

As I was finishing my packing, someone from their tent had asked how is it out there? Glorious!, I had replied, and for the early part of the morning this was true: hiking in the mountains in the mist, where everything is hidden and mysterious, the world silent and quiet but so full of promise, each half-veiled treetop speculating the wonders just beneath--it was a pretty glorious experience. The trail here was less trimmed too, giving the feel of wandering in long-lost places on paths few remembered. Uno agreed when I finally caught up to her as she was adjusting her gear setup: it was actually very pretty.

But then the rains started. They started as sprinklings that would sometimes mature into rain, then devolve back into sprinklings. But they didn't come alone: they came with winds. I had started the day in my puffy (against the cold), but now switched to full out rain gear. Now in the cold and windy and wet, I'm sure the trail was still beautiful, and when I looked up to see huge boulder fields passing in the mist, dwarfing the chapparal crowding the internecine spaces, I could confirm that. I just didn't look up as much, but concentrated more on getting to my next destination.

Which was Mike's Place, an isolated home nestled in a little canyon in the middle of (seemingly) nowhere in the middle of the mountains. It's a haven for hikers, and I took refuge there. The porch of the house had been draped with tarps and blankets, forming a little cave protected from the weather, and there the hikers huddled. Jailbreak and Gretchen were there, and then came me and Emily, and then Colin and Helena and Jake came in, then Matt, then Uno and Dylan, then Truck and Gray Goose and Patricia: the whole group from the Lost Valley Spring campsite, all together again, now cramped in this little space, trying to get warm under the random blankets scattered about. People cooked--I did as well, trying to get warmth back into my feet mostly--and people jabbered away. Hiker talk: food, rumors of other folks on the trail (I heard that Bob was still on trail and had been spotted at Scissors Crossing--that made me happy, as I had missed him at Mount Laguna), gear discussions (mostly about rain gear and gloves). And the discussion of how far to go today, especially given this weather! We could hear the wind blowing outside, could only imagine the rain, and that dark little cozy space became *very* gravitational. 

I stayed for over two hours, I think, trying to get my wet feet warm. Finally I went outside where Scott had a fire going, burning brush around the place, and the heat helped. (As Gretchen noted, the choice was to be out here and warm but wet, or in there and dry but cold: can't win for trying!) What eventually got me going was the promise of pancakes for lunch: Mike's Place is famous for providing hot meals for breakfast and dinner (which was pork chops, by the way), so long as the hikers help out in the prep. Well, at the sound of that, I knew I had to get going: I knew if I but smelled those pancakes I would never leave! So I hurriedly got my stuff today, got some water from the spigot (the other Big Deal of Mike's Place: besides the warm food, it has water in an otherwise fairly dry spell of trail) (well, unless the water is pouring down from the sky, that is!), I headed out with Dylan and Uno, aiming for Tule Spring, the next water source, about 10 miles hence.

If I had thought the morning tough, this afternoon hike was tougher by far. The trail climbs out of the Mike's Place canyon, and for a moment, up on the ridge, the wind was less and you could see the low clouds racing down the canyon, right over the little house. But turn the corner, and the weather started in. Rain now, and as the trail climbed up, occasionally you'd come round the bend and get a facefull of wind driving you back. The trail was also less maintained out here, more overgrown so the leaves and branches would drip water onto you as you brushed past, and in places the footing, always narrow, was a bit washed out. Doable still: you just have to be careful, but when you're cold and wet and being blown about, being careful doesn't help. Far to the west, we could see the edge of the storm, and the desert hills over there: there is the Promised Land, I declared, the Land of Milk and Honey and Sun!

Back at Mike's Place, Spirit (he and Scott keep the place maintained), had said this weather should break up probably 10 miles from here, and that tomorrow would be better anyway. He was a local, so I trusted him, even as we climbed up this narrow track that looked straight out of a movie travel montage--a thin dark line on a dark green hillside, inclined ever upwards, framed by and glanced through and going into mist and cloud and white. False peaks: we'd get to the "top" and round the corner, only to see more incline ahead, another canyon to walk around, another ridgetop ahead. (I had to amend my declaration with the rider: did I mention there's 40 years of wandering in the wilderness before we get there?)

Eventually, though, the trail crested and started heading down. And here Spirit was right: the sun started to peek out in little windows. As the trail settled down into the deserts below, we were finally out of it, and hiked the last few miles pretty quickly to get to Tule Spring. It was still cold, though: now we were in the desert in the evening, which is just going to be cold, but at least with the sun we were (mostly) dry. We set up camp, Uno opting for a tent for the first time on trail, ate dinner, then headed into the tents for the night!

And that was the hike! A tough day--the toughest on trail so far for me. When I do indulge my fears, I worry about the weather up north in Oregon and Washington, in the rain and possible snow. Hot weather I feel ok with--that's the benefit of hiking in southern California--but cold and wet, that scares me. Got a first taste of it today and didn't die so that's good! 

Previous   Next

Some notes:

-- Lost Valley Spring > Mike's Place > Tule Spring

-- So last night, as I was setting up camp on the ridge above Lost Valley Spring, I adjusted my pitch a couple times to compensate for ants. Only after picking the spot did I notice there was a big ant line there, ants moving from small hole to small hole, but many holding little white pellets in their mandibles. Don't know what those were: were those eggs? Anyways, I decided not to bother them, so shifted my tent over. I mentioned this to Patricia (who had set up next to me), and she said, yeah, she saw them too, but hoped they would go home for the night. Turns out, I needn't have worried: this morning, the ants were nowhere to be seen, even in the fog before the rains. I'm guessing they had sensed the weather changing, and were rearranging to get the eggs from getting flooded.

-- Dylan and Uno are nuts. Dylan hiked through all the weather in a short sleeve button up shirt (blue) and shorts (blue) and a hat. No rain gear (he doesn't like the damp feeling you inevitably get inside the rain gear), I don't think he even put up his umbrella. Uno had a Frogg Toggs jacket, but that's it: also in shorts. I lent her my umbrella and she used that for a bit, but ultimately gave it back I think because the wind was too much. Compared to them, me, bundled up in rain pants and rain jacket with the hood up, everything zipped tight: I looked positively overdressed! To say nothing of when we made camp and had dinner: me huddled with my tortillas (it was windy still so I didn't want to bother with the stove), Uno shivering as she did bother with the stove and some flaming hot mac and cheese, and Dylan laying out (literally reclining) on his pad in what was I guess a breeze for him, but a cold driving wind for me. Hmm, can you tell which one of us is native to SoCal, which to Arizona, and which to Rhode Island? 

-- Spoke with Dylan a bunch towards the end of the day, when the weather had broken and we could hear people. He had made a comment about the FitBit calorie estimator, and how he was disappointed that evidently the calculation does not take into account heart rate (as you would think), but just assigns a calorie count to each step after some threshold, the coefficient derived from some paper. It was when he said "coefficient" that I thought: ah, technical training. Turns out Dylan studied CS in school, so we talked about that. He has some interest in data science and machine learning, so I discussed my two pet ML projects with him: the hiking time estimator, and the good-shot bad-shot ratio estimator (he also does, as he puts it, crappy landscape photography. I have whole hard drives full of that stuff!, I told him, which got me a broad smile.). He had some good ideas for the two: clearly, he's familiar with the work, and clearly he can Think (capital-T "Think!", as per the IBM definition). Right now he's not working as a data scientist, but if he wanted to, I think (lowercase-T "think", as per my uninformed opinion) he could make a job, if not career, out of it, technically speaking. Only question would be if that's what he wants (which is admittedly a Big Question). But a good guy, and great to have around when the hiking's tough: pretty calm and steady, gives off the vibe that it's not that bad and it's going to be alright.