Day 2—March 25, 2016 I wake up better rested than I had expected. The first night out is usually the hardest for me. My fears are in high alert. Is that the wind, or an animal scratching at the tent? Every sound is fodder for my hyperactive imagination. Add the general discomfort of sleeping on the hard earth, and I usually awake several times in the night from achy bones and numb hands. There is a little of this, but I sleep unusually well through the night. When we wake, it is light but before sunrise. We take our time with breakfast. After breakfast, I go in search of a private spot to tend to bathroom needs. The brush is thick, so I find myself climbing between branches towards a small clearing. There are a couple rusty tin cans with pull-tab tops in a makeshift firepit. I don’t know when these pull-tab tops were in common use, but it wasn’t during my lifetime. We break camp shortly after sunrise, and it’s already hot. I can smell the bushes starting to bake, a sharp fresh smell that takes me back to middle school wood shop. The few bird calls serve only to remind us of the overwhelming stillness of the morning. Even the helicopters are resting. The trail immediately starts a long, gentle grade down into Hauser Canyon. It hugs the side of the canyon, then it switches back onto a dirt road, and we cross beneath crackling power lines with the sun in our faces. A spray-painted sign points to a small dirt track that departs from the road, and the trail descends into taller bushes and even some small trees. Shade! We reach the canyon floor. A near-oasis awaits us: carpets of soft grass, large shady oak trees, it appears that perhaps a stream meanders nearby. Except the stream has no water. We expected this from the water reports, and we have plenty in our bottles, but it is still a bit disappointing. We lie in the grass and look up at the fluttering green leaves as we eat dried mango and jelly beans. This next section is steep, exposed uphill, so I ask Lindsey if she minds if I hike ahead. I’ll wait for her at the top, I tell her. She’s fine with it. The sun is oppresive, but the strain on my muscles is invigorating as I pull quickly up out of the canyon. Endorphins kick in. By the time I’m halfway, I can feel beads of sweat running down my skin inside my shirt. I feel clean for the first time in months. I look at the rocks and small plants and sun-baked flowers for as long as I can, but eventually my thinking mind takes over and I’m back inside myself. I wonder what my trail name will be. I’m drunk with possibilities. I reach the top before I’m ready to stop, but it’s still early in the hike and I don’t want to cause blisters or overwork my muscles. I see an outcropping with a great view, a ways off trail, and I remember reading about the regrets of finished PCT hikers. The most common regret was not jumping into enough lakes on their hike. There are no lakes nearby, but I think one of my regrets might end up being that I won’t explore off-trail enough, so I vow to start now. I drop my backpack beside the trail, grab my book and a bag of snacks, and pick my way through the brush to the outcropping. A gentle breeze cools me as I sit down to read. Lindsey appears below about a half-hour later and waves. It’s another ten minutes before she reaches my pack, and I am already making my way back to the trail. We break a few more minutes. I can tell the uphill wasn’t as fun for her as it was for me, but she doesn’t seem unhappy, just tired. Our packs are lighter when we strap them on this time. Our water isn’t running low yet, but we still have several miles before our next source. The trail turns away from the canyon and up a small wash where seven vultures circle a spot a small way off trail. A fresh kill? Are there coyotes, a mountain lion nearby? The trail crests a hill and we can see Lake Morena—and its much larger dry basin—below. We take another short break in the spotty shade of the thin chaparral and I explore the nearby rock formations. A short descent later, and we are refilling our water at the campground. We start to walk toward the nearby cafe, and get about 100 yards away when Lindsey notices that I don’t have my trekking poles. I turn around, and a park ranger puts them into the bed of an official-looking truck and then climbs into the passenger seat. I shout to him, but he doesn’t hear me and his partner starts to drive away. I drop my pack and run toward them, and the turn puts me in their view. I wave them down and he returns the poles. Lindsey and I have a short roadwalk to the cafe, where we order a pizza and beers for lunch. The crust is okay, but it’s loaded with toppings, especially black olives. When Lindsey and I were planning our wedding vows, we joked about including “I promise to share the olives” in both of our vows. We take our time and depart about two hours later. It takes us a minute to find the trail again, but it cuts alongside the other end of the campground. We see the two girls from the first day, and learn that one of them lost her bandanna already. They are going to camp at the campground with a couple other PCT hikers who they just met. We think briefly about camping with the group, but decide to do a few more miles. For the past 20 years or so, the official PCT crest has elicited a pavlovian response in the adventure centers of my brain. Every time I would see it, I would daydream “someday”. And so this next section fills me with joy as we come across a new crest about every three minutes. The trail is crisscrossed with sandy washes, local trails, and dirt roads, and choosing the correct path from among them would be near impossible without these markers. My joy is contrasting with Lindsey’s fatigue. To be fair, I am tired too, and she is putting on a good face, but I can tell my enthusiasm is starting to grate a bit. I try to tone it down, but it is uncontainable. I am actually doing this! We pass near some houses. The wilderness to civilization ratio hasn’t been great so far, and I wonder whether passing by houses will be a common occurrence on the trail. (Answer: not that common, but more common than I had expected). Later, we start up a ridge with desert views to both sides, and for the first time, I feel like we are actually on something that could be called a crest. It also seems more like classic desert, with cactus and sand rather than chaparral and oak trees. On the far side, the vegetation returns, and we descend a few switchbacks and stop in the shade of a large oak next to a paved highway with regular-but-not-too-frequent traffic. As I sit on a stumpy part of the trunk, I notice several wooden matches scattered about in the leaves. It maddens me a little, to see someone be so careless (or was it deliberate?) in the dry, extremely fire-prone climate. I collect the matches and put them in my trash bag. A solo hiker comes up, fast, and with a casual stride that makes it obvious that he’s done this before. Everything about him—posture, gait, cheap running shorts—exudes his status; this is not his first jaunt in the woods. We get to talking, and it turns out he is finishing the previous year’s thru-hike, which he had to end early due to an injury. He only has a few days to finish. As he walks off, I notice a bag of potato chips in the outer pocket, and I take a mental note.
We pass under the road in a sandy wash. The cement bridge supports are full of black graffiti, some of it from PCT hikers, that has been rubbed on with the charcoal of burned branches. I am disappointed. We follow the trail up the valley and alongside a road for a few miles. It’s flat and grassy, which is somehow more tiring than the ups and downs of the day. Eventually, we cut to the right through pasture land, cross a small bog over a log, and arrive in Boulder Oaks Campground, where we set up camp for the night.
1 Comment
Ann Osgood
6/27/2017 06:56:17 pm
So happy to be joining you on this trip. I loved running around the firebreaks in the foothills above Glendale, CA when I was a kid. I can imagine your joy to take this trek. Can't wait to read more!
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Author
Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
Categories |