Friday, June 14, 2013
Now fully illustrated
Photos are now added to the previous posts...enjoy and see you next home leave!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Walker Pass, The End for now
San Francisco feels impossibly green and luxuriously cloudy compared to the desert I came from! I finished my hike at Walker Pass on Wednesday June 5 with a long 28 mile day into Walker Pass Campground.
The last few days of hiking were rough - I got a light version of a hiker 24-hour bug going around that left me nauseous and unable to eat anything but water with Propel in it, Pepto Bismol tablets, and dry bagels very, very slowly - but still had to hike 20+ miles a day because there was not enough water in the section to support a slower hike. The days were hot, around 100, shade was scarce, the desert was unrelenting. The last night before Walker Pass I lay in a small tent site surrounded by Joshua trees with two older hikers, Willie Make It and Spark, and I said, "in Judaism we have a prayer we say every morning thanking God for keeping us alive to experience a new day. Tonight, I would like to say, Thank you, God, for making this day over." We all cracked up, because it was so true.
In the middle of this last tough section was a tantalizing 15 miles of lush pine forest resting between 6 and 7,000 feet. In this part of the country the rules of water are reversed. While on the East Coast our mountaintops are dry and you have to hike down for water, here the mountaintops are the only place that get water in the form of snowfall and rainfall in the winter. I held the memory of these shady pine groves and moist ground as I slogged through the dry, dry sand leading to Walker Pass.
I thought I would feel some sadness leaving - I was by all accounts a thruhiker who began down at the Mexican border with the other hopefuls headed for Canada. But I just felt a sense of accomplishment and relief and craving for the very simple comforts of running water, a bed that I didn't have to unpack from my pack, reliable showers, fresh fruit. After a long and calorie-poor day of hiking, I stumbled into Walker Pass Campground to see a tent festooned with flags and lots of voices. Who would be RV camping on a Wednesday, I thought. It was Yogi, the former thruhiker and author of the most widely-read trail guide on the PCT, teaming up with another trail angel named Oakey Girl to provide hot spaghetti, pancakes in the morning, and most importantly water to the hikers coming through. I was able to eat a couple ounces of noodles and fell asleep to the hum of voices around me, grateful to have arrived at something that portended of home.
A fellow hiker and retired nurse, Puppy, and I cemented our arrival in Lake Isabella the following morning (through a generous ride from Aloha, the husband of one of our fellow hikers) with the thickest milkshakes imaginable at Nelda's Diner. My stomach rallied to the task of consuming one of the 100 varieties of milkshakes (frappes, for you New Englanders) that the place makes. And I began, and continue, to reacclimate and reconnect with all the people who supported me in direct and indirect ways during this five week journey. One close friend has decided to join the foreign service - another has a birthday and will unexpectedly be in our hometown when I will. I caught up on careers, romances, friendships, victories and losses and revisited some of my own, too, en route to San Francisco via San Diego.
Once I am in Boston, I plan to go back through these entries and add the pictures that fill out the journey. And then, this account will be done. I can't quite envision reviving my longtime blog, Stranger in a Strange Land, with all the scrutiny my new role in Tel Aviv will entail, but I will find a way to keep recording and there is always my trusty, CSL-provided red journal.
The last few days of hiking were rough - I got a light version of a hiker 24-hour bug going around that left me nauseous and unable to eat anything but water with Propel in it, Pepto Bismol tablets, and dry bagels very, very slowly - but still had to hike 20+ miles a day because there was not enough water in the section to support a slower hike. The days were hot, around 100, shade was scarce, the desert was unrelenting. The last night before Walker Pass I lay in a small tent site surrounded by Joshua trees with two older hikers, Willie Make It and Spark, and I said, "in Judaism we have a prayer we say every morning thanking God for keeping us alive to experience a new day. Tonight, I would like to say, Thank you, God, for making this day over." We all cracked up, because it was so true.
In the middle of this last tough section was a tantalizing 15 miles of lush pine forest resting between 6 and 7,000 feet. In this part of the country the rules of water are reversed. While on the East Coast our mountaintops are dry and you have to hike down for water, here the mountaintops are the only place that get water in the form of snowfall and rainfall in the winter. I held the memory of these shady pine groves and moist ground as I slogged through the dry, dry sand leading to Walker Pass.
I thought I would feel some sadness leaving - I was by all accounts a thruhiker who began down at the Mexican border with the other hopefuls headed for Canada. But I just felt a sense of accomplishment and relief and craving for the very simple comforts of running water, a bed that I didn't have to unpack from my pack, reliable showers, fresh fruit. After a long and calorie-poor day of hiking, I stumbled into Walker Pass Campground to see a tent festooned with flags and lots of voices. Who would be RV camping on a Wednesday, I thought. It was Yogi, the former thruhiker and author of the most widely-read trail guide on the PCT, teaming up with another trail angel named Oakey Girl to provide hot spaghetti, pancakes in the morning, and most importantly water to the hikers coming through. I was able to eat a couple ounces of noodles and fell asleep to the hum of voices around me, grateful to have arrived at something that portended of home.
A fellow hiker and retired nurse, Puppy, and I cemented our arrival in Lake Isabella the following morning (through a generous ride from Aloha, the husband of one of our fellow hikers) with the thickest milkshakes imaginable at Nelda's Diner. My stomach rallied to the task of consuming one of the 100 varieties of milkshakes (frappes, for you New Englanders) that the place makes. And I began, and continue, to reacclimate and reconnect with all the people who supported me in direct and indirect ways during this five week journey. One close friend has decided to join the foreign service - another has a birthday and will unexpectedly be in our hometown when I will. I caught up on careers, romances, friendships, victories and losses and revisited some of my own, too, en route to San Francisco via San Diego.
Once I am in Boston, I plan to go back through these entries and add the pictures that fill out the journey. And then, this account will be done. I can't quite envision reviving my longtime blog, Stranger in a Strange Land, with all the scrutiny my new role in Tel Aviv will entail, but I will find a way to keep recording and there is always my trusty, CSL-provided red journal.
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| Last of the Green Valley smoke over the desert |
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| Sunset out of Tehachapi |
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| Poptart on her 2nd to last day...needs some food. |
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| Morning hike among the Joshua Trees |
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| Midday siesta |
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| Hiking and siesta partner Puppy, also nursing an illness |
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| No water, but a nice tree seat at Ivers Cabin |
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| Last sunset coming in to Walker Pass |
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| Oakey Girl and her magic at sunrise |
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| Yogi's tent at Walker Pass |
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| Trail angels in action, Yogi and Oakey Girl |
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| And a few hundred miles later, the SnoCone of my desert mirages at Newport Beach |
Friday, May 31, 2013
Fire - Lancaster, CA
Quick note from Hikertown in Lancaster, CA to say I'm okay and outhiked the Powerhouse Fire, now burning in Green Valley. Left there yesterday morning, hiked a gorgeous day, looked back, saw smoke, and kept going. 40 miles was way to much to hike in 26 hours. Tonight we're headed into the desert to beat the three-digit temperatures coming up...a long way from the freezing cold temps of the mountaintops just a week ago!
Thoughts and prayers are with the families being evacuated, and hope that the fire is contained soon. One week to go.
Thoughts and prayers are with the families being evacuated, and hope that the fire is contained soon. One week to go.
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| The Andersons |
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| Gorgeous hike out of Green Valley before the fire |
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| Safe at Hikertown, view of fire |
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| Next day hike away from Green Valley, towards Tyler Horse Canyon and beyond to Tehachapi |
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| One of many wind farms we hiked through |
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| Fire flares up |
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| Willie Make It and Spark discussing firefighting |
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| Red sun at 9am |
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| The burn is old, the smoke is new |
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Agua Dulce, sweetest of water
455 miles into this trail, I notice things about myself. I spend part of each day being very ambitious and making unbelievable plans to hike very big miles, part of each day in despair, miserable and certain I will get off the trail at the next opportunity, and the majority of each day simply happy, looking at scenery and trying not to trip as I do so. These moods seem to be roughly determined by a. my blood sugar level and b. the weather at the moment. Sun midday = despair. Clouds and a nice hike into camp = ambition.
I've been hiking through a burned area the last 2 days, completely wiped in the 2009 Station Fire that started in Pasadena. Even talked to firefighters who fought it. A South African potter hiking the trail pointed out to me that there is a strange, stark beauty to the landscape that is so devastated, in the black outlines of trees almost as if it is winter and summer at once. I am trying to appreciate the more desolate and barren areas, inspired by her.
Right now I am staying at "Hiker Heaven," an oasis for hikers in Agua Dulce maintained by a generous and PCT-loving family named the Saufleys. They have tents set up for us to sleep, runs to the REI 30 miles away, a kitchen, showers, laundry, mail service (no PO in town) and all this in their backyard (very big, with horses, cats and dogs). There is another house 24 miles up the road, the Andersons, that also invites hikers to stay and take a load off. I am really impressed with the commitment of the PCT community to supporting hikers. On a trail with no shelters, these little havens are really appreciated. And I understand why the Saufleys live here - the Vasquez Rocks, right in town, are gorgeous.
Just as I am starting to think of life on the trail as "normal," I am at T-minus 11 days of hiking left. Stats: 4 blisters, 6 pieces of gear replaced or bought, 1 sunburn (light), 6 pounds lost, 3 nights of rain, 5 rattlesnake sightings, 0 bears, and many, many trail angels. These last come in all forms, from the very established to the very random. My two favorites came on my way out of Wrightwood, CA (a gorgeous mountain community that was having a communal yard sale AND a farmer's market as I walked through) - Nancy, a mother of two who gave me a ride all the way back to the trail even though she wasn't driving that way, and Joe Maloney from Brooklyn, a grandpa who offered me his extra water as I walked by him.
I've been hiking through a burned area the last 2 days, completely wiped in the 2009 Station Fire that started in Pasadena. Even talked to firefighters who fought it. A South African potter hiking the trail pointed out to me that there is a strange, stark beauty to the landscape that is so devastated, in the black outlines of trees almost as if it is winter and summer at once. I am trying to appreciate the more desolate and barren areas, inspired by her.
Right now I am staying at "Hiker Heaven," an oasis for hikers in Agua Dulce maintained by a generous and PCT-loving family named the Saufleys. They have tents set up for us to sleep, runs to the REI 30 miles away, a kitchen, showers, laundry, mail service (no PO in town) and all this in their backyard (very big, with horses, cats and dogs). There is another house 24 miles up the road, the Andersons, that also invites hikers to stay and take a load off. I am really impressed with the commitment of the PCT community to supporting hikers. On a trail with no shelters, these little havens are really appreciated. And I understand why the Saufleys live here - the Vasquez Rocks, right in town, are gorgeous.
Just as I am starting to think of life on the trail as "normal," I am at T-minus 11 days of hiking left. Stats: 4 blisters, 6 pieces of gear replaced or bought, 1 sunburn (light), 6 pounds lost, 3 nights of rain, 5 rattlesnake sightings, 0 bears, and many, many trail angels. These last come in all forms, from the very established to the very random. My two favorites came on my way out of Wrightwood, CA (a gorgeous mountain community that was having a communal yard sale AND a farmer's market as I walked through) - Nancy, a mother of two who gave me a ride all the way back to the trail even though she wasn't driving that way, and Joe Maloney from Brooklyn, a grandpa who offered me his extra water as I walked by him.
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| Pictures of the Vasques Rocks area |
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Trail stats from May 21-22
Miles hiked in the last two days: 52
Bodies of water enjoyed: 2 (one lake to swim in, one hot springs featuring a man naked-slack-lining over the water)
Musical realizations: singing while hiking, I was depressed to realize I know more Lloyd Webber than Sondheim.
Mimi via Tania
Bodies of water enjoyed: 2 (one lake to swim in, one hot springs featuring a man naked-slack-lining over the water)
Musical realizations: singing while hiking, I was depressed to realize I know more Lloyd Webber than Sondheim.
Mimi via Tania
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| Hiking out of Big Bear |
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| Black rattlesnake heading off the trail |
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| Creek that leads into hot springs |
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| Pool at hot springs (sorry, no naked slacklining man in the picture) |
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| Trail angel Sandizzel at Cahon Pass |
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| Tunnel hiking from Cahon to Wrightwood |
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| Evening clouds...or was it morning? |
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| Farmer's market, Wrightwood |
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| Wrightwood |
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| Mt. Baden-Powell |
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| Biker/hiker rest stop |
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