Death Valley

We went to Death Valley for 4 days. We drove in via Baker on Monday. We didn't quite make it into the park so we camped on the side of the road outside of Shoshone. We drove up in The Man's SUV. We had some 4-inch pieces of foam for sleeping. We just put all our stuff in the front seats, laid out the foam and slept. It was so comfortable. More comfortable than at home. Crow is totally right. While I don't think the two of us could go with a sub-compact car, having a regular car big enough to sleep in is the best way to do it. Much more stealthy than something larger and plenty comfortable.

The following morning we drove into the park and saw the sights in the southern part of Death Valley. It was so beautiful. We stopped at everything to take lots of pictures and walk around. We got a campsite in the Furnace Creek area and then did a hike in Golden Canyon up to the spire that you see when you look at Zabriske point. It's called "Manly Peak." It was so golden and beautiful at the end of the day. By the time we finished our hike, it was past sunset and hard to see the way.

In the morning we went to see Zabriske Point at sunrise and then hike down into it to meet up with where we had been the evening before. After breakfast we drove out to see Mosaic Canyon and then Ubehebe Crater. Then we didn't know what to do with the rest of the day so we drove out to see the Racetrack. The road was really washboardy. The Man hit a rock and punctured his tire. He put on the spare but it was really low of air. There was a vehicle parked next to ours that looked like it had a lot of survival gear. The man (and his wife) who owned it had some compressed air so he filled our tire. We thanked him for saving our lives.

We examined the map and thought maybe if we continued forward instead of backtracking it would be shorter to get to a gas station. Big mistake. We took one look at Lippencot Pass road and I wanted to turn back but The Man went for it. It was the scariest road I've ever been on. We were sure we would die a couple of times. Our SUV isn't very small and we're not experienced off-roaders. The man and woman, whose names were Tom and Kari, saw us and would wait to make sure we'd make it through the scary stuff. After a while we all got out and talked for a while. We thanked them again for saving our lives and keeping an eye out for us. We told them we'd buy them dinner if we survived.

After many hours of struggling on difficult dirt roads we made it to Panamint Springs and bought them dinner. Then we camped there in their site. In the morning The Man woke up and asked me if he was alive or if this was a dream and he was lying in a ditch on the side of that road. No, we were alive.

We drove home in the morning after exchanging phone numbers with Tom and Kari. We drove west on highway 190. It was so beautiful out in the desert with the Joshua trees and the stark, bleak landscape. The desert is so beautiful in winter. I wish I lived there in winter. We crested a pass and there before us was the whole Sierra Nevada range. Mt. Whitney and a wall of mountains south and north of it. There was hardly any snow. It was gorgeous.

Once we dropped into Owens Valley we stopped to take pictures of the Sierras. Then we began the long drive south along the edge of the mountains. It's like a rolling back of the PCT now every time I do it. I tried to imagine where the trail was behind that wall of granite, what part of it was behind there. I could see Jenkins peak but not the trail, but I could imagine it and remember what it felt like to look down into the valley from the trail. I could see the road heading up to Bird Spring Pass where the water cache was. We stopped for lunch in Mojave and could see the windmills I walked through. To the south stretched the San Gabriels and I could imagine the whole trail through there. I could see the ski lifts of Wrightwood. The area of Cajon Pass dropped below the horizon and it looked like you would have to walk 50 miles of flat desert to get between the mountains of Big Bear to the mountains around Wrightwood.

As we drove down highway 14, I could see the PCT up near the Mill Creak ranger station. I could see the PCT as it paralleled the highway and went below it into the Vasquez Rocks. As we rounded the mountains into Santa Clarita I watched the Liebres and imagined myself hiking there. The Liebres connected into the mountains of the Sespe Wilderness, where I did my own little connector hike from Santa Barbara to the PCT. I could see the trail to Santa Paula Peak where I've hiked with the Sierra Club. I could see the Topatopa bluffs where we had a Christmas potluck hike just a few weeks ago. My life is written in the great mountains of Southern California. So many memories. Home.

We picked up our birds at the boarder on the way home. We were grateful to have survived our trip. I was so excited about how comfortable it was to sleep in the back of the SUV I started imagining what it would be like to live that way in my later years. Give up having a permanent residence and just live off Social Security visiting the desert in winter, the PCT in spring, summer and fall, driving around to see beautiful places and just living that way.

Mushroom season has begun

Last weekend I did my annual Ultimate Hike. We hike 17.5 miles and do a mile of elevation gain. The profile doesn't just go up to a summit and back down. Instead we go up and down all day, with worse hills toward the end. It's a brutal hike for people who like brutal hikes. Everyone who came had a great time and we did the hike in record time without rushing. We started at 8am and were home by 4pm.

Yesterday I attended the annual Topatopa potluck hike. We hike 7 miles with 4700 feet elevation gain to the edge of the Topatopa bluffs. The hike gets steeper and steeper toward the summit. At the top we have a potluck. Then we hike 7 miles back to the car.

On last weekend's Ultimate hike I noticed some chanterelle mushrooms on the side of the trail. I picked them all and took them home. Yesterday, while I was hiking to the Topatopa bluffs, The Man was out visiting our mushroom tree. He came home with a plastic grocery bag full of big chanterelles. Tonight we ate enormous plates of mushrooms for dinner.

Tomorrow it is supposed to rain. Our mushroom tree will get more mushrooms. Mushroom season has begun!

Hike to Haddock Camp

I've been wanting to thru-hike the Gene Marshall Piedra Blanca National Recreation Trail. The trail is 18 miles long but I have never seen the whole thing. I had hoped to do the whole thing this week but it turned out I was only able to do an overnighter. There was a lot of snow.

We started the hike from Reyes Creek campground and hoped to get to Pine Mountain Lodge. That would make it a completion of the trail as a section hike for me. We only made it to Haddock Campsite, about 8 miles. There was a lot of snow and we wallowed in it most of the day.

Here is our camp at Haddock Camp. This is the first time I ever pitched a tent on snow. It was very cold.

It was hard to find wood because of all the snow so our fire didn't last as long as I would have liked. We tried to dry our socks and warm up before bed.

It was hard to sleep because it was so cold. I brought two quilts so I had enough down on top of me but I didn't have enough padding beneath me. The cold seeped in from below and I struggled to stay warm. We tried to cuddle up together and share body heat. Here we are in the morning hiking back. We postholed up to our shins in some places but it wasn't too bad.

I have to add that the 2nd quilt I brought, a Jacks R Better wearable quilt, is the bomb. In the morning I stuck my head through the headhole while it was still warm and then wore it around camp as we drank coffee and put things away. I highly recommend such a great piece of gear. I was skeptical at first, but it was pure luxury and so sensible.

Finding the trail in the snow had been easy. We just followed the bear. Here is a picture of Trailhacker following my foot prints, the bear prints are the larger ones to his left and heading off in another direction are deer prints. The deer and bears seem to follow the trail, even the switchbacks, perfectly, so rather than search for trail in the snow we just followed the bear the whole way.

Trailhacker lives!

Yesterday, after saying good-bye to Trailhacker, I drove home to Santa Barbara. I was really tired and had a hard time keeping my eyes open. When I got home I decided to take a nap. I slept for about 2 hours.

When I woke up I took a shower and puttered around the house a little. Then I considered what I should do with myself. I had the whole day, what should I do? I thought about starting some laundry and then I remembered my phone! It was sitting in the car. I went out to get it.

When I turned it on, I had a message waiting for me. It was Trailhacker. He sounded sick, his voice was weak. He said he was turning back. It was too hot and he had heat exhaustion. Now I was worried. He said he was heading for Whitewater Creek where he would spend the day, and try to hike out after it cooled off.

I hopped into the car and headed back to Cabazon. It's about 3.5 hours or so. I still was tired and still had trouble keeping my eyes open but the 3.5 hours went by fast. I reached Banning at 4:30. I decided I would get a hotel room and wait for Trailhacker to call me back. I'd have the air-conditioning on so he could come and get cooled off. I left him a message on the phone that this was my plan.

I was a little worried I had not gotten any more calls after the first one. I got my hotel room and sat and waited for him to call. I waited a few hours and still no call. I thought maybe I should send him a text message and let him know I was here. Immediately after sending the message, I received one from him that he had made it to Whitewater and was spending the day sitting in the water. I thought it was actually in reply to my message, so I replied and told him to call me as soon as he was ready to be picked up.

Then I got a call. He sounded out of breath a little and he was so broken up I couldn't understand anything he said. He did sound a little happier than before so I felt better, but I had no idea what he said. The phone cut off and I went back to waiting.

A little while later I got another call. He was broken up again, but I thought I heard him say that he didn't think he could make it out tonight, that he'd make it out in the morning. I sent a text message to him to verify that's what he said. I never got a response. I felt worried because it really isn't such a long distance that he had gone. Why was it so hard for him to make progress? Was he okay?

I kept thinking about what I should do. I didn't want to call SAR because he did sound like he was okay and I didn't want to embarrass him. There had been a big SAR action recently in our area and all the people we knew had discussed all the mistakes that had been made by the hikers. How they should have gotten a weather report and they would have known to stay home. They'd say the same thing about Trailhacker. He knew it would be over 100 and people would be mad at him for heading out anyway.

At the same time I worried what people would say about me. There she was chilling in her air-conditioned hotel room, drinking iced lemonade and doing nothing. Why didn't she care? Why didn't she rescue him? It was so hot outside I knew I could not hike in to look for him. It was hard to do nothing at all.

In the morning I expected Trailhacker to call early. I wasn't sure where he had slept and I couldn't remember how many miles it was from the start of Section C to Whitewater. I thought if it was 8 or 9 miles and he left at 4:30 again, maybe he'd be out around 8:30 in the morning. I figured I would go get some breakfast and wait for him to call, but in the back of my mind, I was worrying he hadn't already called. Wouldn't he start hiking out the night before and thus be ready to be picked up earlier?

I read the paper at Starbucks and tried to waste some time, but he didn't call, so I went back to my hotel. I sat for a little while and suddenly the phone rang. It was 9AM. Hooray! He was waiting for me at the little parking lot. I drove out there and picked him up and took him back to my room so he could shower. Then we went for breakfast at Sizzler.

What a wild adventure he had. The heat was amazing, he said. He had given up as soon as he could see Mission Creek from atop the ridge. He could see all the switchbacks heading up Mission Creek and could see that it would still be several miles to reach the creek and he just didn't think he could continue. He recognized he already had symptoms of heat exhaustion and he didn't want to do anything stupid. His heart was racing after eating something with caffeine in it and his foot hurt because he thought his arch had collapsed. Continuing didn't seem smart. He retreated to Whitewater and spent the entire day alternating between shivering in ice cold Whitewater creek and napping under a shelter made of drift wood and his tarp.

He was also concerned that even if he did make it to Big Bear where the weather was better, he'd have to descend back toward Deep Creek and the desert again anyway and be miserable again. He decided the best thing was to quit.

He seemed in good spirits when I picked him up. He said the ants out there were incredibly annoying. They got into his food and his backpack. There was a clump of them in the bottom of his pack he thought was dirt, but it was all ants. He couldn't get away from them out there. The water was the only reprieve from the ants and the sun.

He's back home now, after a 5 hour drive home. The traffic was horrible from the 405/101 interchange all the way home. He's not going back out on the trail for a while. He might backpack locally. I have to work. My holiday is pretty much shot. I get tomorrow off, though. No driving tomorrow!

Trailhacker is hiking Section C during a summer heat wave

I just dropped off Trailhacker at the start of Section C. We parked the car at 8pm. The temperature was 102. It didn't seem too bad. You know the old saying: It's a dry heat. So we started hiking.

Amazingly there are still a few flowers blooming in the desert. We saw burrowing 5 owls staring at us right away. Lots of tiny baby quail and bunnies, too.

We slept in Teutang canyon on the trail. It is difficult to sleep without any blankets over your body. You sit there looking at the stars and there's nothing holding you down. Maybe you will float away.

Gradually through the night I was able to cover my feet, then my legs with a bivy sack. With that I could sleep. Eventually it cooled enough I could drape a corner of my sleeping bag over my waist.

We woke up at 4:30AM. I said good-bye to Trailhacker who was continuing onward and I hiked back to the car. I reached the car at 5:30AM where the temperature was a pleasant 74. I had breakfast in Banning and the temperature was still a pleasant 74 and seemed to stay that way all the way home to Santa Barbara which I reached at 9:30. Hopefully he got in a few solid hours of pleasant morning hiking before the blast furnace began.

Trailhacker is experienced and has a perverse enjoyment of extreme heat. He'll be walking along two creeks today and tomorrow. His method to deal with heat is to periodically get his clothing wet, so Section C is a section that he should be able to manage. By Sunday evening he'll be back up in the trees where the temperatures are nicer. I hope he will be okay, but he's done far worse than this in the past.

His goal is Wrightwood by next weekend. I hope he gets better weather soon.

The secret of the PCT

As I drove home from my 5 day section hike of the PCT, the one where I endured mostly misery and terrible weather, I thought about the secret that the PCT showed me.

Our whole culture that we normally live teaches us to be concerned with three things: Comfort, security and status. It tells us the more of those things we have the happier we will be. The PCT turns all of that on its head and instead says that the less of those things we need the happier we are.

Comfort
The PCT shows you how little you need to be comfortable. You need only to stay warm and dry and to eat, have enough water and a safe place to sleep. Anything more than that is luxury.

I remember when I was hiking toward a planned hiker feed in northern California. I and the two people I was with that day were hurrying, hoping to make it in time for the food. It became clear that we were probably going to be too late for the food, so we hoped there might be some leftovers. It became clear that we'd probably be late for even leftovers so we hoped there might still be chairs. Chairs! We worked ourselves into a rapture of desire over the thought of sitting in chairs. When we got there the hiker feed was gone, but there were chairs and apples. We were in heaven.

Hiking the PCT makes the tiniest things into enormous pleasures. A chair becomes a dream come true. A cup is a luxury that gives you fits of pleasure. The secret to happiness is not to have more. It is to have less. The less you have the more happiness you feel because little things bring you happiness beyond measure. In our culture we have too much and so endure a sort of law of diminishing returns where we keep trying to add things to gain happiness but find happiness eludes us. This is one of the big secrets the PCT teaches. Comforts should be minimal for maximum happiness.

Security
Our modern world is obsessed with security on many levels. The most common level is the day-to-day preoccupation of securing enough money to afford a decent life. It takes a lot of work and a lot of money and you are never quite sure you've done enough to have made your life secure.

The PCT strips away most security from you. You are left only with a bag of stuff on your back and your wits. That stuff and your resourcefulness become your security. Your body becomes strong from strenuous exercise and you are able to do things you never thought possible. A marathon becomes an easy distance. Your resourcefulness tells you that you can fashion chopsticks from sticks if you lose your eating utensil. You can make a rain poncho from your ground sheet. You can just hike a few more hours or days to a shelter if needed. Your tools and your feet can keep you safe under most conditions.

On the PCT you walk through many different kinds of landscapes. No matter how austere the landscape, it is filled with living things. All these living things are meeting their needs for life. Nature is giving them what they need. There is no landscape that is worthless because it brings life to whatever is living in it.

You almost become a part of the landscape and the economic system that the creatures in it are living under. There is the phenomenon of trail magic, which I believe is the energy of the universe that governs the living things of nature. This magic force wants you to live and it shows you its benevolence by giving you the things you need when you need it. It is another economy outside the one we have built of money and greed. It is the economy of life, of love. Some people call it the Gift Economy where everything is freely given.

In the economy of money and greed, we never have enough. The things that give us life become mundane and taken for granted. You turn a knob and water comes out of a faucet. There is no wonder or gratitude. When you walk 20 or 30 miles in the hot sun to a spring flowing out of the ground, water becomes life embodied and you feel love and gratitude for the water. The universe wants you to be alive and it provides water. It is freely given.

I think often about the horrible things we do to the earth. The plastic filling the seas, the fracking destroying the water for a few minutes of energy and money. When we turn to money for our security we separate ourselves from the source of our true security. Hiking the PCT brings us closer to the source. You do not have to reach and grab to get what you need. You only need to walk quietly and you'll reach the next stream, the next town. Water and food will be waiting for you. We learn there is a hole in the fence of this prison we live in daily and on the other side is a different world. One of love and wonder, beauty and freedom, happiness, struggle, pain and pleasure. It asks only that we live fully and that we walk.

The PCT takes you through places that only hikers and hobos will ever see. Only a hiker or a hobo or perhaps a swallow can see a culvert under a freeway as a safe place to sleep. Only a hiker or a hobo or perhaps other woodland creatures will feel the safety and security of sleeping under a tree in the middle of nowhere. When you can sleep anywhere, the whole world becomes your home. You can never be homeless.

All of this makes you aware that we worry too much about the future. The PCT calms the fear that rises up in our daily lives that we won't have enough, that we'll lose everything, end up on the streets. There's a 2663 mile long unpaved, single track street waiting for you to call home. You carry inside your pocket the key to that street like a secret and it burns a warm secure feeling inside you.

Status
On a long distance hike you meet people with made-up names. You don't know their real names or what they do for a living. The rankings of ordinary life go away. Being the kind of people we are, there still are ways to rank each other on the trail, but largely you are free from the status you came with. You can camp with someone of a far lower or higher social status than you and not even know it. The skills needed out there are different than the skills needed in society and it levels the field a bit. It's freeing.

At the start of a thru-hike people are very much concerned with their gear. How light is it? Do you have enough of it? What brand is it? As you go along, you realize your gear is just a tool. Everything you own is just a tool. Your possessions are only worth as much as the service they provide you. If they aren't providing any service, they are not worth anything. An aluminum can may provide as much utility as a $300 sleeping bag. Your expensive shoes may be destroying your feet and the cheap ones might be saving them. The money or brand name isn't what is important. What's important is the usefulness of the object and your skills.

PCT hikers are never truly outside society. (If anything, it is only because of our society that we can even do such a thing as hike the PCT.) We still need money. We still carry food bought in stores. Our gear is made with plastics and things that couldn't have existed without industrial society and made in processes that pollute the planet. We aren't at one with nature. We're just passing through. But we touch the edge of a world where you can just be and don't have to prove, and it feels good.

On the trail you learn that your body is strong. You can walk a long way. You can endure scary things. You can make it through a difficult night of bad weather. You can solve problems. It brings a sense of calm, a sense of pride. Next time someone treats you poorly you can see right through the attempt that person is making to position himself above you and it just doesn't work. You carry a secret inside of you. You can walk 2663 miles with very little possessions and endure hardships and still be comfortable, warm, safe and dry. You have the key to happiness and nobody can take it away.

This is the secret I learned from the PCT. Having less comfort makes life happier and full of luxury. Security is not fully dependent on money. The kinds of status modern society bids you to seek are irrelevant. Whenever the cold sweats come in the middle of the night, when you think of your future and how you don't have the millions of dollars the financial experts say you need to survive your old age, you can think of the trail, of the birds and other living things. They have no insurance. They have no portfolios. Yet they live in beauty that even then richest man on earth will never see. They have not hoarded and saved for the future and instead live in the present and let nature care for them. You can think of Billy Goat still hiking the trail in his old age. You can remember the hardships you endured and the priceless treasures you saw that can't be bought and you realize that somehow, everything will be okay.

My authentically adventurous self was evident in childhood

When I was a kid, I think it was in second grade, I wrote the following story. I think it says a lot. It was written on two foot-shaped pieces of paper and the assignment was to write a story from each foot's point of view. (I kept all spelling and punctuation errors in.)

FEET Were we go! What we see!
One day I ran away from my body. When my body saw that I was gone, he held on to my buddy. I jumped up on my bodies bed and tikeld my buddy. He got away. Then we traveld to the end of Alpine Dr. The next night we were in Los Angles. We started to run. then we got lost, we could not cry because we didn't have any eyes.

We found a knife and two eyes and a bottle of glue. We cut a hole in one foot, and another in the other foot. It hurt. We glued the eyes on. Then we could see we traveld to a mountain It was big for little us. We climbed up we saw a campfire, in no time we were warm. We found some shoes, and put them on. We ran home and put on a body.

The End

When I was a kid, I thought I would grow up to become a writer. As I got older, I would write elaborate, multiple paged stories about adventures. A group of friends would go off on some kind of journey through a fantasy world, or we would ride in space ships to other worlds. Once I wrote for a practice standardized test an essay about a dream where I was in a forest running through the trees. We had to grade each other's essays in the class and so many people liked my story that the teacher asked me to read it to the whole class.

As I got older, people told me that's not the correct way to write an essay. You were supposed to follow a structure. They taught me how to write properly. I never wrote creatively ever again after that. They also told me that being a writer was not a realistic goal. I spent the rest of my life struggling to somehow find a compromise between what they said would be realistic and what I enjoyed. I never succeeded at this.

When I talk to children, which admittedly isn't very often, if they tell me they want to be artists when they grow up I congratulate them on a wise choice. The people I know who are artists make good money. Many work for themselves. Art, I was always told, was the most unrealistic goal of them all. Nothing could be more wrong. If I meet a kid who wants to ride a unicycle, I say, Good for you! What if they excel so well at riding a unicycle they get to ride it in the summer parade and they enjoy that so much they end up becoming the executive director of the organization that puts on the parade? You can never know where something will lead so I never tell a child something they want to do is unrealistic.

There is a huge gap between when you are a child and when you are an adult. In the gap between my own childhood and when I became an adult, personal computers were invented among other things. In the years since, so many things have changed, so many new fields have been created, that the occupations that are available to me now could not have even been explained to my parents and teachers when I was a child. Who am I to say that the skills learned riding a unicycle won't prove to be the key to that kid's future? I haven't a clue what the future is going to be.

It's clear from my childhood writing that I wanted to write and have adventures. When I engage in those activities, it is the truest expression of my authentic self. It has been a long struggle to get even this far back to who I am, and I've spent so many years not being myself that I sometimes feel a little sorrow for how much of my life has been wasted. I suppose that maybe answers why I left a good job at a billion dollar company to hike the PCT and why I didn't go back to it when I finished the trail.

Poison Oak Relief

I got poison oak from hunting mushrooms last week. I knew I would get it. I try not to worry about poison oak too much. It's just a rash.

I've discovered a pretty effective home remedy for relief from the itching. I use a hot compress when the itching feels really bad. Tonight I had an angry red welt that itched like crazy. I put the hot compress on it and after a while, the itching subsided and the angry red welt was almost gone.

I've done this each evening when the poison oak seems to flare up. It really does relieve the itching.

During the day I haven't even noticed the poison oak for some reason. I don't claim this is because of the hot compress. I really don't know why it hasn't been very bothersome this time. I've got quite a lot of it on my legs.

I have an additional theory that poison oak is a good treatment for the common cold. I started catching a cold last Thursday or Friday. But it hasn't amounted to much. I had a sore throat for a day and a half. I had a little mucus for a day and a half. Otherwise, I've felt fine. My theory is the poison oak was such as assault, my immune system was in high gear before the cold could really take hold. It may have helped I took a lot of Vitamin C, too.

Big Plate 'O 'Shrooms

We went back for more mushrooms. We gave a few to our chef neighbor. It was worth $29 a pound to see the look on his face!

Hiker Trash

This is what Hiker Trash looks like. I don't know who these people are, but one of them is named Furniture. Anyway, I'm sometimes asked what Hiker Trash means and this is my answer.

PCT Hikers this year

My mom lives near the halfway mark on the PCT. When I did my first PCT hike, she had no idea how close to the trail she was. She got all excited about the trail and started wondering if she could help out the hikers in some way.

The first year I hiked, she would drive through the little town she lives near and if she saw people who looked like hikers, she'd offer them a ride to the trailhead.

The second year I hiked she did the same thing, but she also left a cooler on the trail with drinks. Sometimes she would leave her phone number offering a ride to people who called. People would call her and once she got up the nerve, she invited a few to stay at her house, which is considerably far from the little town and the trail.

At first she didn't want them in the house. She offered the back yard to pitch tents and sleep. She saw all the tents out there and felt bad so so invited them in. They played cribbage, ate tons of food and she invited them to sleep on the couch. She learned that the PCT hikers are wonderful people. She started taking their pictures and had them sign a little register in her house. She never specifically asked for donations, but she would find money hidden around the house for her. She really had a lot of fun.

She decided to do it again this year. She removes her phone number from the trail when she doesn't want to be bothered. She only has people come over to her house that she invites. But she seems to invite everybody.

Today she sent me a link to pictures she has taken of the hikers she's met so far. Some of them she's only driven to and from the trailhead and others stayed over at her house. Looking at all the pictures fills me with melancholy for a world I'm not a part of right now. The trail is a whole little community, a special world. I miss it!

Here are her pictures.

Using my homemade mosquito net with a tarp

My homemade mosquito net tent works well with my 8x10 tarp. It does not work with my poncho. The poncho has velcro on it so I don't even want to get near my gossamer cocoon with it. But even without the velcro, it's just not the right size or shape to work with the poncho.

Because of the way I made the edges around the bottom, I can use stones instead of stakes, which is nice. That means I don't have to carry extra stakes if I need to use the tarp to form a roof. Since the tarp can only be set up one way using the net, there is no room for creativity and I can leave extra guy lines home, too.

The weight for the tarp plus mosquito net compared to my tent is heavier. But I can sleep without a roof now without worrying about mosquitoes. So for a few extra ounces I think it might be worth it to sleep peacefully under the stars. Since it is summer, I can leave home other things when using the mosquito net so it will all even out.

Now I need to make an esbit stove.

Homemade mosquito net tent

I sewed my own mosquito net tent.

It was not easy to sew. The netting would get stuck in the sewing machine foot. It's mosquito netting, not no-see-um netting, so it had holes big enough for a sewing machine foot to find its way in. I figure it should be sufficient for the kinds of bugs I usually experience in my area, which is mostly mosquitoes and flies.

There's no door. I could not figure out how to make a door. The netting is not strong enough to sew a zipper directly into it. If I ever figure out a way to add a door, I may add one later. For now, it's easy enough to just crawl under one of the long sides.

It's quite light, but without a sensitive scale, I'm not sure how much it weighs. With the two lines attached, tt feels to weigh about the same as my Equinox bivy, which is listed at 6.5 ounces. I don't mind that it is white. I used to sleep under a mosquito net tent that I bought in a travel store that was made to go on top of your bed in a tropical hotel room. That sucker weighed a pound. It was white, too, and I could see the stars through it at night just fine.

When I first met The Man we did a little backpacking together and one thing I used to like to do was get inside my mosquito net tent and just lay out naked and enjoy the air free from the flies that plague our backcountry. One time I did that while he was out cutting brush on the trail. When he returned to camp, he was surprised to see me. He told me I looked like a beautiful maiden in a gossamer cocoon.

In warm summer months I sometimes feel sad that I am stuck inside my tent without the ability to see the stars. I've tried just using a headnet but if the night is warm, it is too hot to be confined to my sleeping bag. I about died of heat in Seiad Valley when I tried to sleep without a tent and just a head net. I needed to stick arms or legs out but mosquitoes were biting. Having a full-sized mosquito net tent like this means that I can sleep outside of my sleeping bag on warm nights without worrying about mosquitoes.

I may give this a try on my up-coming hike in the Sierras. I'll bring either my poncho or my big 8x10 tarp in case of rain. I have to try the poncho and the tarp to see which one I can actually set up with my mosquito net tent.

Returning to the PCT in August

I made a reservation for a wilderness permit to hike from Duck Pass to Bishop Pass in August. I will complete the JMT section of the PCT with this hike.

I'm hoping that in August the bugs will have diminished and the snow will be minimal if any at all. My biggest hope is that the scary creek crossings that caused me to chicken out of this stretch in the first place will be so tame by then I won't even notice them.

I'm going to hike SOBO. I got a permit for a really long time even though it's only 70 miles or so. I'm not certain how far it is exactly. I will have to research it out better as the time nears.

Yay! Something to look forward to.

Hike to Dabney Cabin

The Man and I went for a 12 to 15 mile hike today, depending on whether you believe the trail signs or the Sierra Club hike list. The Man wanted to see how his sprained ankle was healing. It seemed like quite an ambitious thing to do.

The trail was along a creek to an old historic cabin. The trail itself was mostly flat. The Man's sprained ankle seems to have the most trouble going up hill, so this flat trail was a decent choice for him to make. But the lengthy miles and the rocks in the creeks did seem to offer quite a big challenge.

He made it, though. He was struggling toward the end but he appeared to be very happy he has healed enough to accomplish the hike.

I enjoyed the hike very much. I was surprised the weather was so nice. I expected it to be very hot but it was mild. There were still wildflowers in bloom so I took lots of pictures. The water in the creek felt good to walk in.

I wore my Chacos the whole way. On the way to the cabin I went sockless and walked through all the creeks. There was some chafing. At the cabin I put bandaids on the sore spots and on the way back I tried to rock hop over the water to keep my feet dry. That worked pretty well, but I missed a spot with the bandaids and was eventually rubbed quite raw. At the last creek crossing I put my socks on and walked the final mile. I wished I could wear socks the whole way, but the foxtails make it quite impossible.

During the final mile I felt like I could walk all day. I'm becoming a convert to hiking in sandals. I thought my toes would have more trauma but I have never hit my toes on anything. I feel so safe now I don't even flinch at the rocks on the trail. Aside from the chafing, the only problem wearing sandals for hiking is when foxtails get between my toes.

When I reached the car I sat in a sliver of shade beside the car and waited for The Man to arrive. The creek burbled below and the stellar jays yelled at each other in the sycamore trees. I felt so content. It is good to just walk and do nothing more. There are no wants, there is only contentment. I felt I could have set up my camp and gotten up to do it again tomorrow. Sadly, I have to go to work instead.

Trike ride to Lake Casitas

I rode my recumbent trike to Lake Casitas from Ventura today. I went with a group, although I hardly saw anyone most of the day. I saw them at the beginning, at one break in the middle, and at lunch. Otherwise I rode alone.

Most of these riders are very slow. Some are so slow they've taken to starting out several hours early so they stand a chance of reaching the lunch stop in time to eat with the others. Being slow is not so bad but I have ridden with this group for many years now and over all these years they have only gotten slower and more hill-averse. This is not a fitness-oriented riding group.

A few of the riders are very fast. I have no hope of keeping up with them but occasionally I try. Not today, though. Some of these really super fast guys have cancer or other terrible illnesses. Most of them are quite old. They keep me humble.

But whether people in this group are fast or slow, they are still bike geeks. There's something I just don't quite get about bike geeks. I find the whole subject of bike parts and new bike technologies incredibly dull, but bike geeks can't get enough of that stuff. For them, the purchase doesn't stop at the bike. It continues indefinitely as they spend huge amounts of time poring over improvements and gadgets and enhancements they can make. Trike riders seem worse than other bike geeks because not only are there regular bike geek things to obsess over, there are special trike paraphernalia like flags and whirly-gigs to make a statement about visibility and dorkdom.

It's like the bike isn't a tool for these nice folks to go out and have adventures. All it seems to be is a huge shopping (and eating) opportunity. And for that reason, I often feel I have little in common with these folks. So I usually show up for my ride, do my best to get a little exercise, try not to get too glazed over when one of them discusses bike geek stuff with me, and then I go home.

Today had a bright spot when I learned that one of them rode his trike from Astoria to San Francisco. He had stories to tell of riding his trike all day on a sort of cycling PCT, the Pacific Coast bike route. Hundreds of people ride this route every year and he had a wonderful time meeting other riders on this route, spending time with them in town stops and leapfrogging them on each day's journey. There were moments like stopping at a roadside rest stop and being surrounded by huge RVs and realizing how different it feels to travel with so little. Moments spent camping in hiker/biker sites surrounded by people whose ideas of camping were to go outside and cook something then eat it inside the RV in front of the TV and realizing how few kids every really get to see the stars anymore. Every day he churned his granny gear up long climbs that lost him tons of weight and granted him freedom to eat as much as he wanted.

In other words, it was my first ride with this group where I actually related to someone. When I mention my PCT hike to the others they say things like, "I bet you are glad that's over and you can get back to doing regular things now." Here was someone who understood and who could tell me stories of an adventure that was the same and also very different from mine. It was a nice time.

Gave an ultralight backpacking presentation tonight

The Man and I gave a presentation of our ultralight backpacking gear to some boyscouts tonight.

I had never been to a boyscout meeting before. It was kind of strange. They are pseudo military with their little color guard, but they have no discipline. They did have more discipline than a bunch of pre-teen and teen boys would be expected to have. Organized chaos in a way I guess.

Somehow we held them spellbound with our gear demonstration for an hour and a half. We brought our packs and The Man went first, unpacking his gear and showing it off. He has some high-tech stuff and the techie boys in the group were very interested. I have mostly homemade/recycled and minimalistic gear and I seemed to hold them spellbound by talking really fast.

I think I disappointed one of the troop leaders because I hardly pack any first aid stuff. What else do you need besides a few bandaids, some gauze and tape, a few ibuprofen and other pain killers, a needle for poking blisters, my pocket knife and a little neosporin? I could use my bandana and shirt for bleeding, my pad for splinting. My reading glasses were extra strong so I could see the splinters in my fingers. Anything worse than basic boo-boos and I'd be too far gone to help myself, I'm afraid. In that case, I'd have to use my phone or hope someone would come along who could go for help. I never needed anything from anyone, though, in all the 3000 miles I hiked.

We talked too long and could not show any pictures. The boys might have been bored with pictures anyway. I had hoped to show pictures of other hikers, of the places where we stayed, the water caches and how my tent is set up with trekking poles. I also forgot to give out my handouts of links to good web sites for gear. I gave them to one of the leaders to hand out later.

I hope they enjoyed our presentation. At least one boy wanted to ask more questions afterward. He really wants to hike the PCT one day. I'm sure that he will.

My new purple Piper sandals

I ended up ordering a pair of these sandals from Piper Sandals.

They look exactly like the picture. They are exactly that color. It's a perfect color. I normally wear brown colors and when I wear brown, they look sort of brown and fit right in. But they have color so they aren't boring.

Supposedly the footbeds will mold to my feet in about a week of wear. It feels like they will do that. The tread on the bottom is pretty much flat, so I don't know how they would do for hiking. Probably not that well. But you never know. Doesn't really matter because these are for everyday and I have Chacos for hiking.

I am enjoying "summer", if you can call it that here in Santa Fogra. It's freezing in the morning and hot in the afternoon. My feet are in sandals every day, my toes are free. I'm hiking in sandals and going to work in sandals. Little-by-little I think that maybe I'm really starting to heal my foot problems from the PCT. Maybe I will never wear shoes again and have happy, free feet forever more.

Fixed my Chacos

I decided to give my Chacos another chance. I flattened out the toe strap and took and exacto knife to the part that rubbed against my heels. With my still-tender blisters from the other day, I went for a hike on the Jesusita Trail up to Tunnel Trail, a rocky, dusty trip of about 6 miles. I made very little effort to baby my feet. I wanted to give them a good test. No problems at all. The Chacos are fixed.

As I was walking down the Tunnel trail, I overheard two men as I was catching up to them. It sounded like they were talking about the Saufley's house in Agua Dulce. Finally as I approached, they stopped and just as I came up to them one of them said, "They're all hard core like this lady here with her sandals on."

I asked him what was he talking about because it sounds like the PCT. He said yeah, he was talking about the PCT. I told them about having just finished the trail last summer and so we started talking about the PCT. They wanted to know if I stayed at the Saufley's. I said that I did and that I got a ride to the REI while I was there. It turned out that one of the guys works at that REI.

We started talking about gear a little bit. They wanted to know if I wore the Chacos on the PCT. I said no, but I was really liking them now and I might be able to do the PCT with them. The PCT isn't like Tunnel trail. It's smooth and level mostly. They asked if I had a really big pack. I said that I did not. I told them about my light gear and that most of the space and weight in my pack was food and water. I tried to impress upon them that the longer you are out there the less junk you need to carry, and that I found that a lot of my gear beyond the main stuff was just recycled stuff, homemade stuff and bits and pieces of things. The news seemed to blow the REI guy away a little bit. I reassured them that most hikers wore shoes like what the two of them were wearing.

As I descended the trail, my feet did start to hurt a little bit. The Chacos are pretty hard. I think I could do the PCT in Chacos if I toughened my feet up a bit and maybe if I swapped back and forth during the day with Crocs. Anyway, I'm really happy I fixed my Chacos and I think they will be my primary hiking shoes for the time being. I'm glad I don't have to buy any hiking shoes for a while.

Serendipity follows the PCT

I went for an over-nighter on the PCT this weekend. I decided to drive out to San Francisquito Road and hike north to Sawmill Campground, then come back the following day.

I tried to get an early start but partway down the freeway I realized I had forgotten my trekking poles. Without my trekking poles I wouldn't be able to set up my tent. I could sleep okay without a tent, but the weather report called for nighttime temperatures in the teens with a chance of snow showers. I was counting on my tent to help keep me warm and dry. So I turned back to get my poles.

I got started hiking around 9AM or 9:30, which wasn't too bad at all.

I could see three hikers on the trail even before I parked my car. I soon caught up to two hikers near a spot where I remembered peeing behind a bush in 2008. It was the same spot where I was trying to leave behind Graybeard. Graybeard was a nice man, but I just felt like hiking alone.

I met the two hikers and their names were Wildchild and Dash. Turned out they know my mother. My mother is so famous I'm going to have to call myself Pipers' Mom's daughter.

As I continued down the trail, I met a man from Lancaster. He seemed worried about his speed. People should not worry about their speed. If they feel they are falling behind schedule, all they have to do is get up earlier and hike later into the day. Take fewer zero days and soon you'll be ahead of schedule.

When I got to Elizabeth Canyon Road and the Red Carpet water cache, I was feeling a little disappointed. I should have started my hike here instead of at San Francisquito Road because the trail between the two was pretty boring. At the Cache were three more hikers in addition to the three I had already met. All were enjoying the water in the cache and taking a break in the freezing shade.

I realized I had forgotten to get a copy of the water report. I asked if anyone had a description of the spring that was coming up. They told me I should just take water from the cache. I thought I should leave that water for the thru-hikers. I really didn't need water, but was hoping to just get a sip to drink at the spring. They read me the description and it sounded like a tiny little drip.

A mile and a half up the chaparral trail I stepped in a mud puddle and found the spring. It was dripping with the tiniest of drips. I decided I would hold my bottle under the drips while I ate a Pro-Bar and when I was finished with the bar I had about half a Naked Juice bottle worth of fresh, cold spring water. I took a sip. It tasted good. I drank the rest. A few little floaties didn't bother me.

Up I continued into more chaparral. I was starting to realize that maybe this was not the really pretty section of trail I remembered and that I should have started my weekend hike somewhere else. I hiked through scratchy scrub laced with motorcycle tracks for quite some time. Then I saw a small glade of oaks ahead and I became very happy. I was going to enter the enchanted forest I remembered after all. The glade lasted only a few feet and then I was back in chaparral with a few interior live oaks to provide interest.

After miles of ravine cha-cha, I rounded a turn and saw a forest of pines that I remembered. There were piles of dead branches with pieces of plastic interwoven in the middles of them. It was very strange. I could see the three hikers I met at the cache sitting on some kind of structure. I read my guide book and it mentioned a guzzler was coming up soon.

I reached a faint road and decided I would go see if that led to the guzzler. It did. That was the structure the three hikers were sitting on.

I had carried with me from home 3.5 liters of water. I had drunk one of them already. I was not sure if I would find more water before Sawmill Camp and since that was my turnaround point, I'd need enough water to get there, camp and then return to the guzzler again. I decided I would get a liter of water here.

I dipped my bottle into the guzzler's standing rainwater basin. The three hikers were shocked. One of them took my picture. She called me the "crazy hiker who drinks from those things." It was my turn to be shocked. I asked them if they really never took water from a source like this. They said eww, no way. They always got "man-made" water. I got out my camera to take their picture. A picture of three crazy hikers who never drank natural water.

I treated the water and tasted it. It tasted terrible. Just like concrete. But it was clean and clear and would work for cooking pasta so I was happy. Off I went into the woods.

Soon the pines turned into big cone spruce with green grasses and wildflowers blooming around every turn. I had made it to the enchanted forest I remembered. I took lots of pictures so I could remember. Some of the big cone spruce trees were huge.

After a few hours of hiking in the freezing cold wind, I started to debate whether I should camp at Sawmill Camp or not. I remember it being a windy place. As the hour to reach the turnoff to the camp drew near, I started scouting out better alternatives just in case it was way too windy there. I checked my watch at each one so I would know haw far to backtrack.

I turned up the side trail to the camp. I walked all around the campground looking for a place sheltered from the bitterly cold wind. I found some really nice places but the layer of soft oak leaves and pine needles was so thick there was not a chance I could stick a tent stake in and have it hold my tent up. I finally settled for a camp site with a picnic table that seemed a little less windy than most of them. I started my dinner cooking and since it was windy, I waited until it was finished cooking to go set up my tent. Normally I would set up my tent while it worked. I wrapped up my dinner in something warm and went to set up my tent.

I got my tent set up and brought my dinner inside to eat in the warm sun while I read a book. Just as I was cleaning my pot, I heard someone call, "Hey thru-hikers!" I responded thinking they might be another thru-hiker hoping to share my spot. It turned out the voice belonged to a PCTA rep who was out on a work project. He was inviting me to dinner and brownies and a warm campfire. I could not turn down a warm campfire!

I walked down there to see Wildchild and Dash already there. I spent the evening standing around the fire trying to stay warm. It was really very cold out. I worried I would freeze all night long. Two more thru-hikers arrived and I enjoyed the conversation with everyone around the fire. I was so grateful to have this company, this spontaneous happy happening, that I was willing to pay for it with a cold night. I was so happy I had taken the turn into the camp and that I had not backtracked to one of my back-up locations. This is what I call trail magic. Trail magic wasn't the fact that these people were here handing out food to thru-hikers but that the trail took care of me enough to provide me warmth and company on what would have been a cold and solitary night. That's trail magic.

After a while I finally tore myself away from the fire and found my way by moonlight to my tent in the frigid wind. I wore every single item of clothing I had brought, save the homemade dirty girl gaiters. I wore capilene tights, hiking pants, rain chaps and my fleece leg warmers on the bottom. Long sleeve shirt, long sleeve button-up "desert" shirt, Patagonia Houdini wind jacket, fleece balaclava, homemade Ray Jardine bomber hat and the Houdini's hood on top of it all. Fleece fingerless gloves on my hands. My down sweater wrapped around my middle like an extra blanket. My 20 degree sleeping quilt wrapped in a bivy sack inside my tent. I hoped for the best.

I actually slept pretty warm. I awoke to a cold morning and when I felt I could brave the outside, I got up and looked around. There was a little ice on my tent. Cold clouds swirled around in the wind. It was much colder than yesterday.

I packed up all my stuff and went down to the PCTA work crew camp to make my breakfast by their fire. Instead, they offered me some eggs, potatoes and sausage, and hot cowboy coffee. Who could refuse!

More hours around the campfire. The leaders offered me a chance to hike further north and then as long as I returned to Sawmill Camp by 2PM they would give me a ride all the way back to San Francisquito Road. That sounded wonderful so I took them up on it. At 8:00 I realized that if I left now I'd have three hours to hike out and three hours to hike back. So loaded up my pack and headed off. They offered to let me leave my pack in camp so I didn't have to carry it, but I didn't want to leave my pack. I'm glad I didn't because I had to keep shedding layers and putting them back on. It was good I had a pack to carry all these layers.

The trail left the enchanted forest and passed the number 500 written in pine sticks on a dirt road. A short while later I passed a marker that the trail crew had just installed marking the real 500 mile point.

There was no more enchanted forest for the rest of my journey. I hiked through frozen chaparral outlined in a rime of white. It was beautiful but very cold. I needed both my fleece balaclava to keep my cheeks and neck warm and my Ray Jardine bomber hat to keep the wind from penetrating my head. My bomber hat worked great. Thank you so much, Palomino, for giving me the kit.

I kept hoping to get a glimpse of the view I saw in 2008 that planted the seed that led me to try to hike from Santa Barbara to the PCT. But the clouds were low and the snow was falling fast, but not sticking to the ground.

Soon I reached a dirt road and the data book said there was another guzzler down the road. I actually recognized the spot immediately and turned to go check it out. I didn't need any water, but the guzzler is in a small little enchanted oak forest and I wanted to take a picture of it. These things are really quite clever. People could install similar things if they had space in the yard and collect rain water to use in the garden. The previous guzzler was a concrete catch that filled a concrete basin. This one was a slanted metal roof with a gutter that fed the water into a fiberglass basin under the roof. I stopped under the roof to get out of the snow and take a little break.

The oak trees glistened with white. It was beautiful. I considered for a moment why I do these crazy hikes. Yesterday the first half of the day had been really boring. But I enjoyed it anyway because sometimes it's nice just to walk without distraction. I knew the weather report was daunting but I went anyway because I hardly ever see it snow. I wanted to see snow fall. Here I was freezing cold but I felt alive. I don't feel alive working and always being in air-conditioning during the day.

I started back southbound happy I had had a good adventure. The clouds began to clear a bit and I finally got my view. I could see Slide Mountain Lookout where I had considered making my trail. I could see a glimpse of Pyramid Lake. I could see the mountains near the Buck Creek Trail that I missed and the Snow Creek bushwack that I got lost in. I could see interesting rock formations that I remember seeing in the Google satellite views when I was researching my route. I saw the old highway with all the old inns that is now just a favorite Sunday motorcycle ride. I didn't see the Topatopas like I thought I would and this made me wonder how I ever though I recognized any of those mountains. That must have been serendipity of the PCT as well.

Hiking southbound I noticed a water tank. I decided to go investigate. I could not tell if you could get water out of it, but I was at the road so I decided I would just walk along the road instead of the trail. Wildchild and Dash had been hiking the road all through here and they said it had better views than the trail and highly recommended it. The views were very nice. I could see far into the Mojave/Lancaster area. The Tehachapis were covered in snow now. Storm clouds stretched far into the Sierra Nevada. I felt sorry for the thru-hikers this year. It's fun for a weekend but every day for months would be exhausting being snowed so much.

Along the way I saw a couple of dirt bike riders. Then I found a big baby bird laying in the road. It looked like maybe it had fallen out of the nest. I didn't know if it could fly yet. It looked lika dove. I picked it up and put it under a shrub to prevent it the indignity of being run over by a motorcycle or truck. It was soft, warm and heavy like my birds at home.

Eventually I reached a convenient place to get on the trail again and then I found myself back at Sawmill Camp waiting for my ride in the bitter cold. I got my ride back and enjoyed talking with Kevin of the PCTA. I hoped to see thru-hikers needing a ride to the Andersons when I got back to my car but there were none. I drove home fighting the urge to close my eyes and nap in the warmth of my car.

I'd post a picture but I can't figure out what happened to the network drive where I download them. It has vanished.