Anyway - we caught a lift back to the trail and ran into our buddy the Grateful Red (a kid our age who had just graduated from CSULB - the name comes from his long red beard, tie-dye headband and general jam-bandy appearance) in the Vincent's Gap trailhead parking lot. We started the ascension of Baden-Powell together, but I was feeling like absolute garbage and the four miles to the summit climb something like 4000 feet, so I fell behind. At the summit, however, we hung out with him for a while as we snacked and rested. He puts in 30 mile days with ease, and we found out he had been taking it easy recently because he was meeting his dad at Kennedy Meadows on June 20th and didn't want to be sitting there waiting for a week. His dad was going to section hike the Sierras with him, but we were much more fascinated with the event he had previously been training for - the Angeles 100. This is a one-hundred mile, roughly 28 hour trail-running race. That's right, 100 miles, running up and down the mountains that had just kicked my and Andrew's butts, with daypacks for carrying water and such. Oh, and he's over fifty. Pretty impressive family.
We hiked to the edge of an endangered species closure - a roughly three mile area of forest set aside for the protection of the Mountain Yellow-legged Frog - and, as it would seem most of the Class of 2014 has done, elected to hike the "old" Official PCT Alternate, which took us on a short road walk to the Cooper Canyon Trail, which intersects the PCT after just a few miles. We ran into a few ladies from Minnesota hiking the six mile Cooper Canyon trail: "Have you read Wild? That's why we're here!" We smiled and hiked on. The first of many, I'm sure. I filled up on water in a stream near the Cooper Canyon Trail Camp, which had a signboard with a notice about rattlesnakes in the area. Well, no more than thirty feet down the trail, I turned a switchback and, "Whoa!" Biggest rattler I've ever seen, maybe as thick as my forearm and very darkly colored. This was the first to really rattle at us, more of a buzzing really, and man I was pretty much reduced to pre-language, so Andrew didn't know there was a giant snake poised to defend its territory and continued right on up to me. He was about as surprised as I had been, and we made a hasty retreat. I really wanted to go back for a picture, but she was pretty feisty, so we kept on walking. Passed mile 400 that day and went about 12 more miles, set up camp in a little saddle that overlooked a sea of city lights - Lancaster, I figured. Andrew's dad wanted to meet us in Agua Dulce, but I figured if we were to take a zero anyway, we might as well just pop down into LA for the day. My girlfriend was getting her wisdom teeth out the next morning, so I thought it'd be fun to surprise her and show up while she recovered. Being so near a city, we had some phone service, so I asked a friend back in LA if he'd come get us from Hiker Heaven, the Saufleys' home, in Agua Dulce Saturday night. He said he was willing, so it was settled.
We hiked down to a fire station the next morning for water and shade, where we met Honeybuzz, Class of 2011, and his girlfriend, Emily. They're about our age, and we quickly found out that Emily not only attended LMU her freshman year, but lived in my dorm building. Small world! The next ten miles from the fire station have a warning in Half-Mile's trailnotes - poodle dog minefield, essentially. Multiple hikers recommended taking the road instead of the trail, "unless you like poodle dog up to your head and on blow-downs" or something to that effect. We heeded the advice, as did Honeybuzz and Emily. Yeah, yeah, spare me the purist lecture, we're still walking to Canada aren't we? Besides, it was no cakewalk - all uphill on asphalt, no shade. Andrew and I played around with the idea of putting in a 27 mile day, provided my friend could pick us up that night from Acton instead of waiting another full day til we got to Agua Dulce. We didn't have service, but thought we might get some at the North Fork Ranger Station. There's an abundance of poodle dog all the way til the last mile before the station, where it yields instead to poison oak. Lovely. Just before we reached that point, though, as the sun was starting to get low in the sky, Andrew and I were cruising downhill, talking loudly about Game of Thrones. "So, do you think he'll have Robin killed, or use him as a pawn? I think that... HOLY SHIT!" Without so much as a warning rattle, I was leaping away from a striking rattler. Pita complemented my evasive maneuvers, though I'm sure I looked like a flailing mess, and he told me the snake got pretty close to my hiking pole but not terribly close to biting me. I was wide awake for the last few miles to the picnic area/ranger station. I heard back from my friend, turned out he had plans and wouldn't be able to get us that night. It was nice cooking and setting up before sunset, for once, anyway. Plus, we ate dinner with a deer - she hung out munching some greens just a few feet from our picnic table. The next morning we convinced a different friend to drive out and pick us up that afternoon, and headed down toward the Acton KOA.
I hadn't intended on being back in LA for a few months, and it was a bit overwhelming after having been either on the trail or in little towns more or less since graduation. But it was great to surprise my girlfriend - she had no idea I was coming - and I certainly loved getting the chance to shower, eat In-n-Out, and rest my knees, just couch-potatin'. I resupplied, bought some Superfeet insoles and Darn Tough socks, but decided I was feeling good enough that I didn't need to get the knee braces I had put on my to-do list. Probably not a great decision.
We left again from Acton around two pm, well over 100 degrees, and after a quick respite at Vasquez Rocks (think Star Trek), we hiked into Agua Dulce. My knees were killing me, and they only sold ankle braces at the grocery store. We walked the next mile off trail to Hiker Heaven, getting there just before everyone crashed, thankfully. We found a couple camp-cots out in the yard and I passed out almost immediately. The next morning I could properly appreciate just how heavenly the Saufleys' place is - showers, bathrooms, a fantastic movie collection, a couple guitars, hiker boxes galore, foot baths, bikes for going into town... pretty much any amenity a hiker could ask for. Unfortunately, we weren't planning on spending any time there, so after a few quick jams and a brief appreciation of couches, we started packing up. I finally decided I needed to get myself some braces though, so we commissioned "iPod" for a ride to a pharmacy. He took us to Carl's Jr. on the way back to the trail, and we got to talking. "If the Sierras are a 10, which they certainly are, the High Cascades are at least an 8.5," he said. "What would you consider Southern California, then?" Pita asked. iPod sort of rolled his eyes and chuckled: "Training."
Another hot day on the trail. We passed a group of napping hikers early in the afternoon, recognizing them as the group that left the Saufleys' before us that morning. Maybe ten miles into our hike that day we hit a water cache just next to the road, where we took a very long break and refilled. Just before we left, we met Hippie, the only woman in the group we had passed earlier that day. She told us she'd be waiting on the rest for a while, as usual. She asked about my knee braces. "You should be taking 800mg of ibuprofen every twelve hours - this is coming from a nurse you know!" she said. I figured that might not be a bad call. Just around sunset we hit another cache, one that had been on the water report. However, the lil' Oasis Cache had more than water. Glorious carbonated liquid gold! Tecaté and cream soda for me, courtesy of the Andersons of Casa de Luna, slurped down from the comfort of a beach chair. Small ecstasies - what it's all about. The nearly-full moon was just rising as we left the cache, figuring there could only be more of this magic at Casa de Luna. We signed the register, laughing at what a hiker ahead of us, Adventure Time, had written (something along the lines of: "Day 248 on the trail, ran out of water and had to drink my own urine a mile back, then found this cache." He also had circled a squashed mosquito on the page: "See this? Real blood, real mosquito. Can't we do something about this? I must have missed the 'bug-free' section of this cache...").
The trail runs into a highway at mile 478, where the Andersons' home is listed on the trail notes. It describes a two mile walk westward into their community, but doesn't provide an address or proper directions. We found their address but didn't have phone service, so we just started heading that direction. Eventually we stopped to ask someone how to get there, considering Calle el Capitan might not intersect the road we were on. "You guys looking for the Andersons'? Yeah you just... uh... shit. Why don't you just hop in my shitbox over there and I'll drive you up there? I can never describe how to get there." His name was Brian, and he took us up to Casa de Luna. It was nearly 10:30, yet we found people hanging out in the "Lunatic Lounge", the little congregation area of couches and tables in the driveway. Jolly Llama, all tucked in for bed on the couch, gave us a procedure run-down. "Camping is in the manzanita forest out back, food goes in the garage, shower is back to the left, loaner clothes right here, pancakes and coffee in the AM." We found a great soft spot out in the "magical forest", which stretches back for what seems like at least a mile, full of cleared camping sites and funky art pieces.
In the morning, over some delicious flapjacks and coffee, Jolly Llama told us that 478-518 was closed for fire damage, so it was 20 miles - either a road walk or hitch - up to Hikertown. He, like most, was getting a ride over, but told us that a group, including our friend The Walrus, had hiked out this morning on the road. Honeybuzz and Emily appeared out of the manzanita grove and we talked with them about our options. We thought about getting a ride over that evening and hiking out of Hikertown along the aqueduct beneath the full moon. However, after a trip to the convenience store and a six-pack of Mojave Gold, we decided we could afford a day since we were bypassing forty miles of trail no matter what. That afternoon Hippie and her gang showed up - Shoetater, Bourbon, Recon and Slow-mo. We spent the afternoon with this crowd, plus Sprinkler, a German guy named Jorg, drinking beers, arguing about GMOs and playing charades. Terri set us up with the supplies for taco salad for dinner, pretty fantastic. Casa de Luna is a really cool place, also known as "Hippie Daycare." I could describe it, but it'd be better for you to just find out on your own sometime.
We decided we still wanted to night hike with the full moon, so we ended up spending most of the next day on the couches of the Lunatic Lounge. A real sweet lady named Jodi came to give us a lift to Hikertown, and she wouldn't even accept donations. She told us about the problems with the lake in town - all the fish were washing up on shore, dead, and the whole town reeked something fierce - as we drove by, we realized she wasn't kidding and simultaneously thanked ourselves for deciding not to road-walk. Andrew popped into Hikertown to pick up his wallet, which he had left back in Huntington while at home, and we set off on our way. It was a wonderfully flat section, all along the aqueduct, I only wish we had hit the part that wasn't cemented over when the moon was out. Nonetheless it was wondrously bright out all night and we hiked til maybe 12:30.
Little Jimmy Spring
Angeles Forest
Just a little guy 
Vasquez Rocks
The Honey Moon
No comments:
Post a Comment