Nancy, Jacki and I took the ferry out of Long Beach and arrived in Avalon late in the day. Avalon is a bustling little tourist town that is jam packed with people and golf carts. On Catalina, you must stay in designated camp areas, so our first stop was the Hermit Gulch campground a couple of miles outside of Avalon. We had a super crappy spot but Jacki sweet-talked the ranger into giving us a better spot and he pointed out the trailhead for us. We asked him quite a few questions to get our facts straight because we were already noticing discrepancies in our information.
We got our camp set up and then sat around relaxing. The weather was perfect and mosquitos minimal.
The next morning we needed to start early because we figured we had about 16 miles to go from Hermit Gulch to Little Harbor. I think we ended closer to 18 miles. Pre-dawn we started climbing. This trail is essentially straight up and down without switchbacks with significant elevation gain and loss. It's quite challenging and I didn't give it enough credit going into it.
With all the rain we've had in the past couple of months, Catalina was lush and green. The weather was perfect with a nice breeze. Sometimes we had really humid pockets and that made for hotter hiking but not too bad. The flowers were popping and the landscape was absolutely gorgeous. We cruised along at a great pace, keeping an eye out for bison. There is a herd of bison that roam Catalina and they can be temperamental. A hiker was gored just a few days before we started hiking. We made it to a deserted Black Jack campground without incident and had lunch there.
We were feeling good after Black Jack and making good time when things went awry. We missed a turn near the Cottonwood Trail Junction based on some info the ranger had given us the night before. We continued down a side jeep trail instead. Jacki had her phone out and kept telling us that we were off track and I kept saying that we were on the right track and to keep going. Silly me. We hit Airport Road and realized we needed to walk 2 additional miles straight up to the airport on a paved road. I was SO pissed at myself. UGH! I heard a car coming and threw my thumb out to hitchhike without even thinking about it. Jacki threw her thumb out as well and we got a ride. We totally lucked out with super nice people who had been coming to Catalina for 40 years. They drove us up to the airport and crisis averted! Several rangers gave us conflicting information on where to hook back into the trail. We needed to get on a path called Sheep Chute to get to Little Harbor. We took the Airport Loop Trail to get onto Sheep Chute and then it was literally all downhill from there. Later we found out there were several hikers who had made the same mistake on that jeep road. SHEESH!
It was all worth it when we saw the first views of Little Harbor. So beautiful! The water was so clear and aqua blue. Our campsite was right on the beach front. We couldn't have asked for a better day when things could have gone so very wrong.
Foxes are abundant on the island and we had a "fox" locker for our food at this campsite, much like a bear locker. There were a few nights that I could hear an animal breathing outside my tent and I'm pretty sure it was a fox. The Catalina Island Fox is unique in that it doesn't live anywhere else in the world but on this island.
We had a nice relaxing evening watching the ocean and sunset and then hit the hay early because we were toast.
Next day's destination - Two Harbors....
Photos can be found on my Instagram @tinahikes
Author of Lola Hikes the Icy Mountain
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2 comments:
Can't wait to read more! I'm doing the TCT at the end of the month.
Lively Lizard - Awesome! It's beautiful :-)
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