PCT 10 Mile Hike from Barrel Springs

Again, I had signed up for a meet-up group but decided it would be in my best mental interest to go it alone.  I declined my RSVP so someone else on the waiting list could go. 

I had a bit of a problem finding the Barrel Springs trailhead and didn't get there till 8.  The meet-up group was milling around waiting for their shuttles out at Warner Springs to be set up.  They were going to hike north on the PCT to Eagle Rock.  I was going south.  I noticed Scowling Red Lipstick Lady staring me down as usual.  I've been on a few meet-up hikes with her and she always gives me the evil eye.  I've tried smiling, saying hello and good morning, and I get nothing but dirty looks back.  It's weird.  She also wears red lipstick to hike.  Who does that?  Anyhow, I ignore her and get on the trail and start walking.  I noticed a backpacker still sleeping in  his tent a little ways in and I was so into scoping out his tent set-up and that I missed the trail and ended up on a goat path instead.  I climbed up the side of a hill on what I thought was the PCT, only to run out of trail at the top.  Oops.  I guessed I better go back down and start over.  The backpacker was making his breakfast when I walked back by him.  I scoped out his stove set-up and saw that it was an alcohol stove. 

Finally I got on the right track and immediately walked through a giant crap ton of poison oak.  ARGH!  Oh well, just kept walking.  The terrain on the south portion of Barrel Springs is very uninspiring.  The trail winds back and forth like a snake, along one ridge after another.  Going south is mostly uphill although at a gentle grade.  At 5 miles I took a break to eat my PB&J and then headed on back.  It got pretty warm but there was a nice breeze throughout.  Lots of grasshoppers and butterflies out and about.  I was so tired and the terrain so boring that I busted out my sansa music player for the first time ever hiking.  I listened with just one ear bud in so I could still hear my surroundings.  I haven't listened to this thing in forever so the music on there was pretty amusing.  I went from Eminem to Kid Rock to Black Eyed Peas to Madonna to Kool and the Gang etc.  The transition that made me laugh out loud was Dolly Parton's "Love is Like a Butterfly" to Lady Sovereign's "Love Me or Hate Me." I was cracking up at the vast difference:








So back through the field o' poison oak I went and then investigated the "water source."  Not sure if this is actually a "spring" and hence the name Barrel Springs.  The water had tadpoles swimming around and yellow jackets swarming.  It actually looked pretty decent though and I would totally drink it after filtering.  Especially if desperate.

Made it back to the trailhead in 5 hours flat. I washed my poison oak legs off with some water I had in the car and then lathered my legs up with hand sanitizer.   Hopefully that will mitigate any devastating poison oak effects- fingers crossed! 

It was a chilly 47 degrees when I started and 81 when I finished. Then what?!   Slurpee time!

Mt. Woodson Full Moon Hike

This month's full moon is called The  Hunter Moon. 

"Its name — one of several catchy monikers including the Blood Moon and the Sanguine Moon — reputedly comes from those who used the light to their advantage, according to Science@NASA. “Hunters … tracked and killed their prey by autumn moonlight, stockpiling food for the winter ahead,” writes NASA’s Tony Phillips. “You can picture them: Silent figures padding through the forest, the moon overhead, pale as a corpse, its cold light betraying the creatures of the wood.”

Cool.  On top of that, there was a partial lunar eclipse tonight.  I personally couldn't see it with the naked eye but apparently part of earth's shadow blocked a small portion of the moon.

I had signed up for a meet-up group  hike up Mt. Woodson but after the crazy week I had at work, I decided that social interaction was not in my best interest.  So I decided to go it alone.  There is a trail somewhere behind the fire station but I just jumped on the first trail I saw that paralleled highway 67 and started walking.  It spit me out onto the fire road and since I'm unfamiliar with the east side of Mt. Woodson, I decided to just keep to the fire road all the way up.  I thought it was 6 miles round trip but it ended up only being 4.  I made it to the top and was kinda disappointed because I thought I was too early to catch the moon on the way back down.  I sat and watched the beginnings of the sunset while I ate my PB&J.  It was a warm, clear and sunny evening.  The view went all the way to the ocean.  I visited Potato Chip Rock and, miracle of all miracles, there was no one there!  That's a first.  Usually there's a line of people waiting to take pictures out on the thin outcropping of rock that looks like it could break in half at any second. 

I headed back down the mountain and was pleasantly surprised to turn a corner and see the bright and luminous moon rising in the distance.  It was glorious as usual.  I was fixated on the moon and startled out of my reverie when a fox ran in front of me!  That's a first!  Pretty neat.  I also saw a few people "bouldering."  They were climbing the huge boulders with all their rock climbing gear.  One guy was free climbing without a belay rope.  Yikes!

Made it back to the car in 2 hours flat with a total of 4 miles and some change.  It was 81 degrees when I started and 67 to end.  I saw 17 people :-)

Enjoy some pictures!

 

My Hiking Buddy is Back!

Pico that is! I took Pico out hiking for an easy 3 miles today.  He hasn't hiked since June because it's been too hot.  I'm getting him back in hiking shape now that the weather is cooler.  Also, I'm trying to train him to ride in my backpack when he gets tired rather than that front-loader sling that I've been using.  It hurts my shoulders too much and it bangs against my thighs-  just is very uncomfortable. 

It was a nice breezy 65 degrees when we started and Pico made it a couple of miles before he started looking up at me beseechingly.  That's his cue to be picked up like a little kid.  So I got him in my backpack and all zipped up so only his head was hanging out.  He did fabulous- riding along like nobody's business.  When it was time to be done, he didn't want to get out!  It was so much more comfortable than the front sling.  Plus that's an additional 12 pounds I can use to practice for backpacking.

70 degrees to end. 

Enjoy some pictures!

Little Kahuna Picture Blog

Little Kahuna's great grandparents came for a visit this week.  It was a delightful visit!

Poetry Break

Sunrise from the Mountains
By Anna Katherine Green (1846-1935)

Hung thick with jets of burning gold, the sky
Crowns with its glorious dome the sleeping earth,
Illuminating hill and vale.  O'erhead,
The nebulous splendor of the milky way
Stretches afar; while, crowding up the heavens,
The planets worship 'fore the thrones of God,
Casting their crowns of gold beneath His feet.
It is a scene refulgent! and the very stars
Tremble above, as though the voice divine
Reverberated through the dread expanse.
But soft! a change! A timid creeping up of gray in east--
A loss of stars on the horizon's verge--
Gray fades to pearl and spreads up zenithward,
The while a wind runs low from hill to hill,
As if to stir the birds awake, rouse up
The nodding trees, and draw off silence like
A garment from the drowsy earth.
The heavens
Are full of points of light that go and come
And go, and leave a tender ashy sky.
The pearl has pushed its way to north and south,
Save where a line spun 'tween two peaks at east,
Gleams like a cobweb silvered by the sun.
It grows--a gilded cable binding hill
To hill! it widens to a dazzling belt
Half circling earth, then stretches up on high--
A golden cloth laid down 'fore kingly feet.
Thus spreads the light upon the heavens above,
While earth hails each advancing step, and lifts
Clear into view her rich empurpled hills,
To keep at even beauty with the sky.
The neutral tints are deeply saffroned now;
In streaks, auroral beams of colored light
Shoot up and play about the long straight clouds
And flood the earth in seas of crimson.
Ah,
A thrill of light in serpentine, quick waves,
A stooping of the eager clouds, and lo,
Majestic, lordly, blinding bright, the sun
Spans the horizon with its rim of fire!