Backpacking Trip 1

So, Janelle and I are obviously not too good at this whole blogging thing. But, I decided I would finally post an update, and maybe two if you're lucky!

Something that I've been meaning to blog about for months has been our new plunge into Backpacking. We have long been car camping fans and last Spring I got the bug to start Backpacking. Janelle, apprehensive yet willingly entertained my new passion allowing me to get a bunch of new gear not only for myself but also for her.

My backpacking experience is minimal at best. Before this summer I had only been on one significant overnight backpacking trip. It was with a few guys I knew from Ponderosa (Luke MacSween and Peter Culp and others). We went to Desolation Wilderness in 2001, which was fantastic, although I was so inexperienced and ignorant at the time that, in retrospect, I had very little idea of what was happening. I wore some boots that were all wrong for hiking and ended up with some pretty gnarly blisters. I didn't have any of my own gear, I borrowed an old exterior frame pack from my friend Luke and packed what I was told. In the end it was a really good trip.

So, this summer I managed to get 2 trips in. The first one was with my friends Josh Anderson and Kevin Saiki. We decided to do a local trail called Skyline-to-the-Sea. The trail begins at Castle Rock and ends at Waddell Beach along Hwy 1 (about 15 miles north of Santa Cruz). The trail is about 30 miles and we barged it over a 3 day period.

The first day had to be fast because we didn't hit the trail until 3pm and we had 9 miles to cover before breaking for camp. We were moving along nicely until I started to get some serious pain in my right knee. It was getting progressively worse and I kept on thinking I wasn't going to be able to do the whole trip when after only 2 or 3 miles I was in agony. Fortunately for me Kevin had brought along a pair of trekking poles (in order to alleviate a knee issue he was having) and loaned them to me. Using them helped me to relieve the stress on my knee and at times I used them like crutches. After some investigation afterward I believe I was suffering from Iliotibial Band Syndrome (#3 on the list). Anyway, I must also give credit where credit is due, because knowing how much pain I was in so early on and knowing that the 3 of us prayed for healing for my knee, I recognize that The Lord healed me and saw me through the end of the trip. In fact, miraculously, as the miles climbed through the trip the pain was less and less!~

One other hiccup on the first day was with our trail. When I called and made our trail reservations I was told by the ranger that one part of the trail was closed during the time of our trip. Looking at the map I didn't think we would be using that portion of the trail, but when we came to the fork in the road I realized I was wrong. We were faced with hiking on the closed section of trail or extending our first day's mileage from 9 miles to 13 miles. Considering the sun was beginning to set, the prospect of hiking those extra miles overshadowed the law breaking of hiking the closed trail.

We weren't told WHY the trail was closed, but we soon found out. We came upon a creek/gulch which appeared to (at one time) have a bridge across it as part of the trail. But at some point there must have been a pretty massive landslide taking out the bridge and much of the surrounding hillside. The parks department was obviously in the process of rehabilitating the area as there were tractors parked and a lot of land had been shoved around. We were easily able to ford the small creek but were again faced with a decision. On one side there was another 2 miles of closed trail which may have resulted in being caught and fined or something by the parks department. On the other side there was this new road that was forced into the landscape by the equipment needed to work on the landslide.

Looking at our map the main trail looked to be in that direction and only a few tenths of a mile away, so we went for it. The road was on a steep incline and was fresh so it was like hiking up a mountain of sand with a 30 lbs pack on. We did finally make it to the top and found the trail rather easily.

The rest of our trip was fairly uneventful. Each day my knee felt a little bit better, a little bit stronger.

One other highlight was our arrival at our second campground. Usually when you go backpacking you're out in the middle of nowhere and you are unlikely to see another person for long stretches of time. Since were hiking through the Santa Cruz mountains we ended up crossing many roads and in-fact paralleling hwy 9 for about a 1/3 of our journey. Our second camp site was in Big Basin St. Park. They have a special backpackers only campground there. But it's near the ranger station, general store, museum, etc. We arrived early (about 3pm) and scored the only site that also had a picnic table (2 other envious groups arrived after we did and got no table). But more importantly, we got there before the general store closed and this enabled us to buy beer! We also bought some ice to keep it cold during and after dinner. Naturally we didn't bring a cooler, so we made our own cooler. This leads me to the only pic I currently have of the entire trip (others are on a different computer, I may add more later).


Heineken never tasted so good...

Anyway, this was my first backpacking trip of the summer and it was pretty sweet. It was a beautiful and refreshing experience; one which I will remember fondly for a very long time. Hopefully I'll get around to writing up the 2nd trip sometime soon!