When my daughter Melinda and I went backpacking at Pt. Reyeslast year, we had such a good time and it was such a beautiful place that we
knew we would have to share it with someone who was like-minded. When my sister,
Nola, said she would be interested in planning a backpacking trip in California in May, we
said we knew just the place!
We had spent 3 days and 2 nights last year, but the plan for
2012 was to make as full a trip as we could squeeze out the time for. And that
meant 4 days and 3 nights. I knew that the basic gear would be the same for a 3
night trip; we would only need an extra day’s worth of food.
For some reason, every time I’ve gone backpacking, I’ll
think that my pack will only weigh about 25 to 27 pounds. I don’t quite
understand why that number is tattooed in my mind. It is slightly possible that
my pack weighed that on my very first training trip when we walked over to the
Live Oak Recreation Park and spent a night. And maybe that number has never
been supplanted by the following realistic numbers from subsequent trips.
So there I am, shoving pieces of my pile of gear and food
and stuff into my Gregory Diva 60 pack thinking, I sure hope I can hold
this down to 25 or so pounds! Finally the last ritual of the pack-out
arrived—the weighing. I lugged it over to the scale and slid the weights over
to reveal…. THIRTY-EIGHT POUNDS! WHAT?
(Here you can view a 37 pound pack getting ready to face the truth of the scale)
As I went over the contents in my mind, I realized that the
basic essentials, such as sleeping bag, tent, Thermarest, pack, fuel came to
almost 25 pounds by themselves. Thankfully, my pack is designed to carry a lot
of weight quite comfortably, so I knew I could manage. And I was also counting
2 liters of water and my food, which I was told is not part of the official
weight of the pack. So I felt a little better and more resigned to the load.
We were very happy to have a driver to drop us off and pick
us up this year so we would not have to stage vehicles at the start and end
points. Cork drove us to Limantour Beach
Now I am fond of a few food-like items that are for sale at
grocery stores and Walmarts. I am usually able, nay, always able to restrain
myself from buying and eating them. Items such as fresh cinnamon sugar Hostess
Donettes. But I have a harder time resisting when my sister is the little devil
figure on my shoulder saying, “Go ahead! Get them! Splurge! It’s for vacation!”
And the little angel figure on my other shoulder already has her mouth full of
a couple of Donettes. These were APPLE cinnamon sugar flavor, which sounded
nice, so I bought them. And yes, I shared a few and then ate the rest of the
bag the first day.
Our reservation for the first night was at Sky Camp. It was
to be a fairly short hike, though the word “sky” was suggestive of rising in
altitude via a steep hike. Instead of the cheater trailhead to the camp which
would have made our hike over almost before it started, we had our driver drop
us off at the more reasonable trailhead at the hostel. Nola and I appointed
Melinda as the “Trailmaster,” since she was the only one with the proper
qualifications, i.e. she did not have to turn the map around like a steering
wheel to see which direction to go.
We unloaded our gear, snapped on clips and hung cups, poles,
shoes, laundry (oops, that was later) and water bottles to our backpacks and
staggered off.
Our Trailmaster pointed her stick. “That way!” she said. We
circled around in a bit of confusion, since it looked like we needed to go the
other way. But as we were reminded: “Who is the Trailmaster here?” Our driver
bid us Godspeed and began inching out of his spot as we disappeared around the
corner. Soon he had the rearview in position to see us for one more “goodbye”
as we passed back by on our way to the trail we were supposed to take.
Too shortly, another trail decision had to be made. We had
planned on taking a shorter trail to Sky trail and avoid “Fire Road ,” which sounded ominous or
utilitarian, either of which didn’t sound scenic. Yes, there were trail signs at
the intersection, but we hadn’t been on the trail long enough to know how to
interpret what they meant when they said “Fire Road, x miles, [arrow]” and
besides, the other one looked hidden and unused, and besides, the Trailmaster
didn’t press hard enough for her choice. And besides, anyone who knows me on
the trail shouldn’t trust my choice, so it’s NOT MY FAULT!
After a couple hours of hiking, we realized why it was
called Fire Road .
Sometime in the past, this area had burned. Some of the views were quite
striking; it turned out to be very scenic and enjoyable. And the other
advantage to taking this route was to reinforce the authority of the
Trailmaster. (“Hey! I said to take the other trail!”)
We did finally arrive at the lovely Sky Camp and after
meandering aimlessly about we finally found our site. Nola had picked all our
sites ahead of time, using intuition, Google Earth type visuals and descriptions. And each
site, we decided, was the best of the whole camp! Here, we had a nice, private area
with either sun or shade, as we desired.
Back when we were packing our backpacks, trying not to throw
random stuff in as the time drew close to be gone, Melinda and I viewed Nola’s
chair with a skeptical eye. Is she really going to drag a CHAIR along? She did.
And I am not ashamed to say that I used it more than she did. In the future I am
going to see what unimportant things I can leave out, like say, deodorant,
extra underwear, first aid kit… so I can bring my own Crazy Creek chair.
(yes, that is poison oak behind the food locker)
We had a nice dinner (guess I need to expand, since this IS “Food
Adventures”) which consisted of various freeze-dried packets. Mel had a chili
mac thing, which ended up a little soupy, I fixed up half of a beef stew packet
that I had bought off the expired rack a couple years ago, and I think Nola had fruit, granola and tea or something. But the highlight was the Platypus pouch of
lovely grape juice, from Napa
Valley
Next to come, Day 2!
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