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| Morning light heading down to Soledad Canyon. |
June 4th, I camped at
0366183E 3836123N. I actually hiked 45.75 miles. Technically I
actually hiked 50, but I got up at 4:30am on what is technically
considered day 10 and hiked for 4 miles until 6am, when day 10 ended.
The reasoning, is really trivial, it doesn't matter, as I did the
miles in 11 days, but I wanted to make day 10 have a 39 mile day
instead of a 35 mile day. Either way I did a 50. I camped at the red
carpet cache, although I'm not sure it's called that anymore. It's
one section, ridge or whatever – chunk over, the next road over
from the Anderson's road. Yesterday was an awesome day. I was up at
4:30am, came down from the ranger station, got to Soledad Canyon and
the onshore breeze had blown the fog in so it was not hot at all. It
was literally foggy, I couldn't see very far far. Once I started
pulling into Vasquez Rocks, the fog began lifting, blue skies. Low
and behold, it's windy and not hot! Which is amazing because the
climb out of Agua
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| Vasquez Rocks, just before Agua Dulce! |
Dulce is a long, long uphill sunny battle. It was
about 10:30am when I got into Agua Dulce, went into the store, bought
a pint of Ben and Jerry's cookie-something-or-other ice cream. I was
hoping the Mexican food restaurant next to the store would open at
11, but did not open at 11, as they were still getting stuff ready,
so I boogied out of town. Before town, I had met, 5, 6, 7, at least 8
hikers, which is a ton of hikers for me. I saw a few more in town
itself, so I can only imagine how many are actually at the Saufleys,
the trail angels there. So I battled out of town, the nice long road
walk. Going on the uphill, my right calf and right hamstring are
hurting. I think thats because my left foot is in such hobbled shape
that I've been kind of limping and babying it, therefore putting all
the extra strain on my right foot. I think it's finally caught up
with me. So I got up that hill slower than I ever expected, well
kinda, I had to take more breaks because my hamstring does not feel
good going up hill. But yeah, it was windy and beautiful, it was like
75-80 degrees with puffy clouds. The trail was wonderful, nice and
open, and flat. The tread was flat with no rocks, with small gravel,
so it was interesting
to compare it to all the other stuff I've been
doing the last few days. It's gentle with smartly designed ups and
downs. I met a few other people. I got to the Hiker Oasis cache –
the Anderson's water cache, I had a soda, stashed one for later. Kept
going, kept going, kept going. I was listening to the second book in
the Hunger Games series. Basically I was just hauling ass all day. I
didn't have to stop for much, thats what I got such big miles,
granted I did get up bloody early. I got to
San
Francisquito road, I could have stopped and gone to the
Anderson's, that would have been mile 39 or 40, but I figured I might
as well push it. I was hoping there was water at the cache, because I
had only 1L and there aren't very many water sources out here. And
there was {water}, there was also 5 or 6 hikers camped around it when
I arrived at about 10:30. The last 4 miles were pretty tough. When I
hit
San Francisquito road I put
down a Mt. Dew, and the caffeine and sugar rocketed me up the 2.5
mile continuous up. By then though, I was just tired. 4 miles is a
hell of a lot when you're tired. Especially when you're going down
hill and it's dark with no light because the clouds have socked in
the big full moon. But yeah, I cooked dinner and went to bed at about
11:15, pack of full water and I'm looking forward to Hiker Town.
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| Day 15 Panorama - The first view of the high Sierras in the distant background. |
