Saturday, January 5, 2013

Day 11: June 4, 2012


June 4, 2012.

Day: 11  Daily Miles: 45.75   Total Miles: 485.75  Hours Hiking: 16.5  6:00am-10:30pm

Listen to the audio journal above or Download June 4th Audio File Here

Day 11
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 
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.
Day 15 Panorama - The first view of the high Sierras in the distant background.