Hi from Mammoth. I realize that I have completely abandoned my journal here, as writing while out in the wilds feels too similar to homework. I was doing okay at uploading a photo every day to my flickr account (www.flickr.com/photos/elisabitch) while in the desert section, but once I lost cell reception in the mountains, that too has fallen by the wayside. Now I am just building an impressive bank of photographs on my camera, which presents another set of logistical hurdles before their public release. Oy.

I will say this: The mountains are incredible. There is so much snow and water, but carry enough food and stay flexible. Stop if you’re pushing or getting pushed around too much. Sit still and let the show begin — coyotes hunting in the snowy meadows, deer grazing, marmots coming up to check you out, a pika nibbling his lunch. Rock fall on the hillside, shooting stars overhead in the big night sky, water roaring under the snowbridges. Such beauty.

When we came into Mammoth, several hikers were in a tizzy over the conditions ahead. Fear factory up and running… We are tuning it out and going to see for ourselves — so far, it sounds more or less like more of the same, and so far it has been manageable. Yes, it is sometimes a lot of hard work. But SO worthwhile.

Go for the thru-hike, as 2000 PCT Alum Joe told me this week… We’ve got this, be patient.

Thanks for the pie, Mom’s Pie!! Delicious! Julian, CA.

Me, backpacking.

As the remaining weeks dwindle before I leave to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, I urge those of you who are unfamiliar with it to read more about it at the website for the PCTA, an organization that issues thru-hiker permits, aggregates updated trail conditions and other pertinent information that I will rely on this summer, and organizes trail maintenance along the 2650 mile trail. And you will also find a resource where many of your questions will be answered — factoids, numbers, maps, the like. Go now, read up.

At the beginning of the month, I drove up to South Lake Tahoe for a snow skills course, offered each winter by Ned and Julie of Mountain Education. The course is structured around active learning — within minutes of meeting at the trailhead, the group straps on their snowshoes and hoists their packs, and proceeds down the trail in an awkward procession through the snow. Immediately, Ned begins to unload massive amounts of relevant, useful information — how to break a trail in the snow, how to “read” the topography to navigate toward a goal, how to bail out and find civilization, and so on. And so it goes for the next five miles, uphill downhill through the woods and over frozen lakes. Hip flexors? Got em.

Once you set up camp along a ridgeline next to Tamarack Lake, Ned brings you down to the edge of the outlet, where you learn how to safely approach the creek for water. Dinner is cooked, in your tent or vestibule if the weather is nasty, and you tuck in feeling a bit intimidated by what the next day holds: ice axe training! In the morning, the sun is shining, though the weather report promises snow. You grab your ice axe, a foreign object until now, and head over to a steep hill below the ridge. First, the fun stuff: glaze the hill with your butt! Just like children (or lemmings, depending on how you choose to look at it), you systematically take turns sliding down the hill to pack down the powder. Ned even has you go down on your back, head first; the blue sky is giving way to the precursory storm clouds, you notice, as you ski down blindly. Then comes the axe, useful for self-arrest, self-belay, cutting steps — generally things you hope to avoid along the trail, as they suck up massive amounts of time and energy. One by one you skid down the hill, clutching your axe, and with varying degrees of style and grace you come to a satisfying stop on the hillside. There, not so bad after all.

The weather holds, so the group grabs their maps for a quick jaunt before dinner. A quick hop skip and jump, and the group navigates to the neighboring lake, held in a snowy bowl under its namesake peak — the line between the lake and the mountain is erased under the snow, and coupled with the evening light, your depth perception is tickled into thinking that white spot where they meet is neither near nor far, but simply infinite.

The snow starts falling as you cook dinner. The tents are all cinched down with dead man anchors, though the silnylon still catches in the wind as the light fades. With a warm belly, you fall asleep in the weather, curled around a bottle of hot water at 8pm. The wind picks up, the snow sets down, and at some point during the night you have to pee so badly that you shove your feet into your wet boots and step out of the tent — to pee in the vestibule. No matter, the snow has completely covered it come morning, when you awake to a new blanket of whiteness pushing in the walls of the tent. A tent neighbor comes to shovel it out a bit, and then you sit and wait inside. First goal: stay warm and dry. Make tea, eat a pop tart. Eat a Clif bar. Make chai. Wait. Tidy up your personal affects. Wait. Crack jokes. Feed your tentmate a packet of emergen-C, withhold water. More laughter, more waiting.

Suddenly, a slight break in the weather. You break camp, and shove the wet gear into your packs to head home. Along the way, you find evidence of other people who had also been camping out nearby — though you would have never known it. Snowshoe tracks following the creek bed lead the same direction as the group. Camaraderie and new confidence is enough to stave off the discomfort and tiredness we feel, and we backtrack over the frozen lakes while conversing over our ambitious plans to hike for an entire summer. Each of us, so different, motivated by such unique reasons, have something solidly in common: a goal, that if completed in one summer, will put us into a group smaller than that of those who will summit Mount Everest this year.

For several weekends each winter, Ned and Julie Tibbits lead groups of interested parties into the Desolation Wilderness to equip them with skills best learned by doing. The experienced guidance and knowledge they have provided the trail community over past years, and on a donation basis, is absolutely invaluable and unparalleled; the goodness they provide within the trail community is so great, and I feel sincerely grateful to have had an opportunity to meet them and spend a weekend in their company. From start to finish, the weekend is full of helpful information that integrates seamlessly into mindful action, and I know that I will have more realistic expectations and therefore a more enjoyable experience this summer directly because of my time with Ned and Julie.

Visitor’s Permit.

To complement the quote on Providence that my dad sent me, I must write a bit on good fortune. I will start with the short version: I live a charmed life.

The long version goes like this:
I grew up in northern California, in a little town called Nevada City, which is nestled in the Sierra foothills between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. No, it’s not in Nevada. I’ll gloss over the details of my childhood, except to say that I have a wonderful family — my parents are both supportive, caring, intelligent, interesting people, and I’m luckily stuck plop in the middle of two sisters. My older sister has been living in Europe for the past eight years, cultivating a life there with her sweet husband; my younger sister is currently taking up residence in my living room while finishing school and following her dream as she interns for FWS’s Condor Rehab program. Growing up, armed with crackers and salami and my engineer father’s “state of the art” video camera, we were dragged through the woods of northern California in the name of family togetherness. I won’t even go in the caravan road trips to such venues as the Grand Canyon and Canada, where we threw CB radios into the mix and upgraded the experience to a “vacation”; meanwhile, our peers were staying in hotels at Disneyland and actually enjoying themselves (“are we there yet? I have to pee!” over the radio and license plate bingo were certainly not in their consciousness). My parents appreciation for dirt paths and bumpy roads, propane-fueled gadgets, and unparalleled wild vistas far superseded any joy offered by pricey destination packages peddled by travel agents and glossy television ads alike.

So we grew up without fences, barefoot in the woods, learning to swim in hot springs, enjoying real snow cones with maple syrup on our snow days and a growing collection of freckles in the summertime. I knew what I was missing out on — my uncreative girl scout troop took me on my very first trip to a mall before Christmas one year, wherein I bought a stuffed bird that played a sad version of a bird call when pressed. But I remember the time my little sister packed dresses for a pack trip into Hoover Wilderness, and the banana slugs on Vancouver Island, the sensation of the sleeping bag lined truck bed jostling under my bum, and all of the snow-bent tree trunks that we played horsey on with much greater fondness. I think of those experiences as a part of me, as woven into the fabric of me. I firmly believe that my parents “got it right” on that front — I’m even somewhat grateful for the intrusion of my dad’s video camera now when I watch our family trips on DVD, despite the opportunity it obviously presented us to perfect our eye rolls and glares long before puberty.

I’ve been living in Santa Barbara for over a decade now, and I love it. I hightailed it from my hometown after graduation, hoping to be close and far simultaneously, and largely because we used to spend Christmases camping on the beach here. I’ve come to appreciate the chaparral and sand fleas in their own right, especially come winter when the sun actually shines. Sure, it’s expensive here and most of my peer group are forced to export themselves in order to find gainful employment elsewhere, but I’ve been quite lucky to have stability on both fronts. Not that life doesn’t have its ups and downs, but you know that proverbial little black cloud? It’s like I have a sunshiny cloud instead.

At one of our recent weekly girl nights, my girlfriend Stevie invited a male friend of hers who reads Tarot cards. Typically we make dinner and drink wine and catch up, so this was a departure from our norm, and one that I hadn’t anticipated. I’m not one who subscribes to mysticism, but I was willing to play along — superstition has a little footing after all, and I’ll be the first to throw salt over my shoulder if I spill it. After each of my friends had sat with Laszlo, asking questions about love and money, I took my seat and cut the deck. Naturally, the trail was on my mind as I drew my cards, though Laszlo had no background info on this. He laid out my cards, and told me it was a beautiful reading. He told me there was someone who had been bad with money, but there was stability now. In my consciousness, I feel like things in my life are very good; in my subconscious, they are even better. In the past, I have struggled, but I have always taken the higher ground. In the near future, I will carry a burden, but it won’t be unbearable. My role in it will be the magician, I will be resourceful and use the tricks up my sleeve. I will leave something behind, but I will be ready to let it go. Any challenges I have I will overcome, they will not be impossible. The outcome will be a success. And so I have been blessed by the cards.

My lucky break, I guess. I wake up and am grateful to be alive, grateful to know what matters to me and to be able to revel in it and pursue it. I am surrounded by amazing people — my family, my friends, the woman who picked us up the other morning when we decided to “loop” a hike (thanks, Robin!); I am blessed with their support and guidance, and it means so much to me to be believed in unconditionally. Providence, in conjunction with the Universe, has provided unequivocally for me, and I am the beneficiary of overwhelming goodness. This hike is a culmination of those family camping trips in the meadow and each lucky break I’ve been afforded along the path to where I am now. Once I decided to make this hike really happen, I feel like everything has fallen into place more or less perfectly. It just adds to the excitement! And I’m off now to go knock on some wood…

“But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money—booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

-William H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya

Thanks, dad :)

Relevant background info: I’m dating a guy who doesn’t like to hike. Don’t misunderstand, he’s outdoorsy and loves trail running, mountain biking, rock climbing, the like. But walking is just too… slow. Needless to say, this creates a smidge of a rift when weekends come around and we both are itching to go play outside. This past weekend, Nolan indulged me and we planned a last minute backpacking trip out in the Sespe Wilderness to take full advantage of the amazing weather southern California has been having.

Friday night I came home after work and packed up for the overnighter. It became immediately apparent that I need a better way to organize all the camping/backpacking gear I’ve amassed over the years. As I went back and forth between dresser drawers and kitchen cupboards and garage shelves for the items on my trip list, I started thinking about how much easier things will be when I’m out in the woods with only the contents of my pack, of how simple it will be once I remove choice as an option. But in these planning stages, choice is a necessary process — discriminating now will make my life easier this summer! I don’t have all my gear and clothing systems worked out yet, so each item in my pack was deliberated over. Being only ten miles in to the hot springs and only one night out, I knew that I would be just fine if I forgot something or something failed to meet my needs (I was prompt to find the loophole on this, but more on that later).

For the first time I weighed many of the items in my pack, and while I wasn’t really surprised at their weights, I definitely started to think about their particular value as far as usage. Mind the ounces and the pounds take care of themselves, as Nolan always reminds me. Regardless, I stubbornly packed the BushBuddy and the Snow Peak canister stove, just for comparison in the field. I also packed up my new Marmot Helium 15* down bag, and threw on my funky snakeskin Dirty Girl Gaiters to test out for the first time (both were awesome!!)

After picking up Nolan from work, we drove out behind Ojai to the trailhead on the Sespe River. The trail criss-crosses the river for ten miles or so, with some gentle ups and downs, and cuts mostly across the exposed hills just above the creekbed — in 2006 a wildfire burned the area, leaving even less shade than the chaparral offered before. The creek has nice holes to dip into, especially in the spring and summer when the temperature rises a bit. The last time I hiked out to Willett hot springs, the temperature gauge on my pack read around 115*, but that was last June (and silly me, it was way too hot to enjoy soaking in the hot springs anyway!); this past week the area has been enjoying temperatures in the 70s and 80s, following a couple of storms — just about two weeks ago this trail was under a blanket of snow! Needless to say, the knee-high creek crossings were brisk, and I was excited to soak in the hot springs after the hike in.

We made pretty good time, reaching Bear Camp (the half-way point) with ease; we passed a group of younger people, all carrying larger packs than ours, and I felt pretty pleased with myself that I’ve learned how to pare down my pack. There were several parties out on the trail, including a large group of boy scouts, but once we arrived at Willett it seemed relatively quiet. There were a few other groups camped out around us that evening, but no one with much proximity to the site we camped out at. After getting water from the creek (finally used my Steripen, for once — hold that thought), and setting up the tarp and the kitchen, we walked a half mile up the hill behind camp to the hot springs, which we found unoccupied and inviting. The water was an opaque milky green, almost like a hot glacial bath, and we soaked in the tub as that sun set and the bats dipped down around us. Across the river canyon, the last of the snow was clinging to the backside of the Topatopas, lit up by the nearly full moon. A beautiful evening, and the best foot rub ever! After our soak, we made dinner on the BushBuddy woodstove (all the soot was a bit too messy in practicality for my taste, honestly) and shared a bottle of wine we’d packed in using a Platypus wine bladder, and then retired to bed with the sound of toads clumsily crashing through the foliage around us.

The next morning we packed up, and agreed we’d just chug water and carry a liter between creek crossings — totally reasonable for this hike. We started back toward the car, passing a few other hikers along the way, watching a group of three coyotes make their way up the creek from up above, and reveling in our good fortune at such an incredible weekend. Again we made good time and were in good spirits, and made it back to the trailhead without incident. My pack felt great, my body felt capable, and I only had one hot spot on my heel from wearing my running shoes which I normally don’t use for hiking. A nice little twenty mile weekend to break up the work weeks! Triumph.

But there was one nagging thought: My Steripen failed to emit any visible light while I was treating the water. Admittedly, despite owning it for the past three years or so, I have hardly used it, and I didn’t re-read the instructions. I simply packed a backup set of batteries and threw it in my pack, even passing on taking Nolan’s water filter instead — I knew we’d have clear water sources, and this was the perfect situation to use it. All the indicator lights were functioning perfectly, and I couldn’t remember if it actually produced any visible light during treatment because I so rarely used it. Well, once I got home, I pulled up the website. Oops. The good news is that it comes with a lifetime warranty. The bad news is that it appears we drank several liters of unfiltered water. Chalk it up to user error (read: laziness), but I’m hoping we get off with just a warning ticket, so to speak. All in all, we’ve had a few nice storms push things through, and the water is definitely moving, so I’m thinking that this is as good a time as any to drink the river water, but it’s definitely a reminder to pay attention… I’m also reminded that I need to supplement my first aid kit with a few antibiotics and whatnot!

All said, it was a lovely weekend, and I’m grateful that Nolan joined me in walking slowly along the riverbed :)

Hiking buddy, post- Matilija hike. Happy new year!