An Attempt at Coherency

Ah, food and rest do wonders.

Anyway, to fill in the gaps of my last post, I arrived at Gibson Jack around 7:30. Started up the foot-path-side. No problems, quite pretty. It was rather nice to recognize most of the wildflowers and not worry about capturing them for future identification. I ran into Annik and Cathi Kunicki from the math department. Annik has a rather elaborate "baby backpack" for her infant. Looks like there's space under the baby's seat for carrying other stuff, though it seemed to be empty today. Anyway, she and Cathi turned around at a bridge, before there was too much of a climb. Annik said this was because her dog was 12 years old (and very friendly; probably a golden retriever). She asked me to keep an eye out for a baby's hat, as her husband had brought the baby up there the day before and lost it. Amazingly, I did find a baby's hat. Presumably it's hers. :^D

Everything was going well. There's a gate towards the top of that side, likely to keep ATV's off of that side. Then there's a bit of a down-slope. And there was a fork in the trail (Hecate is supposed to be the goddess of where paths meet; I think she hates me ;^). Anyway, I managed NOT to see the arrow pointing LEFT labelled GIBSON-JACK, and continued straight on my merry way. On the bright side, I saw a bluebird. On the not so bright side, I hiked two hours out of my way before realizing something was wrong. I knew something was wrong when the ATV trail turned into a drivable dirt road. Luckily at that point I heard a motor not too far from me, and asked the guys whether this was still the Gibson Jack trail. Uh, noooooo.... They gave me a ride back for a ways, then I got off when they turned to go another direction on the loop. I would have been better off staying with them; we got to the turn-off at about the same time.

Up to this point, I was mostly doing all right. A bit tired, but no real problems. Then at the place where I SHOULD have turned, the trail went up. And up. And up and up and up and up and up. I made it maybe halfway up before my body rebelled and insisted on resting and eating one of my fruit/nut bars. Well, half of it; any more would have made me nauseous. This was around 13:30. Up some more, and finally I recognized a ridge from my prior visit. Incidentally, it seems both of my hypotheses were correct: a trail DOES come out where I lost it, and the trail to the left ALSO leads back to the main trail. I took the high trail, over quite a gorgeous ridge. On flat or slightly upward areas, I was still okay. If the slope got too steep, I was at the point of resting every hundred feet or less. There was a set of switchbacks below the sharp turnaround that would send me back down the other side. Part of me looked at the switchbacks and debated going straight up, rather than side to side. However, there was the slight problem of exhaustion. The flatter slopes weren't as hard on my body, even if the path was longer (it was somewhere in this area that I found the baby hat).

Once I started downhill, and once the food started kicking in, I was a whole lot better off. At least, until the water ran out. I hadn't planned on a 12+ mile trek. At a guess, the water ran out around with two miles left to go. Doable, but not pleasant in the afternoon sun. So I was quite relieved when the parking lot came into view, and very impatient with the last set of switchbacks (which weren't avoidable unless I wanted to scramble over bushes and trees). I got back to the car a bit before 16:00. Anyway, I had more water in a cooler in the car (lesson learned on previous hikes, and never so welcome as this trip) as well as a fruit-smoothie. I badly needed the calories in the smoothie, but I had to take it slowly to give my body time to process it.

I was plotting to call my mom and get her to take me to Chang's at this point, when she conveniently called my cell phone, wanting to know where I was and if I'd gotten lost. "Oh, yeah. I did get lost." She wasn't happy to hear that, strangely enough. But she did agree to take me to Chang's after she finished running errands. We got there a bit before 17:00, and I ordered their version of a Thai Iced Tea (not nearly as good as the ones real Thai places have). The calories in that kept me going until the food got there. Then I ate more than half of my dish. For reference, I usually eat roughly half of the dish if I DON'T have a Thai Iced Tea with it. If I do, I generally manage a third of it. I think I ate close to three-quarters of it today. I was starved.

So that was my day. Oddly, I'm not as mentally and bodily exhausted as I was last Wednesday. Longer hike, but less heat. The heat just wipes me out.