OK ... so the other meaning to CLOGS besides Cathy's LOGS is that sometimes stuff gets CLOGed in my head and never gets logged. LOL! But here is a description of the Lost Coast backpack trip I just got back from with W. and K.

Lost Coast Backpack Trip report, June 7-11, 2002

Friday

I packed up the car and met W. and K. at the park-n-ride lot in Palo Alto. We caravaned to the Lost Coast together. We got stuck in rush hour traffic just after San Francisco. It took forever to get through Marin county and Santa Rosa. After that it was pretty much clear sailing though. We saw lots of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and determined that there was some event going on where Harley owners were driving down the California coast and stopping to camp every so often. We got to our campsite at about 10:30 p.m. It was a site about 4 miles in on a bumpy dirt road. We set up camp in the dark with a howling wind for company. We hit the sack quickly and had an OK night's sleep at camp.

Saturday

We got up at 8 a.m. and packed up the cars and drove down to Black Sands beach. We left W. and K.'s car there and piled into my car. Then we drove to the Ranger station to get a fire permit to use the backpack stove on the trip. Then we were off to Mattole and the end of Lighthouse road. It was a long twisty drive on back country roads. We finally got to Mattole and the trailhead at 2 p.m. We were finally on the trailhead by around 2:30 p.m. It was very windy but we were hiking with the wind thank goodness! The sun was out bright though and the ocean was beautiful. We hiked mostly on sandy beaches but with some hiking up on bluffs over the beach. We saw a baby seal hanging out in a low tide pool. That was cool. We got to what we thought was our first camp, Cooksie Creek, at 5 p.m. We set up our tents on a semi-flat spot just up the hill from a creek where we got our water. As we settled in we got out our trail description and determined that we were actually a mile and a quarter short of Cooksie Creek. But we liked our campsite well enough and decided to just make Sunday a longer day. We also examined our tide table and determined that we needed to get up at 5 a.m. and be on the trail by 7 a.m. in order to hike the trail before it got covered by high tide the next day. K. cooked us a great tofu scramble for dinner that night. We were both very proud of the rock shelter we built for the stove to keep the wind away. We saw an awesome sun set that night over the Pacific ocean and then headed to bed.

Sunday

I was up at 5 a.m. and at 5:30 a.m. roused W. and K. We had a cold breakfast and packed up camp. We got on the trail by 6:40 a.m. The hiking was mixed that day. Some was on the beach, some on a nice flat section of coast on a old jeep trail, and some over these nasty boulders on the beach. We made good time though and got past the sections of trail that we needed to during the low tides. This day seemed to be the day of seeing dead things on the beach. We saw a dead sting ray and even grosser a dead sea lion. Ick! We had a nice lunch stop about when we hit the nice flat jeep trail at 10:30 a.m. Getting up at 5:30 a.m. made us ready for lunch a bit early! The weather was very nice and not so windy yet. After lunch we continued on and saw two cabins that folks come to vacation in (not sure how they get supplies to them). We got to Big Creek at noonish and that was our destination for the day. We found a great campsite. Someone had built a drift wood shelter on the beach and had made a nice fire ring and found drift wood for benches. So we had a cushy site with nice soft sand to sleep on. We spent the rest of the day napping, soaking our feet in Big Creek, and reading. It was great. We had dinner at 6 p.m. K. cooked bean burritos for herself and W. I cooked my own dinner of raman noodles that night as I didn't care for beans. I also had some instant mashed potatoes. After dinner we checked out our trail guide again and found that we were in store for another early start. High tide was at 12:42 p.m. and to get past on our route we would have to get to the end of our day by 10:42 a.m. We skipped watching the sunset that night as the wind was just howling and almost blew you over if you came out from behind the drift wood shelter. We went to bed at dusk.

Monday

We got up at 5 a.m. and managed to pack up and be on the trail by 6:15 a.m. It was lots of beach walking this day. We kept what we came to call our "tide" pace. A bit faster hiking pace so we would get to the proper places in our route at low tide. We made good time and the weather was awesome: not too cold and not too hot. We saw many sea lions off shore. We also saw some other backpackers just getting up. We came to rather like hiking early in the morning before the afternoon wind kicked up and while the beach was cooler and in the shade. We reached our last camp, Buck Creek, at 9:30 a.m.! We had another long day of kicking back and relaxing ahead of us. There was another party of backpackers in the campsite that we coveted. They said they were leaving so we took off our packs and hung out on the beach waiting for them to depart so we could swoop in on the site. The didn't end up leaving till noon. We ate our lunch and played at building rock sculptures on the beach while we waited. After they left we were a little annoyed as they did not clean up the site. They left an empty bag of cookies and had tried to burn cans and plastic in the fire ring. We put the smelly fire out and shoved the cookie bag in our trash to be carried out. With that done the camp site was nicer. We set up our tents and then spent another lovely afternoon of napping and reading, and soaking sore feet in the creek. In the morning while we were waiting for the campsite we saw a river otter swim in from the ocean and go up Buck creek. That was a great sight. We were really jazzed by that. The afternoon was delightful. It was an extremely pretty camp site and the great wind had finally died down. I had a great nap in the soft sand on the beach with a warm sun beating down on me. I had a good read in my tent too which turned into a second nap! We had dinner and determined that finally we did not have to start hiking at 0 dark hundred the next day. We did however have to get up at 7ish in order to have time for the 5 mile hike, car shuttle, and driving back to the bay area the next day.

Tuesday

We were woken up at 6:30 a.m. but a very surprising sound of a motorcycle driving by camp. This must have been one amazingly skilled motor bike rider and also a rebel that didn't think that the rule of no motorized vehicles on the Lost Coast past Gitchell creek applied to him or her. He or she drove in on a very rough steep down hill trail that ends at Buck Creek. Then he/she zoomed up the beach going north where he/she wasn't supposed to be with a motorized vehicle. I got up shortly there after and went to the beach to confirm that I really had heard a motorcycle. I could see the tracks in the sand. I also confirmed with W. and K. that they heard it to and actually saw it from their tent window. What a bizzare thing to be waken up by on a backpack trip. We had a nice breakfast and headed off to Black Sands beach by 8:30 a.m. This day was all sandy beach walking. It was just beautiful hiking. We managed to get close enough to the ocean to hike on the harder packed sand. We ran into a woman on our way to Black Sands and had a nice conversation with her. She was there to do some mellow backpacking and to mostly hang out and write on the beach and enjoy some solitude. She was glad to see a group of women on the beach and we reassured her not to worry that much about the rattle snakes or bears. We hadn't seen any rattle snakes and only saw bear tracks. The bears never visited our sites. We also reassured her that we hadn't seen any unstable looking icky men on the trail either unless you counted the young dudes that trashed the campsite at Buck Creek but they were heading off into the hills that day not continuing on the beach trail. It was fun to chat with her. After that we soon reached the end of our trip at Black Sands beach. K. hiked up the short hill to get the car and bring it down to where would could load our backpacks into it and not have to carry them up the hill. We stripped off our filthy cloths and put on nice clean ones we had left in the car. Then we packed the car and started off on the long drive back to the start of our trip to fetch my car. We stopped a couple times at stores for munchies. I had a nice cold can of Mountain Dew at the first stop. That tasted so good! We finally reached my car at 3:30 p.m. Then we settled in for the long ride back to the bay area. We did have a nice stop in Willits to check out a restaurant called Organic Fast Food. W. is a vegan vegetarian and this store was made for her. She got a nice fake-steak burrito and a smoothie with some protein powder mixed in. We had stopped earlier at a Subway sandwich place but W. didn't find much that she could eat there. K. and I filled up at the Subway place. After that it was pretty much a dull drive back to the bay area. I got home at 11 p.m. Poor W. and K. had another 45 minutes to go to get to their house in Santa Cruz. I took a long hot shower and then collapsed in bed. Quite a fun but exhausting trip!!

Tomorrow is the big Henry Coe hike with J. 17 miles and some fun elevation gain to get to Mt. Sizer and some wet hiking on a cross country route through a stream. Should be fun but I just know I'm going to be totally exhausted tomorrow after the hike. My cut on my heel has healed nicely so it should not be a problem at all tomorrow. I got myself two different new Odwalla juices that they refer to as sports drinks. They have those good electrolytes to help me stay hydrated on the hike. I'll also be carrying 3 quarts of water and will try and drink it all. I do need to get up a little earlier so I can stop at Safeway to get a sandwich for lunch. I forgot to buy bread at the grocery store this week.

Saturday night and Sunday is set aside for recovering from the hike and getting some chores done. I need to look at my finances, clean the house for Mom and Dad's visit next weekend, do some laundry probably, and some weeding in my wee little garden (all of 5 plants). I hope I have enough energy for all that.

I need to figure out why my checkbook register is not agreeing with my Quicken register. I want to examine if I have enough money to buy a new lap top computer. I'm hoping to get a fairly good lap top, a combination printer/scanner/fax machine, and some way to make it easy to hook the laptop up to the internet at home. The folks at work have recommended a Dell because the computer is fairly nice and the service is excellent. I do like the look of Dell's catalog. Also I have discovered a freeware program called CIGWYN which emulates UNIX on a PC so I can download g++ software and do coding on the computer if I so desire! So its not quite so important to me anymore to get a laptop on which I can install Linux. OK ... enough techy talk.

I had a good time at the end of work today trying to help K. figure out why the program I wrote for her was not working. She is fun to talk to and we got to chat while we were waiting for the silly program to crash after each test of my debugging. She kept getting calls from her husband who was asking for advice on how to handle the kids. She kept rolling her eyes at me while she coached him. I finally figured out the problem and was surprised to see that I had stayed a half hour past the time I get off and hadn't even noticed. I love work like that where I get so involved that time flies.

Confessions of a hiking junkie!!

I had a great time hiking with W., K., M., M., and L. this Sunday at Nissene Marks to Five Fingers Falls but I must confess I kept a small secret from them about my physical condition. Saturday night I continued my recent trend of having accidents. I left a plate and a fork on the floor next to the couch and forgot about it and next time I was walking back to the couch ... OW ... I stepped on the fork and one of the tines inserted itself into the side/bottom of my left heel. It didn't go very deep but was painful. I pulled out the fork and headed upstairs to clean it up, put on some neosporin, and a bandage. If I weighted my heel as usual it hurt but I could manage to walk in such a way as to not weight it so much. I spent most of Saturday night debating "to hike, or not to hike." I finally decided to give the hike a try as I really really wanted to do this hike with the gang. I decided to remain mum about the injury though as I didn't want to have to have a big discussion with everyone about whether I really should be doing the hike or not. If it turned out I couldn't handle the hike then I would come clean so to speak!

The hike was awesome. I love long hikes with varied terrain and varied views. We got to do three stream crossings, climb up to a ridge with awesome views of the valley with the woods rising around it, see Five Fingers Falls, and even do a boring but nice bit on the fire road. The falls were nice but it was a bit cold as we munched on our lunch since the sun was blocked by the falls and tall trees. I believe only two of us managed to stay dry on the stream crossings. For others the rocks were slippery or their shoes were slippery! I had the advantage of having my trekking pole with me for balance. Other things of note on the hike were we got to see the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and W. rescued 2 banana slugs stranded on and near a piece of wood in the middle of the stream. After the hike we were planning on getting some food at Pacific Rim restaurant right outside the park but alas it has closed so we went to our old standby, Saturn Cafe. I had a root beer float and it really hit the spot.

The hike did not make my heel worse so my "junkie hiking" behavoir was OK this time. However I spent the entire day hiking so that the right side of my left heel did not get weighted very much. As a result I had one sore left leg especially the muscles on my inner thigh and my calf muscle. Its Wednesday and the muscles are still sore but I can tell they are getting better. Hopefully the cut and my muscles will recover in time for Saturdays 17 mile hike at Henry Coe. I don't have any major plans for Sunday other than to recover from Saturday's hike!

Too bad I don't have a digital camera. I have a lovely 3 by 5 inch bruise on my right leg from a fall I took on my hike yesterday. And get this, it looks sorta like an Easter egg! He He.

I was sorta tired on the hike yesterday and my left foot slipped off the trail. I fell over with my left leg hanging and my right leg wrapped desperately around a rock after having been bruised by said rock! I started to slip off the trail which would have meant a 4 or 5 foot tumble into a gully. I managed to shift my weight enough to grab a root and not fall but my was it scary for a few seconds there. One of the fellows hiking with me, N., ran back and grabbed my arm also. I sure was shot through with adrenaline and glad to have escaped the fall with just a big bruise. I also got a smaller bruise on my left leg where it also hit the rock. Its a very colorfull set of bruises. My Easter egg bruises! I did have a good time on the hike despite the fall. The weather was marvelous. It was sunny and warm. We had a marvelous lunch stop on a big sandy mound with great views of Big Basin State park and a nice toasty sun beating down on us.

Today I had a nice short hike with my friend L. We went to see Brooks falls in a park near Pacifica (so we got to see the Pacific ocean today on the drive). It was a nice mellow 3 mile hike with only water falls not Cathy falls! Afterwards we stopped for ice cream at Baskin Robins. I had a scoop of jamoca almond fudge and a scoop of chocolate fudge ice cream. My was that tasty!

I had a great 41st birthday yesterday and a very lazy enjoyable weekend. I slept in till ten oclock on Saturday morning. Then I lolled around watching TV and doing computer stuff till it seemed about time to go to REI to spend my dividend! I got all sorts of neat stuff: a locking carabiner, a NOLS wilderness first aid book, a new Eagle Creek wallet, a padded glasses holder, a light weight coffee mug for backpacking, a rain hat, and a new really soft comfy pile jacket. After REI I headed to Footlocker shoe store to buy myself some new tennies. I got some New Balance tennis shoes. I have been enjoying wandering around in them. They are very comfortable and light weight and way cool looking! At night I watched Stanford lose to Colorado in the NCAA regional finals. It was a very close and exciting game. I just wish Stanford could have won.

Sunday was my birthday and I got up at 9 a.m. and then drove to Hobbees at 10 a.m. for brunch with D. and L. I had my favorite Sonoma Browns dish (hash browns with tomatos, chicken breast, pesto, and cheese), a tall glass of apple juice, and a couple cups of coffee. The conversation was great and the three of us kept exclaiming about what a good decision we had made to cancel the backpacking trip since it was so wet and miserable out most of the weekend. After brunch D. took off and L. and I went to see the movie, The Lord of the Rings. I really enjoyed it. It was very much like I remember the book. We had heard it was rather violent but to both L. and I who are fans of the book it seemed to very much match the book. There is a bit of violence in The Lord of the Rings. After the movie I drove home for a small break and then headed to Santa Cruz.

In Santa Cruz I went to K. and W's house for a watch the Oscars and celebrate my birthday party. We had great fun making fun of the Oscars and groaning when the films we liked were beat by films we thought were poor. We ordered pizza and had lots of munchies. M., D., and A. came by to join us at different times and left at different times. It was good to see M. and D. and to meet A. By the time the Oscars ended everyone but me, W., K., and their housemates were gone. Then W. remembered about the cake so we finished off the evening with cake and I had a cup of coffee. During coffee I had a nice long talk with W. about work problems. It was good to bounce my woes off someone. When I finished my coffee I headed home. It was a great birthday and a great weekend despite the fact we cancelled the backpacking.

What's new. I'm tired again. I went to see the Stanford vs Tulane basketball game on Monday. It started at 9 p.m. so I didn't get home till 11:30 p.m. and then got up the next day at 6 a.m. as usual on a work day. I haven't really recovered my sleep yet. But the game was excellent. Nicole Powell was incredible to watch and the rest of the team played well too. They beat Tulane fairly easily.

I had a good time at work Monday hob nobbing with K. and S. I was complaining about the Open Cascade documentation online and asking to use internet explorer on K.'s PC to see if my problem was related to using a Mac browser. They were commiserating with me about what a pain the documentation online must be. Turns out the online documentation doesn't work right on a PC either. However later in the day I accidently stumbled on a solution and was able to gain access to the documentation that I needed. I wish my work involved teaming up with K. or S. I like them both a lot.

D. and I have cancelled the backpack trip this weekend due to low turn out and a lousy weather forecast. It is supposed to rain on Friday and Saturday. Backpacking in the rain is just not fun so we cancelled the trip. Maybe I can finally get caught up on sleep this weekend. I hope so!

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I wore myself out this weekend. Saturday I was up at 7:30 a.m. and went to pick up P. to go on a hike at Big Basin State Park. We did the Hollow Tree loop that was listed as a 10 mile loop on the park map but since it took us nearly 6 hours to do the hike, I'm convinced that it was actually more like 12 miles. I was sore and tired but happy after that hike. The hike was beautiful with lots of great views from ridge tops of the park landscape with the Pacific ocean in the background.

Then I get home, shower, and take off for Maples Pavilon at Stanford to watch the first round NCAA tournament games. Colorado State took on Tulane in the game one and Tulane came out on top. At first it looked like Tulane would win easily but in the second half Colorado worked really hard and got to within 3 points of Tulane before time ran out on them. The second game was Stanford versus Weber State. Stanford won easily and Nicole Powell had a great game and was beautiful to watch. I got home at 11 p.m. and spent a little time checking email before I finally succombed to my exhaustion and went to bed at 11:30 p.m.

Today I got up at 7:30 a.m. again. I'm just a glutton for punishment. This time I was driving to Santa Cruz to meet W. and K. and possible others for soaking in the hot tubs at Kiva during women's hours. It turned out only W., K., and I showed up for the soak. We had a nice long 2 hour visit and soak. It was pouring rain much of the time but that served to cool us off as we sat in the wonderfully hot water. I had to drive back home in pouring rain but it wasn't too bad. People were being fairly safe about driving on highway 17 in the rain. When I got home I was totally exhausted from Saturday's activities and from 2 hours of soaking. I lay down on the couch and was quickly off in la la land catching up on sleep. I slept for 2 hours! It was a great nap!

The rest of the day I have been checking my email, reading my boards on ivillage, and watching NCAA women's basketball games on TV. I'm starting to feel tired again now so will sign off now and hit the couch to watch some more TV and then probaby in a couple hours, head to bed.

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Hey ... just like an Enterprise captain, I have my own logs. CLOGS stands for Cathy's LOGS!

Good descriptors for this week: dull, dreary, and blue. My depression reared its ugly head and brought me down on Tuesday followed by quite a land slide on Wednesday. Yesterday friends and family helped me pick myself up and dust myself off. Now today I'm gingerly climbing back up the slippery slope. The weekend is looking good though. Hiking, hot tub soaking, hanging out with friends, and women's basketball! Now that's a set of real antidepressants for me.

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