Hiking North Dome

“Miles to go before I sleep...”

Before the tittering about the bear died down, we decided out loud that we should get up at 7:00AM so that we could get started on the trail early. Consequently we promptly woke up at 8:30AM.

Now those of you who know me in person know that barring Christmas, my birthday, and when I’m petrified of missing an early flight, I’m not a morning person. At all. And even on Christmas and my birthday I’m really more excited to sleep in than I am about leaping out of bed to open presents. When I'm flying all you are really seeing is pure anxiety, "Leave your damn toothbrush they have them where we're going!"

Preparing coffee in the great outdoors should be simpler, and perhaps it is for some experienced REI guru, but for us it was an intelligence test than in the end ranked us just above squirrels. The first stop was trying to get Mike’s fancy two burner stove to work without Mike. It wouldn't. Also I’m wary of fiddling too much with things that are highly combustable...before coffee. We then tried to perch a coffee pot on top of Michelle’s single burner stove, but despite our pleading gravity prevailed and the whole contraption toppled over.

Eventually Mike was able to help us out with his fancy stove, and put our squirrel brains to shame. It was a lucky thing too since I was about to put the coffee pot in the middle of a fire. And no, we didn’t think how we would retrieve it once it reached the boiling point.

Once Mike was on the scene a delicious breakfast materialized. Eggs, cheese, toast (which was really just warmed bread), and sweet delicious coffee. Therese and I were the only ones worshiping at coffee’s altar and we did so with offerings of cool milk and chunks of chocolate leftover from last night’s s’mores. It was divine.

Even with the caffeine we were slow to break camp and prepare for the trek out to North Dome. Mike was going to stay behind at the car campsite and meet us on Sunday afternoon at the trailhead. After shuttling us all out there, he joined us for the first few miles uphill.

Those of you who have never been to Yosemite should know that when you hike most anywhere in the park after about 2 miles you see practically no one on the trail. No. One. And considering both how big Yosemite is and how many people visit it every year, that would seem quite a feat, but it’s true. The fact of the matter is that very few people actually hike around Yosemite. Sure they might put in a mile or two here and there, but most people will drive to various sites and parts, tool around for a bit, and then drive back to their car campsites or their hotel for a very dry martini. It isn’t a bad way to go, but I have to point that out so that you know what rock stars we are for hiking at all.

Back on the North Dome trail we are reaching the two mile point and we see many people coming down the trail. Truth be told they could have actually gone out on the trail at 7AM, scampered all the way to the top, and were now coming back to have lunch, but I decided that they were simply a pack of tourist pussies. In fact I screamed that at them as they passed. No. Actually I don’t know who would want to only hike two miles of the North Dome trail since the payoff is only at the very end. Otherwise all you are seeing to your left and right are trees, dead trees, rocks, and dirt. There aren’t any views to speak of and it is pretty much a solid incline for about 4 miles. I don’t really have a point except that as I saw people pass I had the urge to grab them and say, “Did you go to the top?”, and if they were to say “No” I would turn them around and force them to march up there with us.

For the most part, since we were heading uphill almost the whole way, we didn’t talk as much as breath loudly at each other. The conversation was peppered with lots of gasps for both emphasis and for air. I’d forgotten what kind of an adjustment it is to walking with forty extra pounds on your frame, a’la a backpack. Whenever you want a reality check of what it is like to lose ten pounds, or twenty, or more, just try strapping it to you back and start walking uphill.

Just past the mile two point we stopped to have lunch and Mike bid us farewell. While it would have been great if he had come all the way to the top with us, we were going at a very slow pace, and heck, there are better trails to do if you are doing a simple day hike, and I think he’d had enough of our labored breathy conversations.

Another hour or so passes and we realize that we are about 3/4’s of the way there. We also realize we’re running short on water. I’m a water fiend and on day hikes I usually carry almost double what I will need. But for backpacking you usually need double what you normally take. I’d brought enough for myself, but we were passing what we thought was our last water source -- about 600 feet away down a steep hill -- and some members of our crew were down to just one bottle. That wouldn’t cut it for the rest of the day, the night, and then the morning. Therese and I elected ourselves to filter water for the group. It delayed us by a good 45 minutes since once we went down, we had to go up. Yeah. That would be physics not working in our favor again.

When we got to the top, everyone else was well rested, but we decided to take a few more minutes for ourselves before moving on. I lay down on tree trunk, and turning my head I saw two women hiking up the trail together. They were roughly in their forties and one was calling to the other as she made her way up the steep incline that we had just gone up a little while ago. “You can do it, Marie,” the woman said to her friend. Marie grunted a little and kept on maneuvering her way up the hill using the two trekking poles she had firmly grasped in each hand. A few more minutes passed and Marie finally reached the top. Her friend let out a small cheer and they smiled at one another before stopping a few more feet down the trail from where we we sitting.

“I hope I never stop doing this,” I thought to myself. I suddenly flashed on taking my children up to Yosemite, my kids perhaps griping a bit now and then, but then thanking me during their respective valedictorian speeches for those wonderful memories of hiking in the Sierras, and how it taught them to be a better person, and to give back to the planet, which they were dedicating their lives to doing while getting a triple Ph.D. in environmental science, marine biology, and chemistry. “Thanks Mom,” they would say, a tear glistening on their rosy cheek, “you’re the wind beneath my wings.”

“Eleanor. Snap out of it.”
“Huh?”
“Are you thinking about your imaginary children again?”
“No.”

Another mile passes and we pass the real last water source and my calves let out a silent cry. Ah well. At least we’d know that it was there when we were hiking out in the morning. We then hit a long series of switch backs which is always a good indicator that the summit is near. Well. Truthfully it isn’t necessarily a sign of that at all, but in this case it was and we eagerly, at least as eagerly as you can when you are exhausted, plowed on ahead. After reaching the top and continuing for a long straight-away passage, we started getting our first few glimpses.

Through the trees you could see the valley stretching out below, as well as all the other summits that make up the walls of Yosemite. We rushed on with new enthusiasm and then suddenly burst forward out onto a large thrust the was above the tree line. As we headed into the clearing there was a collective feeling of awe. In front of us, close enough so that it felt like we could touch it, was Half Dome. It was glorious. The late afternoon sun caught the gradients of the massive wall of rock. Off to our right was the yawning beginnings of Yosemite valley, weaving eastward. There was an electric excitement that filled each of us and after dropping our backpacks we literally ran to the edges of thrust and threw our hands up in the air, and I called out to the trees and to everyone else that would hear me, “Wahooooo!”





On the right side of the thrust, about a hundred feet from the trail, was a wilderness campsite. This is to say there was an area where someone had constructed a fire ring with some stones and then put a few log benches around it to complete the picture. It was perfect. We set up our camp for the night and then rested for a spell.



The rest of North Dome lay below us. The thrust where we would be camping had a spectacular view, but the trial itself actually continued for another mile. I was determined to make it out to the edge of North Dome, where you could supposedly see even more of the valley, despite the fact that it would be a very steep incline on the return route. At least for this last leg we wouldn’t need to carry our heavy packs.

We each grabbed some water and hit the trail for the last mile. At first it didn’t seem like it would be a very steep decent. Then, well, it started to become one.



Therese and Monique decided that they would head back up to our campsite, but Michelle was game to hike with me out to the very edge. We got there and then hollered back to the rest of our crew sitting up on the thrust above. We didn’t get to see much more of the valley, but I took a picture of Michelle and I to commemorate the event nonetheless.



At this point we were quickly losing light, so Michelle and I hurried, as much as you can hurry uphill when you’ve been hiking for six hours, back to the campsite. We got there just in time. The sun was setting, so we quickly gathered wood for our evening fire, and heated up dinner. Okay, so we barely warmed it, but it was still delicious.

After dinner we sat around the fire and watched the stars come out. It seemed even more spectacular than the night before since now there felt like there was nothing between us. Our conversation turned to dreams and ambitions, and of course, guys, and although I’m sure he would he would enjoyed himself, I was glad that Mike was back at the car campsite with Fuzzy McBear.

Eventually the fire died down and we trundled into bed. I thought I would fall asleep easier than the night before, but still found myself tossing and turning. This is the point where I feel old. When I was twenty-six and hiking around the Sierras with my old boyfriend, I didn’t have the thirty-something aches and pains that seemed to prevent me from finding a comfortable position on my ThermaRest(TM) sleep pad. Eventually I did find something that resembled a good configuration and did conk out for a few hours. Therese, I’m sure, was pleased.

I woke up at half-past sunrise, and peeked out to see Half Dome bathed in morning light. I got up and saw Monique sitting out there, staring across the valley that separated North Dome and Half Dome from each other. Monique is going to hike Half Dome the first weekend of October, and I could see her sizing up the task ahead. It is a difficult day hike, sixteen miles round trip, with a cable ladder ascent at the end that gives you the chance to peer over the beak like edge of Half Dome and into the valley below.

“You’ll make it.”
“I know. I’m just thinking what I have to do.”

I took her picture so that she could remember this moment, where she was sitting across from Half Dome, having achieved a milestone the day before by going on her first backpacking trek.



As the sun started to steadily climb, everyone rallied and slowly broke camp. The hike back would be pretty easy since most of it was downhill. Monique shot this picture of the three of us before we headed out.



The outdoors equivalent of “did I leave the stove on?” caused our group to split up for a moment. Michelle headed back to make sure our fire wasn’t still smoldering. With all the wildfires already happening in the area, I suddenly had visions of getting a news flash back in San Francisco about a fire in the North Dome area, “started by some idiots.” Therese and Monique carried Michelle’s pack between them and I plowed on ahead to get to our previously scouted water source so that we could get some water. When Monqiue found me, she took this shot. I like the fact that it makes me look unusually rugged and hardcore.



We made it down in amazing time and arrived at the trailhead shockingly on time. The problem was that we never told Michael when exactly to meet us at the trailhead. Walkie talkies suck. Or I should say, it sucks to have a walkie talkie as your only mode of communication between you, a large slab of rock, and a car campsite. A cellphone was by no means better, but we thought we were going to beat the system with a walkie talkie. In the end, after telling Michelle, “No, you may not hitchhike. I don’t care if they do look like a nice family,” Monique and I hiked the extra mile back to the car campsite. Because, you know, at this point all you want to do is hike more, right?

We got in touch with Mike and in short order we were back at the car campsite and busily splitting up possessions and deciding who should ride back with whom. In the end, we went back the same way we went up, but we made a promise to stop in the first town for a little cleaning up and a late lunch.



Back in San Francisco it took me three rounds of rinsing and repeating to get the dirt from out of my hair and from under my nails. My feet ached for the next two days, but the rest of me felt truly refreshed. The wait for me to go on a backpacking trip is over, and I’m eager to organize one in the Spring.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my first meal after we came down from Yosemite? Hamburger. And of course some fries.

[previous: "Y" is for Yosemite]

"Y" is for Yosemite

Well. It's been a while.

Off The Beaten Path has actually done a great deal of hiking since March. Yes. Lots. We went to a bunch of places and ate lots of great sandwiches. I just haven't written about it, but it did happen. Really. The sandwiches were particularly yummy, too.

While I may not have been writing about hiking, I have been writing. For about a year I've been working on a play (among other things) in The Red Room, and recently started doing work in-trade to barter for studio hours. The funny thing is that now that I don't have to pay, I'm not going. Which is the whole frigging point of paying for your hours. Paying for something helps me keep my commitment. Most everyone has a 'price point,' a line that is invisible to others but if you cross means that you are 'wasting' your money. Of course the line changes from thing to thing, so to one person paying $250.00 for a new laptop bag is a total 'waste' of money, and for another it is a total necessity. And no, I don't have a pretty ACME made bag, like my friend Jen, since I cannot spend that much money on something I put on the floor of a public bus. When it comes to classes and gym memberships, it is how much you are willing to 'waste' per month. My studio hours? Past my price point. My gym? Not past my price point. Gyms are evil that way. The monthly cost is just cheap enough that you keep paying for it each month, even though you haven't been since the Reagan administration, but you might. Not that 24Hour Fitness was even around back then, but I digress.

It is possible that it is just me. There are plenty of writers who manage to get their ass up in the morning and haul it to their coffee shop office to do their writing. My good friend just finished her dissertation for her PhD in Psychology at her local coffee shop. The guy who owns the place is so thrilled that she wrote so much it there, that he is giving her the space for free so she can throw a huge, "I &^%$ FINISHED IT!" party. Hell, she's probably dropped about $900.00 in there for tea alone so they'll both break even.

The only time I've met writing deadlines is when I kept my online journal. Since that is the other way I get things done in life: I make a commitment to other people. If I tell you that I'm going to be at the gym at 8 in the morning, I will be there at 8 in the morning. 8:15 at the latest. Maybe 8:20 if I'm really dragging, but I will be there. Case and point I finally found a gym buddy this past January and we were gym rock stars until about a two months ago when I started doing my work for the writer's studio. Now our schedules are out of synch, and I've stopped going, but I'm still paying $40.00 a month because I might. And lately as I feel my legs slowly submit to entropy, as my jog up the stairs from the train station gets slower, and slower, I realize I really need to find away to way to make this work again.

What's my point? Commitment is tough.
Money sometimes help keep you rigorous, as do friends, and ACME bags are pretty.
And all of this brings me to talk about Yosemite. Yes, there is through line here, just roll with it.

For years, ever since I started this hiking club, I've said that I wanted to go on a backpacking trip. Not camping, but the real deal: the hike all day with your life on your back backpacking. My goal was to build up a group of devoted hikers and then take them all on a backpacking overnight. The problem is that aside from one or two people, I've never had a consistent group of hikers. I've had groups as large at ten and as small as one. Years passed and at the close of each season we would have only done day hikes. So three months ago when Monique mentioned that she wanted to go to Yosemite for the weekend in preparation for her own hiking goal: to hike Half Dome in October, I leapt up and said that I would help her organize things. From there, car camping turned into one night of car camping and one night of backpacking. Aw yeah.

After many long e-mails, several shopping trips, some last minute drop-outs, and a large mug of coffee, our Team Alpha left San Francisco bright and early on a Friday morning at the end of August. About four hours in my coffee failed and we were almost out of gas, so we stopped for a refreshing late brunch of Red Bull and trail mix. I always forget how much you start hating the food you bring on a backpacking trip about halfway through the trip. The trail mix I was happily noshing on Friday morning would be looked at with absolute disgust in about 72 hours causing me to think, "Those mushrooms can't all be poisonous, can they?" Lucky for me I was hiking with girls, and girls are always interested in something new that they don't have, and in lieu of swapping clothes we could swap snacks. But right now, that trail mix was hitting the spot and I felt like a million bucks. A few more hours pass and we make it to Yosemite and to our campground for Friday night. We get there early enough in the day so that we have our pick, and we pick one way in the back, secluded from the other campsites. We set up our tents and unload all of our food into the bear box.

For those of you who have never been to Yosemite, you can't throw a stone without hitting a warning about bears, and quite possibly, that stone would then ricochet off the warning and hit a bear. This is especially true if you are in the valley, which were weren't, but...nevermind. The last time I went to Yosemite, years ago, I only went backpacking. And while you, like myself, may feel that it is more likely you will run into a bear when you are miles away from a large groups of people that can hear you scream, the truth of the matter is that if you are staying in a campground your chances of seeing a bear quadruple. I was so nervous about bears the last time I was at Yosemite, that my boyfriend and I decided we would only bring pre-made snack food that wouldn't require us to heat up or cook anything, lest the tempting smell of quesadillas would bring a ravenous brood of bears with a serious Goldilocks complex. I remember on that trip that rather than a full 72 hours, I hated everything we brought to eat in about 24 hours and I didn't have anyone to swap with at all. I spent the next 48 hours fantasizing about hamburgers and fries.

Back at our current campground, everything with a smell has been put in our bear box, including the Tic Tacs I found buried in my glovebox. We then set off to get wilderness permits for our Saturday overnight along with the regulation "bear barrels" that the park requires you rent when you are backpacking in Yosemite. A bear barrel is basically a big black cylinder made of industrial government plastic. It has a pop-lid that you lock down with a quarter, so make damn sure you have one, because as we discovered a knife will not do the job. You are supposed to stash all your food, trash, and any scented items at all, inside the bear barrel, lock it down, and put it 100 feet away from your campsite so that you aren't mauled while you sleep. While people used to think that stringing up their food and Tic Tacs in a bag in a tree was good enough, the park frowns on this for two reasons. One, bears can climb trees. Two, even if they can't get to your food by climbing, they will try to get at it from the ground, and what you'll have is a demented game of Bear Bag Piñata happening about 100 feet away from where you are sleeping. Not good. The bear barrels are not only unopenable without opposable thumbs and a quarter, but they are thick so that your campsite won't have a fragrance of Ode De Picnic. Even so, when you get these containers covered in scratches and dings, all I can picture is this bear banging the bear barrel on a rock making the same noises as the Wookie in Star Wars.

We put the barrels in the trunk of the car and drove off to a nearby spot to do a short day hike. Nothing major, just a mile or two to stretch our legs and start getting adjusted to the altitude and the dry air. We started out with little thought to where we were going, and were just happy to be enjoying the late afternoon and the beauty of the trail. We were headed towards May Lake, and there was one point when we could see a beautiful lake off in the distance, before we continued our trek downhill. It was when we hit the bottom hill, and then a road, that we realized, "Hm. There's no lake." Retracing our steps a mile uphill, we realized that rather than taking a the trail to the lake, we'd followed some sort of piece of a trail that did nothing but connect the trail we wanted to be on to another trial you could take to some place scenic. It was nature's equivalent of an alleyway. At least it was a very pretty alleyway and we still had a great talk on the way down the hill. Uphill, we were pretty quiet. You really feel the difference in the air up there, especially when, you know, you're breathing.

After getting back to the parking lot, we headed back to our campsite to make dinner. The night before I had made a huge batch of spaghetti and sauce and we eagerly lit up our coals to begin reheating the sauce. Cooking, even just reheating, over coals takes a long time. We got the sauce to about two degrees above room temperature before we said, good enough, and dug right in. Besides we had a campfire to make and s'mores to roast. We finished up dinner, changed into warmer clothes, put everything back into the bear bin, except for the s'mores, and stared a fire. It was a beautiful, in your face Boy Scouts, campfire just like I'd learned how to make from watching my Dad. In my house back in San Francisco, I take particular pride in making fires in my fireplace, even though one of my first ones almost lit our entire mantel on fire and melted our fire screen. After eating our weight in s'mores, we packed everything away, and laid down to look at the stars for a while. There is nothing more breathtaking than stars in the wilderness. It is a magical sight to have the entire milky way laid out before you, with pine trees stretching their arms up to the sky to touch it.

Therese was the first one in our party to hit the sack. By this time it was close to 9:00PM, which feels like midnight in the great outdoors, and we were still waiting for our second car coming up from San Francisco. It takes anywhere from four to five hours to drive up from San Francisco, and our second car didn't leave until 3:30 in the afternoon, so you do the math. Monique and I decided that we'd sit up and wait for them, just in case they get lost trying to find us. Monique puts on her head lamp and I lean back to look at the stars some more. To pass the time, Monique is looking around our campsite. The light from her head lamp is like a movie spotlight, highlighting rocks, trees, tents, a bench, and a bear. Bear. Monique whips her head back to our bear bin and we see a four hundred pound furry friend banging at it with interest. She then whips her head back to me, eyes wide, meeting my own saucer faced expression.

"There's a bear."
"Yes."
"A bear."
"Yes. What are you going to do?"
"What am I going to do?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to get up."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm going to walk over there," nodding to the next campsite over with a bigger campfire
"I'm going to come with you."
"What about Therese?"
"She'll be fine."
"She's in the tent?"
"She'll be fine so long as we don't yell out, 'Oh my god it's a bear!'"

We darted over to the next campsite and hurriedly said, "There is a bear in our campsite!" The couple there quickly says, "Quick, you have to bang your pots and pans so that he'll go away!"

"They're in the bear bin."
"All of them?"
"Yes!"
"Hm. What is the loudest thing you've got on you?"
"Me."

One of the guys gets together with a few of his friends, and they arm themselves with two empty wine bottles. They whoop and yell and bang two empty bottles of Merlot and our bear scampers away. I guess he prefers good Chardonnay. Not too oaky, and with a light dry fruit.

Monique and I scurry back to our campsite and to Therese's tent. There are no claw marks so we settle back to our campfire while we listen to other campers bang pots and pans while the bear makes its way through the campground. From that point on we are on high Blair Witch alert. Every twig snap and rustle causes us to flash our lights around. Finally Michelle and Michael arrive and we usher them in like Marines. Move, move, move. Go, go, go! We open the bear bin and stick in their food and toiletries so fast you'd think we were avoiding radioactive contamination. The second the food is on lockdown I give Michael a lantern and flee to the tent I'm sharing with Therese. Monique grabs Michelle by the arm and they dive into her tent. Michael, I'm sure, sighs and pitches his tent to the sound of crickets and the nervous titter of four women freaking themselves out talking about bears.

An hour later the adrenaline leaves my body, and I slowly fall asleep, smiling to myself. I think about the fact that the only thing separating us from the bears are just a two pieces of nylon. Still a tent has the same power as a magic bedsheet, which protects nervous children everywhere from monsters and other things that go bump in the night.

[Next up: Hiking North Dome]

Monique Gets A Gold Star

I've called this post, "Monique Gets A Gold Star," but it could easily be subtitled the "Hell or High Water, or Better yet Both" hike. For those of you who read this and don't live in the Bay Area, let me fill you in: we've been getting a lot of rain. And by a lot of rain, I mean people in Seattle have been looking at us and laughing. By a lot of rain, I mean that according to the Chronicle we had more rain on record for the month March than we've had since the Gold Rush. Do you know when the Gold Rush was? A frigging long time ago, people. Well, at least to us Americans. Someone in Europe is laughing at my concept of a long time, while they sip tea and chuckle that at least they haven't had as much rain lately as they've had in San Francisco. Lots of rain.

Perhaps needless to say, I've been itching to go outside and go hiking for the last two months and was determined to not let April pass us by since we'd literally sailed through March. The worst is watching Mr. Hiker Jane hear again and again that his softball games are canceled since the all the parks in San Francisco have been calling "Uncle!" since late January. He hasn't had a game in almost three months and each Friday night before we go to bed, he's been leaving out a chicken wing for the great god Jubu, saying a little mantra over his softball bag and hoping that maybe, just maybe, they'll get to play the next day. It hasn't worked. The nastiest trick is when it will rain the night before and then we'll have a glorious Saturday day, but with the fields looking like chocolate pudding, the games are still called off.

The forecast was for 'partly cloudy' last Sunday, and additionally we were supposed to be 'springing forward' for Daylight Savings. We had three who'd said "yes," I made four, and we had a handful of "maybes." Now I've learned after doing this for the past four years, that pretty much 99% of your maybes are really a "no," but they just can't bear to say it. However, one thing I have yet to realize is that there are many people who say an enthusiastic "Yes!" with a thumbs up sign and really at best they are a "maybe." I don't think it is solely a San Francisco phenomenon, but I'd be willing to venture that people that live in the Bay Area have a slightly above average flake factor, and are pretty much overly enthusiastic about everything. Perhaps it is because many live in the state of a perpetual contact high from the wafting green fog that settles in to parts of the valleys at around 4:20PM each day. Just a guess.

Anyway, Sunday rolls around and while it is grey it isn't raining so I pack my bag full of trail mix, apples, and string cheese and head on over to Muddy's coffeeshop to get some Sunday fuel. People can say what they want about Muddy's, but it is the most perfect slice of the Mission district if I've ever seen one. While I love where I live now, it can get a little Lily of the Valley out here and nothing brings me back down faster than a visit to my old stomping grounds.

Eleven in the morning strikes and out of the mist appears Miss Monique. She is ready to go, hiking pack in hand. I glance at her shoes and worry for a moment since she is wearing tennis shoes and even though the trail won't be too hard, it is going to be very muddy and hiking boots are probably a necessity in spots. No matter. We sit and wait for the other two hikers, witnessing the ever amusing show of characters out in front of the coffee shop and inside. We wait...and wait. "Maybe they didn't spring forward," Monique offers. I agree and try calling the one other hiker whose number I have in my cell phone. No answer. I don't like to leave a "yes" behind. We decide to wait until noon and then if no one either calls or shows by then we'll head off. A half hour into our wait I get a text message from one of the hikers saying they can't come today since they went hiking yesterday and "lost one of the hikers" and they are not feeling too good and will explain later. "Lost?! What do they mean by lost? Did they...? Jesus, I'm not going to think about that." We wait the other half hour speculating on the lost hiker and our final hiker doesn't show. A "yes" that was a "maybe." Oh, San Francisco.

In our hour wait it has started to sprinkle. Just a few drops, but they are taunting me. Quickly I hustle Monique into the car and we start driving North. "Maybe it will stop," I say hopefully. "Do you mind hiking in a little rain?" Monique says that she's fine with it sprinkling and I lie to myself thinking that it will be fine and we keep driving. About an hour later we reach the trailhead and we see some backpacking diehards wandering back to their cars after spending the night out in the park. They are covered with mud, but smiling. I decide to myself that it will be okay.

We begin the trail and for the most part it is pretty easy going, the inclines are pretty moderate, and for once I don't feel overwhelmed by the first hike of the season. In fact I feel downright great. It is the first decent sign that all the trips to the gym these past three months have been paying off. Thank Jubu.

The scenery is gorgeous and although Monique is playing advanced outdoor "Frogger," leaping cautiously onto spots of minimal mud on the trail, we are both blown away by the beauty. There are wisps of fogs rolling over the hills and all the rain has produced an abundance of wildflowers; they burst over into the trail with their flecks of yellow, purple, and red. To the left we can see the Pacific ocean and the stormy waves crashing onto the cliffs.

After hiking for about an hour, the trail turns inwards under greater cover and we pass by a the first of a series of lakes. I don't quite remember the names, but I believe this is Bass Lake. Monique is indicating the lake for you...:




Monique and the lake. Doesn't the rain make her complexion look dewy? I thought so.

Our final destination is a place called Alameda falls and if there is one thing that rain makes more spectacular for viewing, it is waterfalls. Before we hit the turnoff for the falls, we passed by Pelican Lake, and the picture below doesn't do it justice. Try squinting at it and picture ducks swimming. If you try really hard you can almost see a young Ricky Schroder running around it and the credits rolling for "On Golden Pond".



One thing I've failed to mention is that while we were hiking, we were passed by one of those cute hiking couples. Two JCrew models had sprung from the pages and were jaunting along and passed us at one of our break spots. What blew me away was that they didn't have a backpack or even a bottle of water between them -- like they were just taking a quick stroll on what is an eight mile loop. Yeah. Perhaps when they got thirsty they just licked the dew drops off the nearest branch. Who knows. In any case, they come into our story later on and I thought I should mention them before I forget.

So, we turn onto the Alameda Falls trail and we know our final destination is near. We brush past the "unmaintained trail sign" and slog through a bunch of smelly mud and finally come to a clearing where the trail basically ends in rocky mudslide. Standing at the end of the trail looking down is another couple. Not the JCrew people, fairies had whisked them away for the moment. This was a normal looking couple who stood there in their LLBean barn jackets and muddy shoes. We approached them to see what they are looking at. Oh. Down below are the Falls, but there is no real trail down, just a slip n' slide of mud and make shift "steps" where the trail once was.

They look up at Monique and I and say, "Are you going down?" "Are you?," I counter. They laugh. I look down and try and assess the situation from a safety perspective as opposed to the "Dammit I'm going to see that waterfall" perspective. Both voices interfere, however, and they decide it isn't that bad. I declare to the group that I'd like to go down, and the guy in the couple immediately jumps to my side as if I'm somehow some kind of authority on hiking. The woman hems and haws, but eventually gives in and we make our way down the first tier of mud and rock.

It turns out their names are....well, I can't remember so I'll say Christine and John, since those are nice names and they were very nice people. Apparently they were on vacation from Atlanta. How in the hell they found themselves on this trail about an hour outside of San Francisco remains a mystery to me, but I was happy they were there. John was a big guy and willing to be our "spotter" on the one point where we had to leap across the water. It wasn't too far of a jump, but just seeing all that rushing water and knowing that a few hundred feet away this water crashes about fifty feet onto a beach...well, it messes with your head.

Do you see why Monique gets a gold star? Good.

Below is a shot of the top of the waterfall -- the first tier -- and the picture doesn't really do it justice, but it is all I have. Please act impressed.



It is at this point that our JCrew models come back into the picture. We'd made it down the first section, but we still weren't at the beach which is where there is the most dramatic drop for the waterfall. We are looking around and debating, and peering over the side of the cliff to see where the waterfall drops, when our two models popped their heads out from behind a massive wall of rock. "The trail is over there," they say as they continue to scamper back up the trail to the top. "It's steeper than the first part, but less muddy." Oh goody. They prance away and the newly created foursome of myself, Monique, Christine and John decide that if those little pixies can make it so can we.

We make our way down the granite slope to the beach, and indeed the models were correct -- it is much steeper and we've now swapped rocky mud for just plain rocks. But as you can see the hike down was well worth it. It was magnificent:


(That is Christine in the foreground)

Just when I was about to congratulate myself for not getting any water in my shoes on the hike, yours truly got hit by a wave crashing onto the beach. So much for my speech. My boots fill up with water and sand. I try to clear them out, sitting on the beach and trying to brush the grains from my wet socks, but it is like trying to clean a wet floor with a saturated sponge. That said, nothing can dampen my spirits since we've made it down and the four of us frolic like we've climbed Mt. Everest. Christine took this photo of Monique and myself in front of our accomplishment.



And just as I'm about to set up a momentary camp down there, it starts to rain. Not sprinkling, but raining. A group of seals have popped their heads up out of the waves and they look at us like we are crazy. "What are you doing out there?," they seem to say. "Are you nuts? It's raining!" Meanwhile we can't stop starring at them.

"Are those seals," squeals Christine.
"Yes," I say adding, "either they are seals or really stupid humans, but I think they are seals."
"Maybe those are birds," says John.
"Those are not birds." Christine counters, "Besides she says they are seals."
"Yes and I encourage you to use me as an authority when you tell your friends in Atlanta. Just say, this local San Francisco girl said they were seals. See? It's perfect."

The rain is staring to come down even harder, so we do our best to scamper back up the rocks as quickly as possible. If there was any attempt to try and keep ourselves somewhat dry and mud free, it has been abandoned by the desire to get back to the trailhead as quickly as possible. Chatter makes the trail go fast and I finally feel good about bringing all the food I had with me since Christine and John are famished.

We manage to get back to the car before some serious hypothermia sets in and pull off the first layers of wet clothes and dump them into the trunk. Christine and John take Monique's e-mail address and promise that they will send her a copy of their pictures. So far, no pictures. I guess they were really a "maybe." Oh, well. No matter. They still get gold stars.



Oh and that hiker? They found her. Apparently she went off alone into the fog and lost her way, but she did find her way back after a few hours. Yeah. Mother Nature can be scary solo, so remember that before you do some trailblazing, kids.