I wanted to backpack in October, before it got way too cold for me and the nights way too long, and each weekend there ended up being some kind of party or whatever (poor me!) until the third week of this ever-darkening month. Jordan had a work thing, so I asked Nathan to come along and he did. At first I picked a spot in the Sierras but as the forecast went from “cold but totally survivable” to “two inches of snow and colder than your gear is really rated” to “70 mph wind gusts, two inches of snow, and cold” I decided to find something else.
No water at Cache Creek, no water at Coe, no reservations at Pt. Reyes of course. So I asked friends who had been to Ventana Wilderness more often if there were any overnight candidates with water and ended up with Pine Ridge Trail to Pine Valley, out and back. Nathan and I sent about 45 texts back and forth deciding what to eat and what to pack and whether he should buy new gear for this 24-hour jaunt.
Saturday
I had had a yogurt cup for breakfast which turns out isn’t enough food! I was a little anxious because it had rained just a bit on us on the way south and I had forgotten to pack a rain layer (and I was hungry). After a few hours we made it to Salinas to pick up lunch to eat at the trailhead. So I ate some chips and guacamole at like 10:45 a.m., we wandered around Salinas trying to find a place with a bathroom we could use, and then we got back on the road.
The last 30 or so miles were winding and narrow, and the last seven miles or so were dirt and rocks. The Subaru handled it well and I just didn’t look over the side of the road so I’m sure it was a very safe time. I did get nervous in advance for having to drive back down the road the next day. I also worried constantly about water and whether the creek we were meant to camp next to would have any, or we’d have to do a grueling 12-mile day hike from the car and back due to lack of water. Fun!
When we parked at China Camp, it was VERY cold (like 40), the wind was howling, and the trees were dripping from an earlier rain shower. We sat in the car eating our burritos and deciding which additional layers to bring and whether we should just leave because if it was that cold and wet here it surely wouldn’t be nicer in a valley below. I was nervous but less devastatingly nervous than on prior trips. It is nice to gain experience and confidence in my gear and my ability to survive discomfort! After some food I felt better (crazy how that happens) though still sort of grim and we decided to suit up and go.
… And pretty much instantly the trail was exposed, sunny and warm (and went up 400 feet right away) so we stopped to remove base layers and add sunscreen. There were fabulous views here of Ventana’s characteristic V-shaped valleys and crested ridgelines and some cool exposed rocks above Church Creek. Then we descended 400 feet, and climbed 400 feet again. We love our Santa Lucia Mountains.
There were a few desiccated fuchsia wildflowers sticking it out among the chaparral after this dry summer somehow, and the huge poison oak bushes were an honestly-beautiful shade of red. Along the dry creekbeds I saw a lot of snowberry which I suspected of being little insect pods until closer inspection.
Having gained 400 feet twice and lost it once, we now were about to lose another 1,500 feet over about three miles (and our ridge views). We took this slowly on our bad knees and ankles and stopped for rest at a junction. On the way down I fretted even more about whether we’d have water, and calculated over and over whether we would be able to get to the water source and back before darkness fell, and if it was dusk when we got to the car how fun it would be to navigate those rutted roads in the dark and on and on …
We followed bone-dry Church Creek down to the spot on the map marked “spring” and noted to have suitable campsites. This part of the trail was a bit more brushy and overgrown and I was a bit too tired and anxious to watch for ticks and poison oak like I should have. But I’m writing this a week later and I’m fine so surely I’ve learned the right lesson there!
At last (4 p.m. or so) we made it to Pine Valley. The valley had some lovely rocks, many pines (as advertised), and a boarded-up cabin. We ambled along scoping out a few established campsites along the still painfully-dry creek before finally making it to the spring. We saw a man puttering around his camp as we crashed through the brush looking for a suitable pool of water (they did exist! I immediately started to chug the remaining 1.75 liters of water I’d anxiously hauled down all that way in case I needed it to get up and out).
He greeted us and let us know the cabin below this dramatic sandstone formation had a spigot with running water. We agonized for a bit about whether to use it or the spring pools and decided to use the spigot (and of course, treat it). Still in scarcity mindset here, we got four liters and then I went back for four more just in case. Another pair came down the trail about an hour behind us with a dog Nathan really liked and we spilled the beans on the spigot to them too.
The Jack of Jack’s cabin died only about six years ago. According to this obituary, Jack and his son built the cabin themselves on a five-acre inholding in the wilderness, using what was there (trees, deer, fish) or hiking in everything needed (except cement, hauled by pack mules) for it over many trips over three years. After his wife Mary died, he lived there mostly full-time until a heart attack in 2013. In the years between, he was flown in by volunteer helicopter pilot to a kind of heliport his son made.
Nathan took a while to set up his tarp and I set up my one-person tent (which I hadn’t used in years!) as the sun dipped below the ridge and the valley got chilly. We each wandered a bit then met back up and decided to make dinner at the spooky makeshift picnic tables near the abandoned cabin.
Dinner was some kind of terrible Mountain House-type macaroni and cheese with packets of fish, which I choked down (why is food so hard to eat out there), then some hot chocolate which I sipped as slowly as I could manage while Nathan read to me about sperm from Moby-Dick. The stars came out, thousands I think, and the Milky Way, and I hadn’t brought gloves and had all my warm clothes on but started to shiver, so I called it and we went to our tents. It was 8 p.m.
I read for an hour, and then had just about the best night of backcountry sleep of my life that night, with my 20-degree quilt inside a tent. I woke up a few times (10 p.m. and 3 a.m.) and slept shallowly for a while: the curse of a back country side-sleeper. But I had dreams and woke up rested so I know my brain really did a good job shutting off and resting.
Sunday
We woke up to frost! On the shrubs and grass, on my trekking poles and pack, on Nathan’s pot and bear canister, on the dirt. When I looked up the weather for the night later it claimed a 41-degree low in this valley but clearly it was colder.
Since we’d awakened with the sun around 7 a.m. I was hopeful we’d be to the car before noon, but no such luck. (I wouldn’t have cared, and in the end I didn’t really care, but that I had foolishly made plans for Sunday evening that I couldn’t really break once I remembered I’d also planned to backpack that weekend). I took my time tearing down and making breakfast and Nathan really took his time, haha, and just when I was all packed up and ready to walk he had forgotten something, and I was so cold in the shadowy valley I just walked to try to find a patch of sun to warm my face. I think that’s when I burned it.
On the way out, Nathan saw a tree he really liked. Maybe it was on the way in. (He’s on the trail here, so you can see how it’s a little overgrown and unruly).
At the start of the biggest climb out (that 1,500 up this time!) we split up so that Nathan could go at his preferred pace uphill (faster). He tried to engineer this by stopping to make matcha and suggesting I go on, but I needed a rest so I sat warming myself like a lizard while he prepared his cheesy potato-flavored matcha to power him up the hill. I trudged uphill behind him with a range of very bad and annoying songs stuck in my head, which always happens when I hike alone. I saw a deer! And then even though it was a buck, “Do-Re-Mi” was then stuck in my head.
I had been certain that hiking back out, since it was chiefly up rather than chiefly down, would take much longer, but it didn’t really. He waited for me at the top of the first higher point and we hiked together talking about movies and whether satire works and other things for the remainder of the up and down. Despite relatively low mileage I felt pretty stiff and sore (the elevation change wheee) that night and Monday but I was proud of myself for mostly keeping up with Nathan.
We made it back to the car just a bit after noon, I made it down the dirt road just fine, we had a mediocre lunch at a roadside restaurant, then I tried to reel in my car-induced rage on the way home. Once there, I showered, shook out all my still-damp-from-frost gear, and was ready just in time for evening plans. Let it never be said that I waste my weekends.
Lessons learned: “Eat breakfast. Didn’t you learn this already?” – me
“It’s nice to be outside even without tons of granite, especially given good and intelligent and tolerant company.” – Nathan
Packed too quickly for a lighterpack accounting but I would guess 15lb base weight and 20 with clothes, water and food. No big deal though 🙂
bless this mess 