Catalina #2

For this post, things to know:
- I had been checking the weather in Catalina constantly and the low was supposed to be 55 overnight for the nights we were there.
- I had been reading a lot (and becoming obsessed with) lightweight and ultra light camping.

So they could not rent us kayaks.

This was a huge disappointment but not a catastrophe. One of the reasons I had chosen the campsite I did at Parson’s Landing was because we could hike to it. I had originally figured that if we kayaked in and everything went all to hell, that we could always hike out to safety. The small craft warning just meant that we would have to hike in.

I asked the dive shop lady if there were any lockers in Two Harbors where we could leave some of our things (to lighten the load). She said there were and told us where to find them.

We went to the lockers and I opened up my bag. This is when I made a pretty big mistake.

You see, since I had been obsessing about ultralight backpacking I knew that one of the single biggest differences between ultra light and regular backpacking is that the ultra light people don’t take a tent. They take a tarp that can be fashioned into a small shelter to sleep under. I had watched (an embarrassingly large number of ) videos online about how to make such a shelter and was confident I could do it. So into the locker I put my tent and tent poles.

Ironically, THAT was not my big mistake. My big mistake was that I also left behind my base layer. Your base layer is supposed to be the stuff you put on first under your clothes. In warm weather you can just wear the fancy sweat-wicking boxers and shirt (which I was) but in colder wearer you are supposed to wear a pair weird synthetic long johns under your pants to keep you warm. That is what I left in the locker.

Also left behind: my second set of clothes and about half of my snacks and food and some other random things. It probably lightened my bag by about seven pounds. Mike decided that he really couldn’t leave behind anything except his extra set of clothes.

We went to the general store where I bought water to fill up the hydration bag inside my pack. The water added about another two pounds. So all of that took almost an hour. We walked to the edge of town where we had been told that the trail started.

Turned out that the trail actually started at the top of a steep hill on the edge of town, to get there we had to hike up the hill at about a 30 degree angle. At the top there was a bench. Mike wanted to stop at the bench to rest. This was about five minutes into the hike.

The lady at the dive shop said that the hike was about six miles. I doubted that and thought she was trimming some distance off. I had looked at the trail online previously. About three quarters of it ran along hills on the coast and the coastline had about a half dozen coves on it, which meant that to get around each cove you have to hike inland to the back of the cove and then back out to the coast. These are called “switchbacks” and there were a lot of them, some as long as about a half a mile. So even if a cove is narrow and only a quarter mile across, it could take a mile of hiking to get around it.

My feeling was that we would be lucky to make it to camp before sunset.

A note here about Mike the Director. As a film school graduate, he is incapable of doing anything without somehow trying to make it a film school project. He had previously decided that he would make a “show” out of the trip. So While I was hiking, we was filming plants and dirt and talking to his camera a lot. This slowed us down considerably, however I think that some of the footage is going to look marvelous. The basic idea for the show is that we would take these interesting and short and relatively inexpensive trips that anyone would be able to do if they applied themselves. We’re not climbing K2 or anything, and that’s the point. Sure, it is fun to watch Bear Grylls leap out of a helicopter and bite the head off of a terrified tarantula, but is that something that you want to do? Probably not. The same for watching Rachel Ray try to spend ONLY $40 a day in a Tuscan village. It is $40 a day on food alone, not to mention airfare to Italy. I think that it might be fun to watch a couple of people who are totally unprepared and under-qualified, try to take on some nominally difficult adventures. Maybe that’s what we should call it: “Nominally Difficult Adventures”! You can come on the show if you want, just let me know and you can come with us. The only stipulation is that you aren’t allowed to be any good at this stuff. If you know how to SCUBA dive, then you have to go rock climbing. If you know how to rock climb, then you have to go hang gliding. You get the idea.

So we are hiking! The first couple of switchbacks were fun and really pretty. You could look down into the coves and see all the pretty little sail boats moored in them. Some of the coves had small buildings, some of them were private. Catalina is known for its kelp forests and from up on the hills we could see them waving in the water down below.

About an hour in, Mike started to get blisters. Remember that we hadn’t planned don hiking. If he’d known then he probably would have packed differently. As it was, he had a lot of weight to shoulder.

But onward we hiked. And hiked and hiked and hiked and hiked. It started to get darker and darker and I was starting to get frustrated because we weren’t making very good time.

After about three hours we got to the North end of the island. This is where our trail cut in for the last half mile or so to the campsite. This was a strange stretch of land that was very different than the scrub brush and cactus that we had been hiking with. It was a different environment entirely. All tall grass like a savannah and rolling hills rather than stark, high cliffs. The sun was just about setting when we came over the top and finally we were able to look down to our campsite a quarter mile off. So we excited and scrambled down pretty fast. The sun had set by the time we actually got down there and I have to tell you, it was already getting pretty cold and with a breeze in off the ocean.

There were two other sets of campers on the beach. We found our specific site and went about getting wood and water out of the lockers.

I should mention here, we did not bring stoves of any kind, because Mike had been confident that we could do all our cooking on the fire. I had told him that all I needed was the ability to boil water for my dehydrated food and my coffee. He said that would not be a problem.

Well, it turns out that was a problem.

The wood in our locker was damp. Probably condensation inside the metal locker had been marinating it for a couple of days. Mike was only able to ever get a fire going for a few minutes using some industrious fire-starters that he had made out of cotton balls and Vaseline. So while he tried and tried to start a fire, it got darker and colder.

I set up his tent and then went about creating for myself a shelter from tarps. It was actually pretty easy. You lay down one tarp on the ground and stake it down. Then lay another tarp on top. You stake down the back end and then (using a walking stick or, in this case, Mike’s monopod) you pitch a little opening in the front about a foot high and with cord you tie the front corners down (I tied the corners to rocks of which there were many to chose from because our beach campsite was all rocks). Inside my little tarp home went my foam pad and sleeping bag.

A note here about how bad I am at stuff. It was a good thing that I had two flashlights because I would keep turning off the first one and setting it down, then I wouldn’t be able to find it in the dark and so I would have to use the second flashlight to find the first one. I’m totally the best camper in the world!

Eventually Mike had enough of a fire going that we were able to (almost) boil water to pour into the dehydrated food bags. It was so cold by this point that I had on my jacket and even put my food bag inside the jacket just for a little extra heat.

We ate quickly without saying much and then I slipped into the awesome tarp tent thing that I had made. It was okay at first, not a lot of space, but there isn’t supposed to be. Someone who gets claustrifobic might not have liked it, but I was okay. At first.

As the night got colder and colder, I realized that it was way below 55 degrees. Eventually it occurred to me that all those times I had checked the weather, I had probably been checking the weather in Avalon, not the weather at our campsite, which was twenty-some miles away from Avalon, on the other side of some mountains, facing a different direction and right on the beach and exposed to the wind from the ocean. So it was much colder than I had expected. I kept waking up every few hours because I was shivering. My sleeping bag is rated down to 45 degrees and I was wearing pants, socks, a shirt, an over-shirt, a Northface soft shell jacket, a hat and a scarf over my face. And I was still freezing my ass off. I don’t think that I was dangerously cold or I would have retreated to Mike’s tent, but I was very cold. Since (obviously) a shelter made of tarps isn’t sealed or windproof, the breeze from the ocean would slip right inside. And I would lay awake thinking about my base layer. That nice warm, tight black base layer that I had left in a locker in Two Harbors. I decided right then that I would never ever ever never ever again leave it behind. Ever. I don’t remember that last time I was that cold.

But it was not all awful. if I poked my head out of the shelter,I could see across to the mainland. it was clear enough that I could see all the way across to the lights of San Pedro and Long beach. For some reason that made it very lonely though.

So that first night was very cold and lonely.


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