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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Catalina #3

For this post, things to know:
- Girl Scouts are rugged.
- The ocean is scary.


(Camp)

So I had a very cold night that first night, but when I work up about 7am it was sunny on the beach and even a little warm. It was nice.

The beach was wide and rocky and surrounded by hills and the view was pretty.

Mike tried to make a fire again, but couldn’t, so we just ate powerbars.

The previous day the lady at the dive shop had said that the small craft advisory would lift about 3am that morning, so our plan was to hike back and get our kayaks. I emptied out my backpack so that I could bring my tent (and base layer) back with me.

About 9am we started hiking back. I was not looking forward to it. About fifteen minutes into the hike we stopped to hydrate (that just means drink water, but doesn’t it sound cooler if I say “hydrate”?). As we were standing there in the shade of a tree hydrating, a gaggle of little Girl Scouts passed us going the other direction. Some of them were wearing flip flops and singing and – in my memory atleast - they were dressed in tutus, waiving princess wands at us. So, as you might imagine, Mike and I totally felt like big tough strong awesome hiker men right about then.

That hike was pretty much the same story, but it was nice to be outside, but it took about three hours and we were covering the same ground as the day before, so it did start to get annoying because it just felt like backtracking. And I hate backtracking.

As we crested the last hill over Two Harbors, we could see kayaks putting out from the dive shop! I was so happy! It meant that we would be able to rent our kayaks and would not have to do the hike again!

We made our way down into town. Mike wanted to eat again, so for two days in a row on our camping trip he had cooked food. Because that’s how I camp.

Turned out that the small craft warning had only been extended from 3am to 11am, but about1pm we were able to rent our kayaks. I put my tent in my pack and put my pack inside a trash compactor bag and put it inside the drywell of my pretty blue kayak (a drywell is basically the trunk of a kayak).

Before we left, I walked over to the general store and bought a Durflame log and bought two more lockers of wood and water at Parson’s Landing. Mike said we didn’t need a Duraflame log, that he just needed some lighter fluid, but I bought the log anyway. I’m not sure if it was entirely legal to take a Duraflame log to our campsite because Catalina has some weird fire restrictions, but let’s just go ahead and assume that I broke no laws.

A note here about kayaks: These were the sit on top kind, not the sit inside kind, so they are much easier to use if you have no clue what you’re doing (its like they invented these things for me).To launch a kayak you get about 90% of it in the water, with just the tail on the beach. Then you hop on and use your paddle to push off. There are virtually no waves in Two Harbors, so this was pretty easy. But then you’re floating and your brain goes all “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING! THIS IS SO NOT RIGHT!”

Because there are boats moored at Two Harbors, I only had about fifty feet to learn how to steer the damn thing or I would have collided with some very expensive sail boats. But luckily it was not all that hard to learn.

After a few minutes the initial terror of being on a tiny boat goes away and it gets to be kind of fun. It is not as hard to paddle as I had feared, but it isn’t terribly easy either. It goes pretty smoothly, but a kayak doesn’t glide on its own, paddling doesn’t create a lot of momentum. Once you can get a nice rhythm down, it gets easier. You have seen it one TV I’m sure: you dip the paddle on the right side and push forward with your left arm, then slide the paddle up and out on the right and dip the left end into the water and push forward with your right arm. It is kind of a windmill motion and once you get going and learn how to let the fins of the paddle glide in and out of the water, it even becomes fun.

At first we stayed relatively close to shore, following the coastline in and out of the coves. The water was blessedly calm. Soon we started gliding over the thick kelp forests. I did not like these one little bit because you could only see a few feet down into the water, so it meant that we were constantly gliding over these dark, massive shapes and only when right above them could you see what they were. And it was really scary to look down into them, because the blurry dark masses would materialize suddenly into fish or rocks. Suddenly all of those jokes I had been making about sharks were not funny anymore. I had these images in my head of a giant mouth full of teeth appearing out of the dark kelp shadows.

Since Mike was filming while we kayaked along, I had to keep stopping so that he could keep up, which would have been fine, but when you stop kayaking, the waves try to turn it around and push it into shore. And each time you have to start kayaking again, it takes forever to get back into a rhythm. Or perhaps it just takes me forever since I have no actual physical coordination.

But none the less, we made our way up the coastline. Moving in and out of the coves and having a good time. The weather was good and the water was smooth and the views were great. We passed over schools of slim silvery fish and even some small jelly fish. Those look like little ocean ghosts. Probably the stranded souls of kayakers who got eaten by Great White sharks.

We had to kayak 4.2 miles and the first four miles of that was along the eastern side of the island. Then we had to round a point and at that point we would be in a different current coming in off the Pacific Ocean as we headed more North West to Parson’s Landing. I had had some concerns about rounding that point because I am smart enough to know that two different currents would be coming together right there. So I didn’t think anything of it when the water started to get more rough and choppy as we approached that point. It got windy and I even turned my hat around so that it wouldn’t blow off. But I consoled myself, telling myself it was just because of the point.

Then I got around the point and I could see for miles out into the ocean and it was completely different.

I realize now where the term “sea change” came from. It was a completely different ocean that I was looking at.


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Catalina #4

For this post, things to know:
- The ocean is dangerous.

For the first four miles of the kayak trip the water had mostly been nice and smooth. The little waves we went over were small and round and pleasant enough.

When we came around the point and turned left the ocean ahead of us was terrifying. We were heading into the current, so the waves were coming toward us. What I saw was a jagged field of waves several feet high. These were real waves. When they crested they pointed forward sharply and then collapsed down heavy. There was so much wind that water blew off the crests of the waves straight ahead – straight into my face – so there was a misty layer like rain above the waves. And the current was fast – in the wrong direction – so it was pushing us back and sideways. On this side of the point there were no coves to pull into for safety or rest, just cliffs with rocks at the bottom.

The graceful windmill motion of paddling didn’t work anymore. I had to stick the full paddle straight down into the water and push hard, levering myself forward. And then had to do the same on the other side, and fast, otherwise I wouldn’t be pointing into the waves anymore. If I wasn’t pointed into the waves, they would push the kayak sideways and the water would crash over the top of me and if the length of the kayak got hit with a wave it would nearly flip over. This came close to happening more times than I care to admit.

After about ten minutes of difficult progress, it got to the point where I couldn’t even move forward anymore. All my paddling did was keep me in place against the current. The waves were so high that when I was down between them and looked back, I couldn’t see Mike anymore.

I considered turning around, thinking that we could pull in to a cove on the safe side of the island and just hike to camp, but the problem was that I could SEE our camp from where I was. I could SEE IT! And I would have had a problem with turning back at that point.

So we kept on going. It was scary and probably the only time I can think of as an adult when I felt that I was in real, physical danger. Like actual peril. If I had been knocked off the kayak, if it had flipped over, I don’t think I would have been able to flip it back over and get back on. I’m not sure what would have happened at that point.

So I just paddled and paddled and paddled my little heart out. As I got inches and inches closer to the camp, I saw that it was rockier than I had previously realized. There were formations of rocks that had been under the water, but the waves were so high now that they first engulfed the rocks, then withdrew, leaving the rocks above water and totally exposed and dangerous.

I was able to kind of aim the kayak in between some of the rocks and then a wave scooped me up and pushed me in, but it turned me sideways as it did and so I hit the beach with my kayak turned sideways, I hopped out and tried to drag it up the beach but by then another wave came in and pushed the kayak into me, knocking me down. I scrambled up and dragged the kayak up out of the water and then promptly collapsed on the beach, exhausted and still a little scared.

Mike came in a couple minutes later and made just as graceful of a landing as I did.

It had taken two hours to go the first four miles and it took a full hour to go the last 0.2 miles.

Also, I was now completely terrified of the ocean, and not just because of the sharks.


(Our kayaks on the beach the next day)

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Catalina #5

For this post, things to know:
- Durflame Logs are fiery awesome!
- I am not graceful at all.

Remember how there had been a small craft advisory? And that it was lifted shortly before we got the kayaks? Well about an hour after we took the kayaks out onto the water and paddled away from Two Harbors, another small craft advisory was called. Which means that most of the time we were on the water that day, we were innocently and naively scooting along on water that we shouldn’t actually have been on. So that explains why some of it was so bad. Only we didn’t know any of that at the time.

Once we made it to camp we spent awhile just doing nothing. Just trying to catch our breath and repair our spirits. I have to be honest with you, I was a little shocked by what had just happened.

But as the sun got nearer to the horizon, we decided to get set up for dinner. I got out my Duraflame log and Mike built some sort of wood tripod around it. We lit the thing up and suddenly there was fire! Hooray! It was a nice big hot happy awesome fire.

I set up my tent. I was very happy to have a tent. The wind started to pick up and it started to get dark. We boiled water and made dinner and actually had a nice time. It is amazing how much a nice warm fire will do to pick up your spirits. Mike had some hot chocolate and it seemed like the greatest thing in the world.

Eventually we each crawled into our own tents to sleep. With the rain fly on my tent, I couldn’t see out, but I could hear how loud the waves were when they broke on the beach and it scared me a little to think about while I drifted off.

We woke up about 6am the next day. We needed to get an early start because we had to catch a bus in Two Harbors at Noon. So I got up and broke down my tent and packed everything up and loaded it into the kayak. It took Mike a little longer to get packed but that was okay because I was drinking some coffee and staring unhappily at the ocean (It was a very cinematic moment! I felt like I was in a movie about someone who hates the ocean!).

It looked like the sea had calmed down some, but the waves were still breaking really hard on the beach. Remember, this was only the second time that I had ever put a kayak out into water.

But finally it was time. Mike went out first and he managed to time it just right so that the suck-back from a wave pulled him out.

I went next, but didn’t time it right. I tried to ride a wave out, but a bigger one came in a second later and pushed the kayak sideways and back up the beach. It knocked me over onto my back and the kayak rolled over the top of me in the water. I jumped up, completely soaked and rolled the kayak right side up. I pulled it back out into the water and tried to line it up into the waves, I went a little further out, so the kayak was completely in the water. Another big wave came and went over my head, so both the kayak and I were pushed back into the beach.

At this point I must have looked like such a pitiful drowning rat that a guy ran out from one of the neighboring campsites to help. I remember he shouted to me, “I’m glad I’m not putting out in this!”

We only had a second before the waves came in again. He held the kayak pointed straight out and when the wave came in I jumped up onto it and paddled like crazy. I hollered back at the guy, “THANK YOU!”

That dude was awesome, whoever he was. The patron saint of under-skilled outdoorsman, that guy was.

Once I got out past the rocks and into the ocean, I took inventory. I was completely soaked all over with sea water. I had lost my bottle of water when the kayak rolled and I could tell from the way the boat moved that I had a lot of water in my drywell (the trunk) which was also where all my stuff was.

Luckily the current was pushing us back to the point. The waves were still rough, but nothing like they had been the day before.

As we neared the point, seals started popping out of the water. At first they were far away, but then they started to come in closer to bark at us. I think that they wanted to play. Or maybe they were like, “What the hell are YOU doing out here? Don’t you know there’s a small craft advisory right now?”

For my part, I was not happy about the seals because sharks eat seals and I was convinced that the seals were bringing the sharks closer, so I would yell at them, “Seals! Go Away! I do not like wildlife!”

Shortly after that several dolphins popped up between Mike and I. I barely saw them, but Mike said that there were a bunch. Several seals continued to follow my kayak while I yelled insults at them.

To save time we stayed further out to sea than the day before and made more of a straight line down the coast. With the current at our backs, we made it in about an hour and a half. By the time I pulled up onto the beach in Two Harbors, my clothes had dried, but I was covered in a thick layer of dried salt. It was pretty weird. I pulled my stuff out of the kayak and everything was soaked (even though it had been inside of a trash compactor bag).

We had enough time before the bus that I unpacked everything onto a picnic table so that it could dry.

We also got lunch (Mike’s third hamburger during out camping trip. I had a corndog. That’s how we camp, you got a problem with that?) Also, and quite happily, I had a Jack and Coke at the bar.

The “Safari Bus” we took from Two Harbors to Avalon was basically an old Blue Bird school bus. It was hot and dusty, but we kept the windows open for the breeze. It was a bumpy ride (imagine going off-road in a school bus and that’s about it), but the roads out of town led up along the high ridgelines, so the views were beautiful.


(View from the bus window)

It took about an hour to get to the little Catalina airport, where we switched buses and rode down (another hour) into Avalon.

Arriving in Avalon was like rolling into the big city! Multi-story buildings! Golf Carts! More than one restaurant!

The bus let us off basically around the corner from our hotel.



(Your humble author after surviving two days of hiking, camping and kayaking)

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Parson's Landing Catalia, 2011

Some cool long exposure night shots Mike the Director did at our campsite.