More Catalina Stuff

Awright, here's the next entry I did

---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
Catalina: day too tired for math (11/27)
Got back from two night, 35 mile hiking trip with Patrick (one of my awesome teammates) about 1.75 hrs ago. It was awesome getting back because my beloved teammates brought thanksgiving leftovers up to camp from the dinner they had at the Avalon teen center while we were backpacking. Seeing as we brought essentially no food on the trip, we were hungry.
We wanted to hike to the end of the trans-Catalina trail from our tent site and bck over the thanksgiving weekend. It is a 56 mile hike round-trip, and we each brought a small container of dried oatmeal, and between us had 14 small granola bars (those 90 calorie per bar crap. Sheesh, it’s not like I’m on a diet), two tins of honey roasted peanuts, and a handful of raisins. We didn’t have enough. I did bring (and carry the entire time) 5 liters of water.
So, yeah, this hike was a last minute decision. I had to lend Pat a spork, we left so fast. We had no tent, no bivies, just our pads and bags against the wind.
The first night we started out at dusk (~5pm) and hiked till 7pm. It was an amazingly stressful hike. The moment it got gull dark I took lead cause Pat didn’t have headlamp, and following the trail was an extremely fretful process. I worried about getting lost, even though it really didn’t matter as we were hiking on a small island, but the trail was light a dusty and the surrounding terrain was also dusty and only slightly darker. So I would get increasingly worried each time we left a trailmarker behind, until we found the next one 500 yards later.
To our merit, though, we only got lost once. The trail crossed a dry lakebed, and with no markers it was impossible to follow the trail. We found it again by beelining in the right (we thought) direction, but there is something about being tired and hungry in the darkened wilderness that freaks me out and feeds my panic monster. We had done a hard PT before hiking and I know we were throwing ourselves into an insane hike with little/no preparation. That was part of why I wanted to do it, feeding my urge to vision quest in the wild. It seems weak in retrospect to have put so much nervous energy into those few miles, but I do know that the more tired I am the more likely I will want to curl up when placed in a strange situation. Not that I ever have (damn right) but it’s that much harder to do stuff.
But it turned out ok. We aborted the 56 mile hike on day two when 2000foot elevation gains/losses in 4 miles took the wind out of both of our sails, but we still ended up hiking 36 miles overall in under 48 hours (day 1 [starting at dusk: 6 miles]->night 1->day 2 [turned around: 18 miles]->night 2->day 3 [got back around 1:30: 12 miles]). Pretty decent I’d say.
Our second night was blessed. We were both dead from the hike and hanging out at a campsite (pay-per-use, which we did not), when the site ranger drove by. She noticed us lounging on said site, and asked us if we were camping there tonight. When we said “no, we’re just cruising through” (it now being 3:30 and the last thing we wanted was to have to move), and told us our story of a failed attempt at a farther campsite, she told us that the campsite we were on was rented to her for the night. She told us that she was heading home (it was thanksgiving), and that we could use her campsite if we wanted. We got caught site-stealing (pretty much) and were given the site. THANK YOU, RANGER LADY.
Then we got home and our teammates had saved us Thanksgiving leftovers from the teen center and it was glorious.
Currently I am enjoying glory:
-my sleepingbag, hung up to air out, rotates naturally in the wind for even UV exposure
-kiwi can be eaten like and apple, skin and all and then some (4 down the hatch. Don’t tell my teammates)
-I realized I have had the most instances of déjà vu in my life since starting AmeriCorps: 4
-One at a conference table eating lunch during a project
-One walking over a curb
-One sitting at a picnic table on our tent platform
-One I can’t remember but remember having
-> With all of these I get recollections from what I think are dreams I’ve had. Just brief emotion/memory snapshots. It’s crazy

Awright, gotta head 4 miles to Avalon to charge cell phone, wash clothes, etc
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---

everythings good here, getting my red card for wildland firefighting this week