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(c) Courtney B. Duncan 1997, 2002

Chapter 3.

Some Training Hikes

 

Death Valley Days

 

Viannah was out of the foot brace by November 8-11, 1996 when we spent a Veteran's Day four day weekend at Stove Pipe Wells in Death Valley.  This campground marks the last settlement, very near sea level, before the long westward uphill out of the park.  The trip from home took seven hours, a wholly different viewpoint from what we had on vacation the prior August.  When we arrived nearly all campsites were filled by Clampers, a large, loose connection of folks, hundreds or thousands, who camped together on big weekends and took their organization various degrees of seriously, but not very.  Parked between two decked out recreational vehicles with all the accessories including stand-alone BBQ pits large enough to feed a hundred, we pitched our tents.  Based on the population here, it seemed unlikely that there would be vacancies down at the heart of the park below sea level, Furnace Creek where the Texas Creek Campground was, nor was it likely there would still be a vacancy here if we went down to look and came back here an hour later.  So, Stovepipe Wells site #12 it was.

 

During our stay we went on several sightseeing hikes including the road from Scotty's Castle up to his gravesite on a nearby hill Saturday afternoon.  Monday on the way out, we explored Devil's Golf Course, did a little wading at Bad Water (the lowest point in the U. S.) and took in the view from Dante's Peak.  Friday evening we walked north from the camp ground about a mile across sand flats looking for plants and wildlife and fooling ourselves as to how far away the short dunes were.  I was eager to use the GPS receiver to find our way back, and to estimate our time and distance.  Although it grew dark during the expedition, we never really needed technology, though it did spot us right back at our campsite rather than just somewhere in the grounds from where we would have had to find our way back to site #12.

 

Sunday, we drove back up the main road several miles and visited a less used campground up in the nearby mountains before proceeding up to see the charcoal kilns and beyond that a picnic area beyond the end of improved road.  There was snow on the ground up here, we played in it and hiked up a ravine towards a nearby ridge.  Viannah stayed with me much of the way up but had none of the drive I had to reach an actual ridge top at any cost.  Somewhere between half and two thirds of the way up she wanted to go back down enough that we turned and retreated back down the rocks toward the bottom.  We incurred no new major injuries.

 

The most challenging hike had been the prior evening from about four until dusk.  We drove just east of the campground and parked on the side of the road so as to explore the sand dunes.  Viann stayed with the van, as she was under the weather either with a bad cold or a mild flu during the whole weekend.  The kids and I set out for the big sand piles.  Half a mile of moderate marching and we still weren't to any dunes that were significant.  Of course we all wanted to go to the tallest one.  Checking the sun angle for a guess as to how much time was left, we continued up sand ridges and along a route that I thought would bring us to the tallest peak with enough time left to return before dark.

 

I was in touch with Viann by radio but this didn't last long.  All three of her battery packs were dead and we had no way to charge them until we got back home.  They were all ten years old and shot for capacity, I had charged them all just before leaving home and none had been used until now.  I would have to replace the battery inserts sometime before we continued with more serious hiking events.

 

The kids all wanted to take off their shoes and go barefoot and then for me to carry their shoes.  I taught them to tie them together and carry them over their necks or shoulders.  John, as usual, wanted to be carried.  We slogged up, using double energy with each step, the sand cascading down each side with each double-deep push.  Viannah was in front, gaining and Katy was behind, falling behind.  I had John's hand and was lifting him by one arm half of the time in order to maintain the pace.

 

Other walking parties were on the ridges ahead of us.  They seemed to be racing to see the sunset.  Sunset comes early in the valley with walls of mountains on east and west sides, and sunrise came late.  It wasn't obvious we were going to make it but we pressed on.  Finally, with minutes to spare, we reached the area of the summit and picked a small place to crash and rest.  Nearby a group of college-age looking people were sliding cardboard sleds down the long north fact of the dune.  An adult at the bottom, perhaps a teacher or counselor, was videotaping them as they arrived.  It looked as if each of four or five of them had climbed laboriously up and slid hectically down several times and they were just winding up their fun for the day.  The sun went down and while we rested, the last of them pushed off for the last time and we were alone briefly in the growing grayness before starting back.

 

Viannah's ankle was fine but I was worried about her or the other kids stepping on sharp sticks poking out of the sand in the bottoms that we would have to cross on the way back to the road.  Up in the dunes it was fine, but down below where it might be easier walking it looked dangerous.  I didn't take off my own shoes.

 

As we returned, we tried our own attenuated sand sliding and walking down dune faces.  Nobody seemed to mind this 'destruction' by people.  The dunes change every day with the wind anyway.  They would probably not be the same on a subsequent visit, though much might be recognizable to a frequent visitor.

 

We came out to the road and back to the van just as Viann was starting to worry.  Not quite too dark.

 

Viann, mostly over her cold, was not happy Monday returning home.  We tried to visit sites we had not yet seen.  From Furnace Creek we went up to Dante's View from which you can see the lowest and highest points in the lower 48 states, Bad Water and Mt. Whitney, at once.  From there we went on down to the south and east exiting the park from a different way than we'd come in either this time or last summer.  She was irritable, ready to be home.

 

It made for a long day.  We finally reached civilization after two and had lunch at a cafe in Shoshone.  From there it was freeways most all of the way back, a good six hours with only a single drive-through and gas stop in Barstow.  Viann was too mad about the long return day to buy Toy Story doll toys, all the rage this year, at the Burger King, a decision we would regret later with Christmas approaching.

 

But it was supposed to be a four-day weekend, I tried to explain, pointing out that just leaving to go home didn't mean it was over until after we were home.

 

At least this had been the right season to visit Death Valley.  Daily highs had been in the 70s and lows at night were in the 40s and 50s.  Still, camping had lost some of its charm and winter, for most other camping spots, was coming on.

 

I passed the time on the roads talking and when nobody in the car was in the mood for talking, making ham radio contacts.  A short skip opening on 17 meters to the northwest provided a couple of interesting chats.

 

We were home by six thirty.  Viannah was hiking again, it was time to start trying to wedge training back into our schedule once more.

 

A History Lesson

 

Training is hard to start and once broken is hard to re-start.  Weekends fill in quickly and the remainder of spare energy is re-taken by fatigue.  With Viannah's foot out of the brace, however, it was time to get back on the trails and try to re-capture some space from our other busy lists.  It was November 16, the leading edge of the busy holiday season, seven years past our first little walk up a hill of thistles.  I didn't want to try anything too big and nobody had much spare time, but late in the afternoon we set out to go up the Edison easement horse trail as far as we dared go and, probably, back the same way.

 

This was not far, a couple of miles up in the late afternoon and a couple of miles back down in the twilight.  This is as far as I'd ever been on this trail.  We crossed Flanders, Olive, and El Varo, streets that were usually taking off points when the trail was to be used to get someplace else.  The city map shows the trail reaching the Lucken’s Cutoff, but when we got into winding cuts out of hills, we quickly reversed course in the orange sunset and started back.

 

One of the purposes of the series of training exercises was to get acquainted and talk.  I'd been reading Sandburg's Lincoln and before that, Churchill's autobiographical reflections on World War II (abridged), and took this as an opportunity to give a detailed history lesson, everything I could remember about the presidents, other world leaders, and their times.  Starting with Lincoln and the War Between the States, I then skipped to the World Wars, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt, Truman and the Atomic Bomb, Eisenhower, Kennedy and the assassination, then Johnson, Nixon and the resignation, Ford, Carter and high interest rates, Reagan, Bush, and now Clinton.  Viannah was impressed with the lesson, calling it "wonderful" in her journal and particularly remembered the presidents and assassinations.

 

I talked and talked, regurgitating everything I knew about these periods of history from my American-trained point of view, inventing a little here and there as required to fit things together.  She listened attentively, asking an occasional question, not seeming either overly engaged or bored.

 

She was also impressed that, on our return in the dark to the house she got to use her very own key to unlock the front door for the first time.

 

This would be our last hike together for 1996 but there were a few walks to work that would still count as minor training for me.

 

Long Holiday Commutes

 

December 19 was a Thursday, a scattered day at work.  I tried to collect myself and regain cohesion by walking home via Cerro Negro.  Walking was always better than bike riding for this.  When bike riding, I was restricted to streets, streets that were traveled by cars and so I spent much of my time trying to remain safe both because of my own speed and from the speed and weight of the other vehicles.  When walking, I could follow much rougher and more primitive paths and, while on those paths, was less concerned for my immediate safety and could let my thoughts drift to or concentrate on other matters.  Sometimes I would set out with a certain problem to work on and, sometime during the walk, would reach either a point where I needed tools (a computer or piece of paper) to proceed or I reached some conclusion that could be jotted down in a sentence or two for later reference.

 

This day being near the winter solstice the sunset was early, before five.  I was well up into the hills before it started getting really dark.  As always, moving along the path behind Descanso Gardens and ultimately Verdugo Hills Hospital as it really got dark.  This made for an impressive view of the business district in Montrose below to the west.  When I reached the drop behind the hospital, people were talking outside their cars in the parking lot below.  Wanting neither to disturb them nor take on the climb down at this point, I followed the fence line west down towards the freeway instead.  This led into rough country, unfamiliar and also unsuitable for traverse in the dark.  The path I took missed the side road completely and came out in a culvert near the 2 and 210 Freeway interchange.  I climbed a couple of fences and waded through some mud before arriving at the side road that leads back down into Hidden Valley and from there to home.  As always, I counted off the last six blocks eagerly and arrived home around 7:30.  Viann, used to such things was not so much worried as annoyed that I had left her alone with the kids for so long.  They were eating dinner.  I joined after cleaning up and catching my breath.

 

The next morning the weather was excellent, skies were characteristically clear, temperatures were in the 50s, winds were scant and the ground dry.  It was the last school and work day before the Christmas Holidays were to begin.  John had a first grade Christmas Play at school.  Ever determined to ride the bike whenever possible, I left the house in time to make the two mile uphill trip on the bike and arrive just in time for the play.  Afterwards, it occurred to me to take the opportunity to continue to work by an unusual route.  A couple of times in the past I had walked or ridden up the Arroyo to Gould Campground then up the road to Highway 2 near where it enters the Angeles National Forest.  This was a grueling ride and not an easy hike.  The trail up from JPL beside the stream went from paved to unpaved then to just a rocky trail, tough on a bicycle.  Mountain bikers would take the rocks in stride and ride through the streams, but I would usually have to stop and carry the bike across.  People were known to wipe out in these streams, sometimes leading to injuries.  The road up out of the campground featured steep grades on gravel, some seemingly un-navigable on a street bike, certainly for someone with my limited pedaling power.  The reward, however, was a fast ride down the wide and paved Highway 2 into town and then a choice of routes on to the house, all of which involved only a little more uphill before the final downhill stretches.

 

I had never gone this route in reverse before and this seemed like the ideal starting perch combined with a rare opportunity to try it.  The ride up the wide Highway 2 was much less fun, relaxing, and motorcycle-like than a ride down, and surprisingly longer, but at last I reached the cutoff towards Gould Campground.  Negotiation of the walking path through the locked vehicle gate was tricky, and then I was on the brakes nearly continuously for the next mile and a half of steep downhill.  The paved road runs out right away and the gravel is no more easy to negotiate going down than up except there is no need for pedaling but a new fear factor at the higher speeds.  The road through the campground itself seemed like it would be easier going and it was in fact downhill the rest of the way to the East Gate at work (after which it would be uphill for half a mile to my building).  But, it wasn't easy.  I tried riding through one of the crossings and ended up stalling and having to put my foot down getting wet half way up the right knee.  On a subsequent crossing, I was carrying the bike across, lost balance on the rock path, and ended up wading above shoe-top level the rest of the way.  Squish, squish....

 

Still, I reached my building and was at my desk by ten.  Not bad for such a commute.  The remainder of the day was mostly parties, greetings, and tidying up.

 

La Tuna to the Country Club and Another Decision to Go Forward

 

I stayed home several days during the holiday period trading vacation days for child-care costs and hassles.  I helped John set up his electric train on a board, did some reading, and had a very reflective year-end session with my journal sitting out in the cold and damp in our back yard in a heavy jacket.  Hungry for a better devotional habit, I was resolving to an in depth reflective reading of parts of the Bible daily with some meditation.  This would last for some months before the inevitable mutation into other forms of meditation would occur.

 

The new year started out with a screeching halt.  January 6, the day I was to return to work, gale force winds blew down trees and limbs and knocked off the power in our neighborhood.  Winds of over a hundred miles per hour uprooted stands of trees at JPL and destroyed the amateur radio club's mesa antenna farm.  Again.  And, I had come down with the flu the evening before and was miserable with fever spikes and chills.  I got up and tried running the generator so as to power the central heat and run the heater in the waterbed.  The power came back on after 6:00 p.m.  I put all the power generating toys away and crashed back in bed.

 

Every day I thought I might feel like going in to work for a while in the afternoon, but, home by myself and nursing the illness, I would sleep all morning, get up and make some tea, then feel bad and go back to bed.  On the third day I went to the doctor complaining that I was usually only out one or two days with such an illness.  The doctor was surprised, warned me to expect to be out for at least seven days and wrote a prescription to use only if I didn't get better after that amount of time.  It was back to bed.  I was down for the entire week and was, in fact, first able to get back out of the house for half a day on Sunday.  A two-week holiday had turned into three, one miserable.

 

Always looking for a motivation for people to get their amateur radio licenses so they could talk to me from a distance, I had planned an amateur radio role into our hiking trips.  I bought Viannah the beginner's book from the American Radio Relay League, Now You're Talking intending that she would use this as a self-study guide.  I flipped through the book assigning about a chapter per week projecting that we would be able to take her down for an exam sometime in April and still (barely) have time to get her call sign in time for use in the Grand Canyon.

 

"Why does she need to do this?" Viann asked.

 

As my first answer, I gave the truth, that I was just trying to use this event as leverage to get past this milestone in family licensing but that other than that, there was not much reason except that she would be able to check in with Viann on the rim without my presence.  Unlikely except in the case of an emergency when licensing wouldn't matter anyway.  The argument, when explained out loud this way, got progressively weaker.  This would just be more busy work for us when we were already overloaded trying to have lives, jobs, and do training all at once too.  True, we could work on the subject matter talking while we did training hikes, but there was only so much that could be done in that way, there could be no "practice tests" there and code practice would be problematic at best.  And, we would want to talk about other things too.

 

Let’s just dispense with this subject now.  Hope carried through several weeks into the winter and spring.  During our next hike we talked at some length about ham radio, mostly my anecdotes and hand waving explanations of basic theory.  I checked in with her as to how the reading assignments were going.  The material was not over her head, but she was not motivated or interested and did have other homework from school.  After a week and a chapter, the effort stalled.  It would have worked better if I had been available for direct, regular participation but it became more and more clear that the opportunity to get that questionably useful license was going to slip away, perhaps forever, being a low priority part of these preparations.

 

During the weekend of February 8, 1997, we planned a long-version hike.  Viann dropped us off at the I-210 La Tuna Canyon exit where a fire road up into the hills south of the freeway was easily accessible.  We synchronized watches and radios and set out on another under-planned and under-estimated adventure.

 

The paved road went about half a mile then turned right, narrowed, and began a steep grade.  At an apiary another half mile up, the road changed to gravel and remained that way for the rest of the way, whichever side path one might choose.

 

This was another route I'd gone on the Schwinn Varsity on a Sunday afternoon some years before.  After the excruciation of ascending to the top, the ride down to the south-southeast had been mostly spent with one foot dragging the gravel and sand of the road and both hands riding the brakes with barely any control of the wheels which would alternate between bouncing off rocks and sinking into deep sand pits.  Walking was a better approach to this road than a street bike, although many mountain bikers passed us going either way, the ones going up mostly walking along with us.

 

At lunch time we stopped in a little grassy recess in the uphill side of the embankment, checked in with home and had our sandwiches, bananas and grape juice boxes.

 

Back on the road, we played tortoise and hare with one small group of mountain bikers for the last several hundred yards to the top.  They would pass us pedaling, then we would pass them walking.  One of the bikes looked new, hardly used.  It was well decked out with accessories but the rider didn't look very impressed with them at this point in his climb.

 

People who had ascended from various sides were riding and walking around the radio site at the top.  One group went along the summit road to the west and returned in half an hour having found a dead-end about a mile away.  We proceeded east toward upper Glendale.  One rest stop had a park bench facing south, the opposite side of the ridge from our approach, viewing Glendale and Los Angeles beyond.  We stopped for fifteen minutes and looked, snacking and chatting with fellow hikers headed in the opposite direction.  It looked as if the trail was much more accessible from the other side.  This had never occurred to me before

 

Our progress down the gentle slope took several hours.  It seemed to me that we were headed east toward home, but the direction was actually east-southeast and was not actually going to get very close to home at all.  There were opportunities to exit and descend down trails of various quality to the north, but we skipped them all, passing radio sites and finally getting to a part of the road that was nestled between ridges and not visible from outside.

 

We started into the ham radio discussion mentioned above.  Soon we were hearing the noises of diesels and wondering what was going on up ahead.  I theorized grading and explained to Viannah how gravel roads needed to be graded occasionally to even out the ruts and keep them serviceable.  Around a bend, the culprit came into view.  It was in fact an earthmover but it was being used to move fallen trees from the road.  A crew was cutting up the wood to make it more manageable but most of it was being pushed off to the side.  We were waved by just as if we were a car at a construction detour.

 

After more twists and turns, the road passed through a pleasant green meadow with running water and healthy looking trees before coming to a vehicle gate.  After a rest, we were back on city streets, still descending.  It was time to figure out how to get home, but there weren't many choices for routes.  We went the only way we could, down and down, until we came to a Country Club which blocked our route as far as we could see both left and right.  We turned left, north, and continued up the street.  It was time to make a pick up call.  Being out of site of the repeater that Viann and I usually used, I switched to the auto-patch (automatic telephone connect) repeater and called the house.  We arranged a simplex (not repeated) frequency, a time, and an estimated place.  The GPS said over 3 kilometers to the house still.

 

Once again we were out walking in the dusk, something that had never been part of the plan.  One block went uphill, Viannah complained and asked if we couldn't just wait there.  Even though it was sometimes non-sensical, I would nearly always rather keep moving than just sit and wait anywhere.  In any case, I didn't want to give the appearance of being derelict in this upscale neighborhood at this time of day.  True, having my obviously pre-teen daughter and some high-tech gadgets in my hands helped with that, but backpacks and a worn out look neutralized part of the positive image.

 

In at least six more blocks we reached Montrose Ave., which runs north along the substantial wash at the south end of the community.  By now we were in direct radio contact and were picked up within fifteen minutes, just as it was getting too dark to be fun anymore.  We were still at least two walking miles from home at this point.  A stroll all the way back to the house, which had been the original intent, would have been quite an uphill chore.

 

The next day I called a family meeting to decide once again whether or not to go through with our plan and thereby to initiate final training and final preparations.  It was time for me to get serious about making reservations, getting permits, pulling together equipment and generally getting ready for a major undertaking that was really going to happen.

 

The purpose of the family meeting was to re-establish consensus in support of the main adventure and to set our face toward it.  As dinner concluded, I started raising the questions.

 

"Are we really going to do this?"

 

"Of course, why would I think otherwise?" was the immediate reply from everybody else.

 

We discussed dates.  How about Spring Break?  The material from the Park Service indicated that it would be quite cold on the North Rim in April.  Depending on the snow, it might not yet even be open to the public.  This would not leave much time for training either.  How about July or August?  Too hot?  Flash flood season?  It was decided to go soon after school was out, leaving one week after the last day to decompress, pack, take care of last minute chores, and leave for the actual trip in a deliberate, leisurely fashion.  Also it was decided that, for fiscal and scheduling reasons, this single week would be the only vacation for this summer.

 

How about training?  We were all busy.  There were Children's Choir and Girl Scout activities.  Viann replied, "Just determine what you have to do and compete with everything else for Saturdays.  It won't always be easy and won't always work out, but just try to do what you have to do and you will do what you do."  This was an echo from the past.

 

"How about the basic plan?"

 

"What about it?" Viann wanted to know.

 

"Well, how many days do we want to take," I had in mind two, one down and one up, "and do we want to try to stay in the hotel at the bottom?"

 

It was decided that we would try to get along with day packs and snacks and stay in the hotel at the bottom, possibly getting meals there too.  I had an action item to figure out what this would cost and what was possible.

 

Viann insisted, "This is a once in a lifetime trip, you need to spend at least one day at the bottom and enjoy the view."

 

Suddenly my notion of how long I'd be going without a bath expanded by fifty percent.  But she was right and also an unhurried day at the bottom would give us an opportunity (not in twilight) to explore and/or recover.  And, this expanded plan fit into my notion of day on - day off that I was trying to adopt following the last vacation that had been too rushed in every respect.  So it was decided that we would spend three days on the hike.  We got out our calendars and started figuring out what the actual dates and schedule would be.

 

Not wanting to be rushed, I dictated that we would leave early on Saturday, not Friday evening and working forward from there, we would spend an off day Sunday at the North Rim campground then leave as early as possible Monday morning to hike in.  Tuesday would be spent at the bottom.  We would hike out Wednesday; spend Thursday recuperating at the South Rim campground and then drive home Friday.  This would amount to seven full days.  Well, it might not work that way, what about reservations?  It would be possible to move everything later one day, I would just have to make some calls and find out what was available to work around.

 

What about the support team up top?  The main feature of the plan was that Viann, Katherine, and John would make the two hundred mile drive around rims and move the campground while we were walking across.  When should this be?  It really didn't matter, but it seemed to make the most sense to do it on Tuesday, the day we were resting at the bottom.  This meant that for the up top team, it would be one day on and two off, there would be plenty of leisure to do things deliberately, or not.

 

What about training?  I announced, again, that I would like to try to do two hikes per month, that this was minimal, but probably also maximal given our situations.  One of these hikes would be a short day hike, 4-5 miles, the other would be more involved, perhaps 10-12 miles and maybe even longer with an overnight stay somewhere.  The one backpacking test would be towards the end of training and would give us an intermediate goal to work towards in terms of equipment and abilities.

 

"Yes, yes, whatever," was the tenor of the response to all my hand wringing about detail.  Still, the approach was quite watered down compared to the original plans of only half a year previous.

 

And so, with newly stated resolve and an outline of the schedule, I went off with a list of phone calls to make and other tasks, like making lists of what we would need for really carrying this venture out.  The next few weeks would be revealing about the level of planning really required.

 

Reservations

 

A big trip to a popular destination like the Grand Canyon requires real advance planning.  With New Year's 1997 behind us, and the revised master plan in hand, it was time to regroup and get these formalities going.

 

As with all major efforts, as this one drew nearer, the realities of it started to become less fantastic imaginations and more terrifying realities.  We were not really big backpackers; maybe the best thing would be to do it as day hikes.  There was a hotel at the bottom, Phantom Ranch, right?  Maybe we could stay there and carry nothing but food on our backs and canteens.  I called the reservations number, the agent looked to see what was available.  No, nothing at the ranch for the days we had in mind.  Thinking quickly, I checked days later in that week.  No, nothing there either.  All the deciding about dates had already been done.  The agent suggested that I should call and try again.  A few days later I did.  I waited while a new agent checked the reservations list.  Nothing.  How about August?  No, nothing in July or August, the only thing they had available was a few days in February (next month!) and a few in December (nearly next year!).

 

"What is the deal here?"  I wondered out loud, pondering to myself why it took so much to pry this information out of them.

 

"Reservations are opened on a month by month basis, eleven months ahead of time.  The phones are jammed for the first few working hours of the first day of the month after which all of the times are taken."

 

This trip would have to have been planned last June and reserved last July 1st to have a chance at a Phantom Ranch room for these dates.  Viann had told me so in so many words.

 

Thinking quickly again, I realized that there would be no cancellations between now and the dates in question.  Even as people's plans changed, these precious slots they held would remain in their possession until the last minute and even then they might be handed to friends or just forfeited rather than turned in.  We could travel to the Grand Canyon with the strategy to call the reservation line during the last two or three days before the descent to see if any opened rooms up late.  By then, we would have done a lot of backpacking preparation and training and might just as well go for it.

 

"How about ranch meal seating on any of those days?"  I asked.

 

Yes, there were some on Monday dinner, Tuesday breakfast and lunch.

 

"What about Tuesday evening and Wednesday breakfast and lunch?"  I did not want to have an arrival deadline on the day of the hike down.  It would be most useful to have our meals made for us on the day of departure.  We would have all day Tuesday to cook for ourselves.  I did not want to hike down on a Sunday, probably a much more crowded day.

 

No, there were none then.  Only Monday evening and Tuesday.

 

Hmmmm.  OK, I would take them, two of each meal, paid by credit card in advance.

 

"Be sure and call a day or two beforehand to confirm this reservation."

 

"What?  I paid didn't I....”?

 

So, one basic decision was made by lack of sufficient advanced planning, that we would not be sleeping at Phantom Ranch while at the bottom.  This meant using the campgrounds and that meant obtaining a Back Country Permit.  I went off to search through my materials from prior visits for information on how to obtain such a permit.  It wasn't obvious in any of the park publications.  A careful re-reading of one of the weekly newspapers yielded some directions and phone numbers.

 

This procedure was more forgiving of late planning.  Reservations were only taken up to four months in advance.  Our first opportunity (and perhaps last) would be February 1.  I carefully prepared the form for our intended itinerary, two nights at Bright Angel Campground and hike out on the third day.  This was faxed in on the morning of February 1.  There was nothing more to do but sit and wait.

 

After about three weeks, a reply arrived.  The rules and fees had changed.  Since we might not have known about this, our reservation, which was available, was being held in lieu of payment of the new fees of $36, a $20 permit plus $4 per camper per night.  They would only wait a few days for a return fax of a credit card number, which I did as soon as possible.  After another three or four weeks, the permit arrived in the mail, filled out according to our plan.  No change was now possible, it said.  There was a large set of rules on the back, fourteen different ones, and a place for the trip leader to sign at the bottom.  I could sign right now but it seemed like the best approach would be to have a solemn, public reading of the rules during the last week before the trip after which I would then sign it and make it all official.

 

With these details in the bag we could now obtain camping reservations for the rims.  I called Destinet, the company that handled all such arrangements for the park service and in short order we had all the reservations we needed and were into the credit card for about another hundred dollars.  As the all-important permits and confirmation forms arrived in the mail they went into the Grand Canyon envelope for safekeeping until the time of the trip arrived.

 

Our fate was sealed.  The decision had been made not to play the cancellation game, we would backpack and therefore train to backpack down and back up.  We would have prepared meals on the bottom on the days that we didn't want them, but it would help anyway by reducing the amount of food to be carried.  We would be camping.  That meant a tent, pads, and sheets.

 

The literature warned about rain, but it seemed too much to bring an umbrella.  Rains were usually later in the year and I didn't mind getting wet, particularly in such a hot climate.  The literature warned mostly about heat and the dangers of physical exertion in the heat.  Being the leader of the trip, it was my lot to worry about this.  A participant could just trust that the leader knew what he was doing, but it was my job now to take the warnings about heat seriously.  We would wear hats and cooling scarves or bands.  We would take plenty of water and try to rest in the shade.  I had grown up in the heat of Texas and knew where my limits were, at least where they had been when I was in my twenties when living there.  Viannah had only been through a handful of 'hundred plus' days in her life.  Heat was something to worry about and it was going to be hard to simulate heat training in Southern California.

 

These issues would figure into our preparations.  Meanwhile, we had a small stack of papers in our hand that meant we were committed, at least to over a hundred dollars, to making the trek.  And we were permitted, within the constraints of these papers, to do what very few other Grand Canyon visitors seriously attempt, to descend to the bottom and later return safely to the rim, on foot.

 

Lent

 

Ash Wednesday 1997 was February 19.  I was asked to play piano for the church's service that evening in the cozy Fireside Lounge there and, when a soloist turned up unavailable, to sing as well.  I found the service meaningful and moving nonetheless.  We were reminded of our unworthiness and our need for repentance, but also about grace.  We wrote some of our sins on pieces of paper and burned them, and were then ritually anointed with the ashes, "from ashes to new life."

 

Doing anything like this on Wednesday was difficult.  Viann nearly always worked until nine or later so the children were all with me.  Arrangements were made for John.  Viannah and Katherine went with me to the service.  On the way home I thought about fasting during lent.  There are various degrees of fasting practiced in the Christian world.  The Catholics do it regularly but with restrictions so watered down that the potential for pain is barely noticeable.  In fact it can be practiced in such a way that it is barely even inconvenient, more of a meal planning strategy really.  This is more than most Protestants do however, namely, nothing, being supposedly under some different sort of contract with or emphasis from God.

 

I had tried fasting before, sometimes 24 hour water-only fasts.  I'd eat early one evening then late the next.  At various points during the day I would really be dragging, gulping at water until I was sick of it.  Was it a spiritual experience?  Well, in part, yes.  I'd heard of people using clear juice to keep going, still abstaining from all solid food.  Never having tried this, it seemed attractive; I decided to do it once a week until Easter.  Which day?  Not on the weekend, including Friday, too disruptive to other people.  Not on Tuesday, Children's Choir night.  Not on Wednesday, the night I had to feed everybody myself.  Thursday it was.  That meant starting tomorrow.  I snacked around more than usual upon arriving home.  The next morning I was on.

 

I started with a glass of fruit juice then went to work.  Around ten I had a Dr. Pepper.  This would be a "Dr. Pepper Fast."  Around noon I went to the cafeteria and bought a big bottle of juice, a different flavor each week.  Mid afternoon there was another Dr. Pepper, then at home another glass of juice for the evening.  In all it was about an 800 calorie day and much better than water-only fasting.  There were low points, but I was able to function normally, turning down snacks and food as they came along.  In the evening, one is supposed to be winding down anyway; the next morning when I got up I could eat again!

 

Was it a spiritual experience?  Did I spend all that time I wasn't eating meditating and praying?  Was I more acutely aware of my faith through the day?  Well, yes, in part.

 

I wondered if I would be able to ride the bike or do training hikes on these days and was surprised to learn that not only could I do them but they helped!  One Thursday I drove the car to work.  That one day was the worst of all.  The following Thursday, I rode the bike and was surprised to feel better all day, not more drained.  Reserves and higher blood flow kicking in, I supposed.  How wrong our assumptions about how things like how our bodies work can be at times.

 

Best of all, my weight held constant, I didn't worry about overeating and could worry less about chronic stomach pains on Thursdays.

 

The day after the first fast, Viann and I went on a wonderful retreat with our friends Joan Reeve and Scott Owens, leaving all the kids with Mica Murrillo at our house.  Upon our return, the race was on, the next holidays would be in connection with the Great Grand Canyon trip itself.

 

Viannah went on a school trip to Wrightwood February 3.  On March 7, I took Katherine to Santa Clara to do research for her fourth grade California mission project.  The big adventure with her was now starting as well.

 

The Wreck of the Dominator

 

 

Each year, the Los Angeles Chapter of the Choral Conductors Guild has a Children's Choir Festival.  This amounts to a Saturday morning rehearsal and Sunday afternoon performance at some host church.  The individual choirs have rehearsed the music for several weeks prior.  The 39th annual festival was rehearsed March 15 at San Marino Presbyterian and it was also time again for another training hike.  One place that I had wanted to try out was along the beach of the western end of Palos Verdes, a place that I had visited and scoped out with John on a rained-out TRW Swapmeet weekend in January.  I had learned of the trail from a copy of John McKinney's California Coastal Trails, given us upon our move here by a friend at Champion's Covenant Church in Houston, Paul Lessard.

 

An arrangement was made that I would pick up Viannah direct from the rehearsal and proceed to the hike by way of lunch somewhere on the southwest side.  The weather was fair and sunny.  At the end of the rehearsal, parts for the upcoming Children's Choir musical, "So Long Joe," were passed out.  Viannah would play the role of Pharaoh.  This was a major part.  (But not everybody could be Joseph, after all.)

 

We drove in relative quiet to a sandwich shop somewhere in Torrance where we ate among cell phones and upscale apartment dwellers.  After lunch it was on to the indicated school parking lot for the beginning of the hike, arriving around 2 p.m.   I used my still relatively new toy, the Magellan 2000 GPS receiver, to get a fix on the car's parking place.  We were in the parking lot of a school and recreation center.  Clearly people came here for sightseeing and hiking, others like us, and local joggers were getting into or out of cars too.

 

The guidebook said that the first mile or more of this beach was like walking on broken bowling balls.  I had trouble imagining this until we were down in it.  The waterfront was made entirely of broken rocks about bowling ball size.  Hopping along on these was fun at first.  After a couple hundred yards it was becoming a chore, and this was going to go on for over a mile.  Our shoes were not good for this, I was wearing my heavy-duty day shoes and Viannah had normal utility tennis shoes.  We would need better walking equipment.  Occasionally there would be patches of sandy trail in a stand of grass on a partial ledge, but not very often and hardly worth going out of the way to use.  We proceeded on broken bowling balls for over an hour, then the beach turned left and there were rocks to climb through and around.

 

The cliff at this point was less vertical and contained many dirt trails.  In fact a wide dirt shelf separated the rocky shore from the cliff.  People were fishing.  A family with small children was setting up for a picnic.  Three college girls were claiming one rock as a place to sit and chat and snack for the afternoon.  We saw a seal in the protected cove, and then he ducked under and was gone.  The trail was easier; we rested and then went on where the trail turned back to the right, more southerly.  My sense of direction and geography at this end of Palos Verdes was skewed, I thought we should be able to see Catalina Island from here, but we could not yet see either that or the Point Vincente Lighthouse which I hoped might be today's destination.  Further, I couldn't reach the Catalina repeater on the radio, though I could reach another on Castro Peak to the west at a stretch.

 

We marched along on more broken bowling balls.  The light surf ran up on broken bowling balls that extended two or three dozen yards to the base of the earthen cliff.  On top of the cliff beginning here were the backs of multi-million dollar estates.  There was no access to the top.

 

After a time we rounded another point, each one had its own name in the guidebook, and we could finally see the lighthouse.  It was a long way off.  We had started late and were already tired from the bowling ball hopping.  My fantasy that we might get to the lighthouse, ascend, and return to the car on the road, began to fade fast with the waning afternoon.

 

I fired up GPS and let it run for a while only to see what time it was.  Looking ahead I estimated the time to the next turn in the beach.  No telling what would be after that, but it would be late afternoon already by the time we reached that point.  There was no map in the guidebook, but the text quoted many miles to the lighthouse.  And then there would be the trip back, long by land or by sea.

 

On the cliff tops a hundred or more feet above were fences and people's back yards.  The regular pattern was broken in one place by a large concrete drainage surrounding a pipe.  The drainage reached bottom at concrete structures.  Viannah, tired, was tempted to explore or rest.  We carried on.

 

We were beginning to pass wreckage of a ship along the trail.  Big room sized pieces were partly buried in sand and rock.  It was all half rust, yellows and reds, browns and blacks.  One big piece seemed to be a post dividing four rooms, all of which were torn open or rusted away.  I tried to imagine what part of the ship this was from my experience on Sproul at Scripp's Oceanographic Institute but could not.  I carefully climbed in and around.  Viannah rested outside.

 

The guidebook told about the wreck of the Dominator, how it had become caught on the rocks in a storm and gone down.  To our left we could see a diver, perhaps exploring offshore portions of the wreckage.

 

In a few minutes we continued.  The sun was behind a cloud in the west.  We still could not see Catalina; the lighthouse was out of view again.  Our feet hurt.  It was time for an extended rest stop.  A major portion of the Dominator hull, it appeared to be the bow, stuck out of the sand right on the point.  We fashioned a place to sit and got out our snack.  After a warm day of clear sunshine, it was getting chilly and breezy, the sun still behind thin clouds in the west.  We moved a little to have a better windbreak.  GPS said that it was 4:30 p.m. local.  I ruminated about the fate of vessels with such imposing names:  Dominator, Titanic, Challenger....  I mumbled a little out loud, but the thoughts were not coherent enough for conversation.

 

Behind us, northeast, was an un-scalable cliff.  It was made of some rocks but mostly dirt grown up with weeds and grasses.  Even if one had the skill to scale the near-vertical slope, the ground wouldn't support good holds.

 

Viewing counter-clockwise was the wreck strewn beach that we had come up, then the water, developing a slight chop.  I couldn't see if the diver was still out there.  Further around, to the south, was more water but still no island.  The land to the south supported the lighthouse.  We could see that it was illuminated and counted seconds between flashes, about thirty each.  To the east on the beach ahead, maybe half a mile more, was a stairway leading to the top.  Near the bottom were porches, furnishings and improvements.  Further on, maybe two miles more, was another beach with a cliff featuring trails, possibly another way up.  Where we were here was not well accessible from the top.  That might explain the lack of other hikers.

 

Viannah and I talked this over.  She was able but not very willing to go forward some more.

 

"Isn't it about time to go back, dad."

 

If she had my sense of time and daylight, she would have said this about an hour ago.  In fact, maybe she had, but I dismissed it as low level whining.  We had an hour, maybe ninety minutes before sunset, and another half hour of light after that, all too short a time to return the way we came, and it would be boring, against my 'don't repeat a path' policy anyway.  So I thought.  To make the return trip in about half the time, I had been counting on getting to the roads and sidewalks up top.  There was no obvious way from here.

 

"We could go up those stairs," Viannah suggested.

 

"Yes, maybe," I couldn't tell much from here, but it did look like just what was needed.  Given the time, it was clear that going any further towards the lighthouse was now out of the question, even if we could move really fast, which we couldn't.  "OK, let's try that," I said getting up.  Viannah stayed put.  "We'll get up to the road and the walk back will be much easier and faster.  We may get back to the car about sunset, just right."

 

"Maybe we could ride the bus or get a ride in a car."

 

"Oh no, we have to walk everywhere!  Come on, let's go."

 

She started loading her pack and in a few minutes we were stumbling towards the stairs, feeling sore, feet beginning to blister.

 

It took ten or fifteen minutes to reach the stairs, but well before we arrived, a large No Trespassing sign was easy to read.  Now I was starting to worry.  The improvements at the bottom were low value, not very attractive.  Cheap, broken lawn furniture, concrete and bricks.  Somebody had done some gardening.  The last flight of stairs was pulled up to help reinforce the No Trespassing concept.  I studied the mechanics of it all.  We could certainly climb to the first accessible portion of the stairs and go up anyway, but what would we find there?  A locked gate?  A security system?  Armed estate guards?  Pit Bulls?  A very annoyed, well-to-do homeowner calling the police on his cell phone?  Or maybe we would come easily up into somebody's yard but then have no way out to the public street.  Clearly we would have to follow some property line out and that property line probably wouldn't be a maintained path.  It would probably be a fence between two grouchy, well-to-do residents both calling the police on their cell phones while their large, vicious pit bulls barked around our ankles or worse.  If I were by myself, I might try to sneak around.  The last time I had done something like that was when I was in my twenties.  Back when I could still credibly claim stupidity or ignorance.  Not now, and anyway, sneaking around was not something I wanted to (or needed to) teach to or reinforce with my daughter.  (Anyway, if I were by myself I would probably trot forward and drag myself onto the lighthouse grounds at nine p.m.!)

 

This wouldn't do.  Viannah danced around on one of the brick walls, not resting.  There appeared to be other stairways further up the beach, but it was unlikely that any of them would be public or any different from this one here.  There was that area that looked like it might have trail access to the roads, but we would never reach that before dark.  It looked like the only sane way out was to go back the way we came and hope to find some obvious shortcut, one that we hadn't seen on the way, before it got too dark.

 

We started back.  The sun and wind were in our faces.  We would revisit the whole beached wreck of the Dominator.  We passed the bow and turned north.  I heard what sounded like rocks falling and scanned the cliff for a slide, or a hiker, or an animal, any of which might suggest a way up.  Someone on the other side of a fence on top was throwing rocks at us!  It looked like a teenage boy, but it was hard to tell from this distance.  I imagined that he seemed sour that we were invading his privacy, but there was really no way to determine what was going on except the rocks clinking in the gravel short of us and the manner in which he threw them.  He had little chance of hitting us.  Despite the height advantage he didn't seem to have the range.  We continued, passing other hikers who were noticing the same un-neighborly treatment.  Soon we were out of sight.

 

We weren't talking much anymore.  There is a time in a close relationship, sometimes, for example, after a long day together, when there is not much more to be said for the time being.  Viannah was tired.  I was concerned.  I scanned ahead and didn't see much of promise within an hour's walk.  I scanned my memories of the afternoon and didn't find any hope there either.  We were approaching the big concrete drainage.  It had taken us 45 minutes to get back this far and the sun would set in only fifteen or twenty more.

 

This looked like a natural wrinkle in the cliff line that had been reinforced and developed as the outlet for the nearby street drains.  There was no indication excepting the 40-45 degree slope that it wouldn't be permissible to go up this way.  The concrete pipe and surrounding erosion-preventing concrete were plenty rough to support us on our shoes.  It would be a workout but not an impossible one, or particularly dangerous if we were careful about technique and footing.  There were no fences, signs, ditches, or other hindrances to people on the shore who wanted to climb out.  A public drainage wouldn't end up in somebody's fenced backyard.  Something in the back of my mind nagged that this wasn't probably the best approach to our dilemma.  Something else insisted that this was perhaps the only way out, even if it was a poor, risky choice.

 

"Let's go out up this pipe."

 

"You've got to be kidding, dad."

 

"No, I think we can do it if we take it easy and be careful.  Here, let me wear the backpack."  We had taken turns carrying it by its top strap with our hands; it was hot to wear on one's back, and uncomfortable for an extended time.  I took the backpack, put it on, and pulled it up snug.  We started up towards the base of the pipe.

 

On close inspection, the easiest ascent was to climb up the middle of the pipe itself.  It must be ten or twelve feet in diameter, large enough to walk up on the inside, but the exit end was grated off and, in any case, there was no telling where one would come out.  This was not Les Miserables; we were not running from the law, or a riot.  At least not yet.

 

I had Viannah go first.  She seemed to take the climb easily.  I stayed three or four steps behind, as my dad had often done for me in years past, getting winded fairly quickly.  I don't remember dad ever acting winded after such a climb.  Well, maybe I did.  Seems like we used to always stop, sit on a rock and huff at the top.  We were about a third of the way up, no problems yet, but now it was a long way down, for anyone unwise enough to be looking.

 

The cleavage in the cliff got narrow.  We were surrounded on both sides.  The pipe continued directly up at its constant angle.  We could not yet see what was at the top.  I hoped for the best:  a maintained park strolling trail winding through the grass that grew right out of our current path.  I planned for the worst:  an angry homeowner with dogs and guns waiting, or the police, or a concrete wall forty feet high.  We stopped for a rest, standing in place, shifting around a little.  The only good traction was on shoes and occasional palms; the seat of our pants would probably be too slippery.  About half of the climb left, we continued.  The gap in the draw started to widen.  There was some grass over the edge ahead.  An eroded canyon stretched off to the left; there was some sort of building in it, perhaps a pump house.

 

We reached the top, a grassy expanse about the size of one large undeveloped lot between two large developed lots.  The house on the right was fenced in, close.  The house to the left was out of sight in the shrubbery.  Across the grassy expanse were a six-foot fence, a locked vehicle-sized gate, and a large sign.  On our side it "didn't say nothin’,'" I thought to myself, remembering the verse from Woody Guthrie, “This Land is Your Land”.  A hundred feet beyond was the street, a busy three-way intersection.  I didn't want to be observed climbing over the fence, but there was always a car or service van or truck in sight from some direction.  Some of the drivers stared at us with concerned looks.  Most just ignored us.

 

I climbed up and dropped the backpack over to the other side.  No going back now.  We couldn't hear the surf anymore.  The sun was down; it was starting to get dark.  In the absence of privacy to climb over, I just scanned for official looking vehicles.  Seeing none, I helped Viannah up and over, and then started up myself.  I used to be a lot better at this, these days I worried about tearing my clothes or losing my balance, either of which would be a big deal once back home.  I guess I was timid after I had climbed a wood fence one day as a cable TV installer sixteen years ago, got my foot caught in the top, broke off a board and fell five feet flat on my back in the grass, knocking my wind out for a good five minutes.  No such disaster happened here.  We were both over.  All moving vehicles and walking pedestrians were now out of sight.

 

We headed up the road to the north.  Development stopped after one house, the cliff top must not be suitable for building.  There were walking trails through the grass, some looked like they went down some distance.  I didn't remember seeing anything like this leading up from the bottom.  Perhaps they didn't go far.  This was not the time for exploring; it was the time for getting back to the car before dark.  It was an easy walk beside the curb.  I accelerated the pace.

 

After a while, the road went straight while the cliff turned west toward the beach where we had inferred there might be access we didn't otherwise know about.  There was a dead end road; a man was parked there watching the sunset.  Beyond were more houses.  Did the trails come up into this development?  It was too dark to tell much now.  We were able to talk again.  We discussed choir and city busses and family.  The road joined a busy thoroughfare.  We walked on the left side.  There wasn't much space.  I had Viannah go first.  Cars and trucks sped by in the gathering darkness; some seemed surprised at people walking along the road.  I was nervous again; we were not dressed to be on a vehicle road in the dark.

 

We had not driven here, nothing looked familiar, either behind or in front.  The road wound through another busy intersection and down into a wooded development.  Now it was really dark, everyone had their lights on.  We had only a small flashlight but no one thought to get it out.  At least we had a sidewalk now.  There was too much noise, too much dark, too much concern for safety, too much separation for non-essential talking now.  Vehicles zoomed by.  It was my plan that we would walk up to the intersection where we had turned to go down and park by the school.  Nothing like that was in sight yet, 'maybe around that next corner a quarter mile away,' I thought, 'maybe not.'  Then I thought about using GPS.  We had marked our position on leaving; I could set it to direct us back to the car.  If we walked fast enough, three or four miles per hour, it would be able to judge our direction and even tell us which way to go without the need for a compass, something else we had with us but nobody thought to get out.

 

In a few minutes the darkness was complete.  I was using the display light on the GPS receiver.  It was still struggling to get enough satellite tracks to determine anything.  It was close to 7:30.  Finally it locked up.  The car was 0.3 kilometers away directly to the left!  What a surprise!  I had no idea how far we were away, but would have thought it was straight ahead and perhaps a mile at least.  I also knew that military corruptions to the GPS signals could cause bearings at such close range to be off.  Anything under half a kilometer I wouldn't trust.  Still, there was a break in the hedges and a sidewalk that went straight down a lighted path in the direction indicated.  In a second I decided to give it a try.  Bracing for nocturnal troubles with traffic and residents, we took the left and proceeded down the sidewalk, between houses, down stairs, across a couple of streets, and then, sure enough, after about three hundred yards that is, about 0.3 kilometers, there it was, right ahead of us.  Well, a little to the right but surely in sight.  The car!  We were saved!

 

At ten until eight, I started the car and we drove away, relaxing and nursing our tired legs, sore backs and chafed feet.  It was yet a 45-minute drive home and we hadn't had any supper.  This was an unfamiliar territory and it was dark, there was no time to safely fool with the radio, all of the red lights were too short.  We agreed to look for a McDonald's or equivalent.  We tried getting out the map to figure out where we were and how to get to some freeway.  Then, on the left we spotted a McDonald's.  We pulled into the parking lot, made an autopatch home to report in, and studied the map.  Viannah was impatient both for the food and for the rest room.  We got cokes and fries, did our business, and sped off in the dark for home.

 

Mt. Luckens

 

That adventure on the beach had been one of the 'short' hikes in the rotation.  Now it was time for a long one.  About the only direction we hadn't gone from the house was northwest, towards Mt. Luckens.  There was a radio site up there that our friend from church, Glen Smith claimed to have hiked to some years ago.  I knew it had to be relatively easy to reach since utility trucks would need to be going up and down regularly and at some point in the past, even cement mixers must have made the trip.

 

I proposed a whopper for March 22, to leave from the house, hike to and past the elementary school, Palm Crest, then up the trail to the junction with Lucken's road, where we had turned and come down last year, and from there up to the radio site and back down the other side into Tujunga.  I studied the map all week, it looked like three or four miles straight distance, probably twice that with winding and switchbacks, and a little for leaving from the house rather than the school, the nearest place accessible by car.  This would be fine for a long trip; half would be up, maybe one mile per hour, and the other half down, at two miles per hour.  Including snack and pickup that came to six hours max.  We would want to leave early so as to get back down in time for a late lunch.  The pickup would be arranged by radio.  I ignored a piece of conflicting information that I had:  there was a sign at the Highway 2 Fire Station end of this trail that said "Tujunga 12 miles."  I also ignored that it had to be at least as far from our house as it was from that fire station.

 

Viann reviewed the plan and, with no study at all said, "It's going to take a lot longer than that, I hope you're not up there in the dark."

 

Hmppf!

 

The intention was to leave at eight, but Viannah is not an early riser and I'm not much of an early pusher.  We walked away from the house at 9:20.  Well, we'd still be home mid-afternoon.

 

At 9:50 we passed Palm Crest and kept walking.  As we paced up the fire road, Viannah would ask about things and I would tell her everything I could verbally about them.  'Basic Information Training,' my duty as a father.  I described the workings of a CD player and it's improvements over its audio reproduction predecessors.  We walked through from the magnets in microphones to electrical signals on twisted pairs to analog to digital converters, sampling, aliasing, laser recording on plastic media, laser reading, digital to analog converters, aliasing filters, and the magnets in speakers.  She listened attentively, somewhat disinterested.

 

Viannah told me about school and her friends and related in some detail books she had read and movies she had seen.  I listened attentively, trying to ask something once in a while, trying to suppress or at least hide my own degree of disinterest.

 

My approach to hiking is like everything else, plan and structure:  fifty minutes on and ten off.  These numerical guides would help keep me from relying too much on my feelings, which might lead to being too lazy or too heroic.  With a schedule to keep I would always ratchet expectations up if I thought I could, try to beat my own system and get there early.  Rarely would I slack off.

 

Viannah lacked all this specialized, mathematically based training.  About half way up, she started stopping very frequently.  The first time, I was sensitive and silently called an unscheduled rest stop.  We took some water, snacked a little.  She rolled small rocks down the drop from the edge of the road.  In five minutes we got going again.  After a hundred feet, she was stopped on the edge kicking little piles of gravel off again.  Being in charge, I indicated that we should keep moving.  I marched slowly to the next turn in the road and waited.  It was as if she was going to push off the whole shoulder grade down the hill.  I went back and explained that this wasn't a good thing to do, there might be people or animals below and all this rock motion was going to promote erosion.

 

We walked for another hundred yards and it started again.  I went up to yet the next bend in the road and sat down.  This was a problem.  True, one of the purposes for these training hikes was to work out these bugs, to learn to travel together, to keep going without getting so obsessed that we missed what was there to see and experience, but first in my mind would be to keep going, we were burning daylight!

 

I was thinking about getting stern, but that was not a good long-term solution.  This was about the only activity in the family that didn't (yet) involve any yelling and it would be nice to keep it that way.  At a loss otherwise, I prayed.

 

"Lord, how are we supposed to get anywhere - every time we start to make progress she stops to roll rocks down the hill."

 

"Yes," was the answer, "reminds me of you and ham radio...."

 

I decided not to say anything just yet, but to go on ahead at my own pace and take a little side trip up to the old LEON survey site we had visited last year.  I went on ahead, only a little worried about being out of sight of Viannah for ten or so minutes.  We had seen nobody on the trail yet and there was no place to go but up or down.  She knew which way we were going.

 

At LEON, I took a short rest and let the GPS receiver get a fix on the site.  From this I checked the time and found distances to some locations in the receiver's memory, like home.  Like points on the La Tuna Canyon trail from that past adventure.

 

We had been separated long enough; I started back down the spur, wondering which way I would go, down to meet her, or up to catch up?  How much progress would she have made?  Maybe none, maybe I would go all the way back to where I had left her and have to figure out what to do then.  I decided to decide when I got to the junction.

 

I rounded the last turn on the way back to the main trail.  There was Viannah approaching it from below, fast.  She was worried, hadn't seen me in ten minutes, and was trying to catch up.  She didn't want to admit this, though.  Not wanting to force her hand, I said, "This is the wrong way," implying that I'd tried that route and found a dead end, which was true.  We went up hill together, now at a reasonable pace.  Later in the day, when she (and I too) realized how far we were going, she expressed a better understanding of the need to burn miles during the daylight.  There is a time for walking and a time for resting.

 

This piece of road had not been maintained since last year when we had been on it.  Trees blown down in the big January wind storm lay across it, rock slides barely left any room for a hiker, much less a mountain bike.  It was impassable by vehicle.  We were passed by a couple of mountain bikes on the way up, and some more zooming down.

 

And so we arrived at the intersection with the Luckens road and turned left, onto territory where we had not been before.  The climb was immediately gentler, the road much improved, the surroundings at once more pleasant.  This smooth dirt stretch ran through groves of trees, ideal for a horse and buggy ride on a Sunday afternoon a hundred years ago.  We talked about this and enjoyed the ambiance but when we stopped, there were insects.

 

For a couple of miles, the road was relatively straight, swapping between the north and south sides of the ridge.  On the south we could see the L. A. basin, mostly smog as usual, but landmarks, like the 210 Freeway and some larger buildings were recognizable in our own little valley.  On the north it was a clear view down into the Tujunga Wash.  This new perspective re-adjusted my map sense of the area once again.  Routes that I had thought ran at right angles on opposite sides of the mountains were really nearly parallel.  How easy it is to be disoriented but still functional when operating down below.

 

At one rest stop I checked in with Viann.

 

"It is already pick up time, where were you?"

 

Our reply, "We're still on the way up, don't do anything until you hear from us again later."

 

"OK."

 

I then took out another radio and made a blind call for my friend John Zitzelberger (W6GL) who happened to be listening for someone else and responded.  He had his kids out at a fair in a park near his home thirty or forty miles away, his wife Donna was at work on her usual weekend shift as a nurse.  Using a little box in the hand to communicate wireless between such diverse situations is the magic of radio.

 

Well, maybe the situations weren't all that diverse.

 

A line of trucks passed us on the way down, their work at the top apparently finished for the day.  We could see the radio site ahead, maybe a mile or a mile and a half.  The road made a U-turn and went uphill the wrong direction.  It then turned again and we could see the top, now further away.  This pattern repeated for an hour.  We could see the top and think we were close, then the road turned away for nearly as long as we had gone forward.  It was all up hill.  This was the hot part of the day.  We had not brought a lunch, thinking we would be picked up in time for at least a late lunch had been a mistake.  We were over packed on snacks and had adequate water though.  We stopped to rest and use some of them. Three more trucks passed.  The first two drivers seemed business like, annoyed that people were in their road, irritated that they were still at work this late on a Saturday.  The last one was friendly, contented, he smiled and waved.

 

The views as we neared the summit were more impressive.  To the south, upper La Crescenta hillside development was over a thousand feet below.  The canyons were steep and narrow; some of the faces must have been 70-80 degrees in slope.  We were above pine trees, the sky above was deeper blue than we were used to seeing from home.  We were getting a little sunburn and a little windburn on our faces.  We would need hats for the future long hikes.

 

Several more path reversals and we walked into the radio site at 3:20 p.m.  This was the top, the middle of the hike.  We had been on the road for six hours.  I hoped that going down would be twice as fast and not as far.  We walked among the buildings, tumble weeds, and fences below row after row of antennas on different levels of mounts and picked a place to sit for an extended rest.  As soon as we were on the site, my GPS receiver signals all went to near zero, still tracking but not very well.  I had interference in every radio that I tried to use.  I checked in with Viann.  She was re-planning the afternoon as it went along to allow for our continuing lateness.

 

Her terse replies had an ‘I told you so' flavor to them.  "So when will you get down?" she asked.

 

"Not before five," I said, thinking wishfully to the last, "plan on five thirty."

 

"OK, let me know."  We were getting low on snacks.

 

I called John again, he was not hard to read, and I was sitting right under one of the repeaters in our connecting path.  The owner of the system was monitoring and heard where I was and came on the air to describe in detail what his building and antennas looked like.  With nine buildings to choose from, we were sitting right under his!  It was impossible to pick out which of the dozen dozen antennas above us were his just from a verbal description.

 

We could see cumulus clouds off to the west.  This was new, it had been clear all day.  John was wishing vicariously that we could stay up here until after dark and see the Hale-Bopp comet.  That might be nice, I thought, with no interest at all in staying up here any longer than necessary, with an increasingly mad wife on the ground below.  My battery started to go out.  I tried to sign with what was left of it, on extra-low power (we were sitting right under the repeater after all).  I had another battery in the backpack but I didn't want to dig for it and besides, I was not up here to talk on radios, but to get acquainted with my daughter.  I put all the techno-stuff in the backpack and we got up to leave.

 

Some mountain bikers were riding around us, eyeing us as if we were crazy to have walked all the way up here.  Different groups headed off downhill, one from the way we'd come, and one to the way we were going.  That was a good sign.  The road went somewhere, at least somewhere a mountain biker would want to go.

 

The descent started immediately in a cut.  We were on the way out!  The road on this side was less well maintained, much more rocky, the gravel coarser.  There must not be much, if any vehicular access from this side.

 

It was now late afternoon.  We were headed downhill to the west, facing into the sun.  Our knees and feet hurt.  We were going to have to have better shoes.  This was going to be about the limit for my flat-bottomed, thin-soled, army-like shoe-boots.  We pounded gravel downward, downward, stopping to rest as often as before, but having covered more distance.  At one switchback, Viannah found a bush to potty in.  This was the first time anybody had needed this all day but was something else to think about in planning those longer hikes.  Water was running low and snacks were mostly gone, but we were doing OK, I was more worried about our feet holding out than anything else.

 

Occasionally we would look up at the radio site and notice it receding as it had approached.  At every turn in the road it seemed close enough to jog right up to, but a little further away, a little more white crystalline in the blue sky.  There were plenty of turns.

 

We encountered an intersecting trail top and a box with brochures in it.  It was the Deukmejian Wilderness Park.  There were some mile-sized hikes from the houses below.  We were closer to the houses once again.  Development went higher up the mountain over here in Tujunga than it did back to the east in La Crescenta.

 

Then the road took a sweep around a knoll.  Viannah promoted erosion by sliding down a shortcut while I walked around.  We could see the valley that must be the end of the trail.  It might be only one more mile!  I checked in on the radio.

 

"It's 5:00, where are you!"

 

"We can nearly see the end."

 

"Call me when you know where I should go."

 

The valley looked idyllic against the low west sun.  We could see people walking on the trail below, probably locals.  They wouldn't be out far.  We were nearly there.  Down some more.  The road turned around a cut and it was wrong way again as far as we could see!  Rats!  We kept going.  After a long, tired walk of depression, the road turned again and we could see the valley again.  We were closer and lower but not enough to restore any optimism about being nearly finished.  Now were we nearly there?  No, after going down and down some more, the road turned again.  'This five or six mile descent must be twelve itself!' I complained and exaggerated to myself.  Now I remembered about the sign at the ranger station.  Yes it probably was twelve total.  Probably more than twelve.  This was, once again, a longer long hike than I had anticipated.

 

Two or three more long reversals and we were in what had appeared to be the final stretch, a nice stroll through trees.  It had looked smoother from above.  We passed cataracts, an improved waterfall on the adjacent stream.  This reminded me of corneal cataracts.  With hope now rebuilding, I was in a didactic mood again, but sore and tired.  We talked about my mother's father and his cataract surgery around age 60 and thick contact lenses that he wore that I remembered from my boyhood.  Last time we had hiked the trail past Palm Crest, we had spoken similarly about my mother's mother and her fight with multiple sclerosis.

 

We were in the shade now.  The sun was not down, but it was in this canyon.  We were shaded from the JPL repeaters too.  I couldn't raise Viann on 224.08 any more, and now we really were near getting picked up.  I switched to the autopatch repeater, 224.70, which, being on Cerro Negro, should have a better view to here.  Trying different spots, I found one that worked and managed to place the call.  We agreed to meet on simplex in half an hour.  She would drive to Tujunga listening using the outdoor antenna on the van and we would hike until we found identifying street names so she could figure out where to go.

 

The stream ran into a flood control basin held back by a thirty-foot high dam.  People were fishing in the pond.  Nobody was catching anything.  This was the nearest fishing hole I had seen to our house.  I made a mental note to bring Katherine here sometime with a rod and reel.

 

Around the pond, through some hiking gates, a short false start up a road toward a hillside house, and we were down in the houses, low-rent horse properties, people living on the frontier between the city and the country.  The road was straight, not well maintained, a 7-8 percent grade down.  We plodded along, feet hurting on concrete.  It was starting to get dark.

 

I made calls on the radio, no response.  We stopped at the first intersection that had street signs, Apperson Ave. and Haines Cyn Ave.  One house at the corner had amateur satellite antennas, probably somebody I had once known in connection with AMSAT.  There was a time when I would have gone up and gotten acquainted, right now I just felt like a homeless man with his daughter.  Viannah sat on a curb and rested.  I made more radio calls without response.  It would be too dark to read soon, I would have to come up with an extended plan if this went on much longer.  We had been waiting at the corner for ten or fifteen minutes.

 

The radio crackled.  Viann was calling me but couldn't hear me reply.  In a few minutes, she tried again and this time we did connect.  I gave her the street names; she used a combination of Thomas Guide, dead reckoning, and driving around to locate us.  Finally she arrived, with the other kids in the car.  All were irritated.  I switched the radio off and we threw our stuff in the car.  It was too dark to read now.  The jolt back to full urban family life hit.  Katy and John were scrapping in a back seat.

 

Viannah had been paying on a piece of jewelry at the Glendale Galleria since Christmas.  Today she had the money to pay it off and take it home and had been looking forward to doing that this afternoon all day.  But now it was pretty late, how late would the store be open?  We rushed home, cleaned up a bit, rushed to the Galleria and arrived at ten before eight, that is, ten before closing time.  There was some trouble with the payoff, but finally we were on the way out of the mall with Viannah's treasure.  We had pizza at the Glendale Numero Uno.  It didn't go too badly for a family outing.  I was tired.  Viannah looked no different than usual.

 

I got in bed intending to journal at 10:05 and fell asleep immediately.

 

Borrowed and Bought

 

Besides being an example of poor time estimation, this last long hike had demonstrated just how poor our equipage for the intended hike was.  Viannah was wearing tennis shoes and my shoes were old, worn, and virtually unpadded.  We both felt this at the end of the day.  We didn't have enough pack capacity either.  It was time to go shopping.

 

The next Saturday, March 29, 1997, we went off to Sport's Chalet, the local, full-retail repository for all sorts of sporting goods, including hiking and camping gear.  We went upstairs to the camping department and looked at backpacking meals.  After much careful study, it looked like most of them required hot water and most of them served four.  This raised the questions of where we would get hot water, 'nowhere,' I thought, and how we might save leftovers.  After some more careful study, we picked out a meal that we thought we would like and planned to use it on the overnight backpacking campout that we planned for the nearby mountains as part of the final phase of the work up.  Maybe in connection with that trip we would discover the secrets of heating water and packing leftovers.

 

We looked a long time for a hat for Viannah that would match my $10 straw hat in functionality and cost.  After looking through the entire selection several times and trying several on for size and look, Viannah picked out a solid gray safari hat with a thin chin cord to hold it on.  We looked at walking sticks, the wood ones were expensive, the light-weight, aircraft aluminum ones with springs for stowage, foam pads on top and rubber on bottom seemed too high tech.  Viannah already had a wood stick she wanted to use.  I was undecided; we moved on.

 

On a salesperson's recommendation we picked out bandannas that contained some water retaining material.  They were supposed to soak your neck and keep you cool.  Viannah chose blue.  I got yellow.

 

I picked out a map book, Southern California in over a hundred grids at a scale of three miles to the inch.  This was supposed to help us plan our remaining training hikes near home... more accurately.

 

I was taking all the warnings about carrying enough water seriously.  We picked out gallon-sized canteens and bought three of them.   Twelve quarts should do us for nearly all day each day of the trip just in case there were no spigots anywhere on the trail.

 

Finally it was time to get hiking boots.  I had good memories of having hiking boots just like my dad's and using them going places together.  I looked forward to this buying of shoes, an unusual activity for me to look forward to.  The help in the shoe department was disinterested in our business.  We made up for this with our own enthusiasm, trying on three or four different styles each.  Finally we ended up with a matching pair, green and tan.  Mine were high top (but not like those old ones from the sixties) and hers seemed medium high top.  Both were supposed to provide ankle support.  Mine were like walking on air!  I was amazed.  My old shoes felt like walking barefooted on concrete compared to this.  We also selected two pair of mid-line hiking socks each, another $40 plus and in that great tradition of shoe buying, decided to wear them out of the store.

 

I had been nervously eyeing the likely bill.  It came to about $362!  In another great tradition, that of American consumerism, I charged it.  We hadn't even priced backpacks, but I expected the low end of what we needed to be around $250.  This was something else to worry about.

 

On the way home, I told Viannah, "Now, we need to wear our boots all the time we can now in order to break them in.  I want you to wear them to school."

 

She did in fact wear them to school once or twice, but they were unsuitable for P. E., she said, and so she stopped wearing them except on actual training hikes.  I started wearing mine to work all the time, doing personal training hikes by walking to work more frequently.

 

My friend Scott Owens had offered a month before to loan me his backpack, the one that he had used many years ago to tour Europe on a shoestring budget.  I had demurred at the time, but now I called him up and asked if the offer was still open.  We reasoned that backpacking might not be our thing and that a full-up backpack would be expensive for just one or two overnight trips.  And, as Scott said with a slight edge of disgust, "I haven't made much use of it lately."  Scott and Joan were about to move, "Return it to the new house, no hurry, I won't have to move it that way," he assured me.

 

The following Monday I was riding my recumbent bike to work, thinking about walking sticks some more and decided that I needed one after all.  I pulled off into Sport's Chalet just as they were opening, went right up to the stick department and picked out the most inexpensive high-tech one they had, in the largest (tallest) size.  No springs, just a pad on the bottom (shaped like a small animal paw for the print it made), and foam grip and a rubber-like knob at top with a short lanyard to hold on with when not using.  There was discussion about using two of them, one in each hand, and having a spikes attachment for rougher walking.  This was beginning to inflate out of hand.  I took the basic model for $21.50 (bad enough), loaded it in a pannier sticking out straight up, and finished the trip to work, hauling it back home the same way that evening.

 

Things were forgotten.  Later that week we made another trip to the store for more food in different types (the whole food thing was still an experiment), a first aid kit, a compact repair kit and a few other items.  My credit card didn't work this time.  Was it overdrawn?  I left my purchases at the checkout and went home for another card.  This was embarrassing, what had happened?  What did this mean for the rest of the trip?  Well, there were plenty more credit cards, but I didn't want to be using more than one at a time.  Maybe just this once....

 

Basic provisions were thus in place.  We planned to carry representative gear and supplies on future hikes and try them out for mass and usefulness.  Now we were ready to start working on those packing lists and the plans for those final, full-dress training missions.

 

Gould Canyon

 

On Sunday, we brought the borrowed backpack home from church.  Late in the afternoon I wanted to try it out.  In the back yard, I picked out two logs that looked like they would fit, then put them in grocery sacks so that they wouldn't chafe the backpack.  Together these weighed a little over forty pounds.  I stacked them end to end in the pack then started lacing up my new air-ride boots.

 

"Viannah, do you want to go on a hike around the block?"  A hike around the block was about a mile and about 150 feet vertically."

 

"No."  She did hiking because I suggested it, not because it was her own thing.  Besides, there was homework or something needing to be done.

 

"Katherine?"

 

"No."

 

"Take John," Viann suggested, "in fact you won't need the backpack, just carry him on your shoulders, he's too little to walk that far."

 

This was the kind of helpful suggestion that struck me instantly as misguided.  John put on his 'hiking boots,' some high top shoes that we had found in the stream at Sequoia National Forest the past summer.  I hitched up the backpack, refusing any help, "I need to be able to do this by myself."  It wasn't typically going to be easy but perhaps I would learn technique with experience and experience has to start somewhere.  We staggered out the door.

 

The weather was cool and overcast.  The walking went well enough at first.  John wasn't too little, but he did vocalize his right-off feelings of tiredness.  These were great shoes.  I walked along trying to get the pack adjusted right.  The load kept shifting, maybe that wouldn't be a problem with real loading.  There were many adjustments, some to tighten underneath, some to pull off of the shoulders, but at the cost of an upper body squeeze.  I kept fiddling with these without getting much additional comfort.

 

Twenty-two miles of this?

 

We rounded the block, walked along a busy Foothill Blvd.  People in passing cars, including a patrolman looked at me like I was high-class homeless.  Did the little boy in tow help dispel the image or reinforce it?  We picked up a dog.  "Shoo!  Scat!  Scram!"  These were my favorite names for dogs.  That way you could call them by name and run them off at the same time.

 

It was only around four, if we made signs like we were hanging out after dark, maybe there would be trouble.  We rounded the corner, back down La Granada, and home.

 

The following Saturday, April 5 was scheduled for a hike.  Remembering Gould Canyon, the branch of horse trail above Green Street that we hadn't taken, we loaded up our logs and snack (food in Viannah's pack) and walked from the house and up to Foothill where Viannah wanted to rest at the bus stop, already!  We did rest briefly, a short chance to get the weight off my back, but at the cost of having to get it back on before proceeding.  Then we headed up the Edison easement, resting again after 200 yards.  This wouldn't do but I tried making conversation about something else.

 

A youth had been electrocuted bungee jumping from a high-tension line recently.  Viannah mentioned this.  We inspected the high-tension tower we were sitting under.  I tried to explain about voltage (tension) and the fact that service could be performed on high-tension wires via helicopter (carefully!) but that you didn't want to get anywhere close to grounded and high voltage at once.  "See those big insulators?"

 

We reached Green Street, crossed Highway 2 and arrived at the well-known horse trail and drainage access, but this time turned left to go up.  In contrast to the vehicle road below, this was single track, suitable mostly for foot traffic.  Shortly, the trail crossed the stream; we waded ten yards in mush.  Our hiking shoes were getting dirty!

 

Horse properties bounded the ravine.  A person working near their barn was a little surprised, or rather off guard, to see us.  Another horse shed looked like a walk-up fast food place.  No one, horse or human was in sight.  We continued up grade and arrived under a highway bridge.  This was Highway 2, a surprise to me, but what else could it be?  The bridge was high.  Someone had climbed to most places up underneath to do graffiti, some Sci-Fi, some in an oriental language.  We rested under the bridge, sipping our water, considering all this.  Viannah told stories of her peers (boys) who might do things like that.

 

The trail was even more narrow above the bridge, sometimes the steep canyon walls barely made room for a stream full of reeds and the trail.  At the next rest stop, on a ledge in the trail, we thought we heard horses.  In this narrow draw, we were going to have to at least get up to let horses by and would probably have to hike off some distance one way or the other to find a place wide enough to pass.  We discussed the need not to spook the horses when they went by then continued waiting, on alert.  No one ever approached.  The sounds eventually faded out.

 

In another few hundred yards, the trail reached a plateau, a place where vehicles could park.  There was a way out here and it looked like the right way to go unless we wanted to risk a full-up climb up Lucken's Connection, something beyond the scope of today's trip, an incline where I wouldn't want to personally raise 40 pounds of logs.  We rested.  I flicked rocks into a culvert and was immediately sorry.  Viannah wanted to play in the culvert for half an hour.

 

"If you feel like walking around, we'll load up and go on," I suggested.

<groan>

 

I checked in with Viann on the radio and we started back towards home on surface streets.  Soon we passed our neighbor Mrs. Smith's parents' house.  Viannah knew about it from having cleaned up a nearby city park as a Girl Scouting project.  We rested on the brick fence at the park while motorists passed and stared.  We ate a little of our food while I felt tired.  How far were we going today?  Six miles?  Four?

 

Plop Plop Plop back down the hills on the streets, in the Edison easement, down La Granada and past the noisy freeway once again to home.  The first trip in "full pack" was a reasonable success.  Soon we would need to do actual packing and see if we could get the weight down to a realistic level.  I started mulling over the end game of the training regime.

 

From the South

 

As soon as we were home that evening, Viann and Katherine went off to Montrose House nearby to camp out indoors with Katherine's Girl Scout Troop 863.  The next week, cousin Jenny's baby Samson was born in Dallas and adopted out quickly.

 

The annual Health Faire was held at Methodist Hospital, Viann's employer, and she had to go up on the next Saturday, April 12, to help out.  This was the sort of interference we had in mind when discussing the compactness of plans and the need to work in these big training events into our otherwise "normal" schedule.

 

My topographic map of the area was dated 1972.  This was during construction of the "2 Freeway" which ran directly south from our house towards downtown Los Angeles.  Along to the east of the freeway route, the map showed a fire road that came from a subdivision in Glendale back up to the Verdugo Hills Hospital site.  This was about the only nearby trail we hadn't been on yet and, as with them all, I was curious about what it was like up there.  I had biked around some of the involved areas, but not all of this particular road.  Off we all went in the van, Scott's pack still full of two logs and a few sundries in Viannah's daypack.

 

After much studying and some dead ends, we found the subdivision end of the trail.  It went for one block then was barricaded at the edge of a cliff, a manmade cliff.  In the time since we had moved here another new hillside subdivision of half million-dollar houses had been put in.  Apparently, a road in had been blasted through the mountains and right here it was!  We got out and looked around.  We could jump a fence (with difficulty), make our way down the cliff, cross the busy road, go up the steep grade on the other side and proceed as on the topographic map or we could drive around to some better starting point on the other side that didn't involve much off-trail, highly visible climbing.  We got back in the van.

 

There was no direct connection between the old and new subdivisions; we had to go the long way around past Glendale Community College and up Mountain through the blast zone.  I had been here before on the bike and a few times in the car.  One of the old fire roads had been improved into a second outlet for the new development and we went straight through and followed this route.  We could see the trail we wanted to hike on up above and even tried going up to one of the edge houses' parking area to get close, but there was no obvious, good way to get to the fire road without serious climbing, something we didn't feel up to this late afternoon.  Finally, out in the undeveloped portion of the improved road there was a turnout and turnstile that looked like a reasonably easy way in.  We stopped, said our good-byes, and were off up to the road.  Even this involved some steep, loose dirt climbing before we were on the desired trail, but finally, out of breath we stepped up onto the gravel road.

 

I wanted to see and hike the entire road so immediately wanted to go left to the south.  Viannah did not want to do this, she wanted to head right for home right off and that would be plenty far enough.

 

"No, no, no!  This is supposed to be a longer hike, it's already too short for that and we want to see the whole road, the overlook on the north cliff of the cut and so forth."

 

This led to an extended argument while we weren't moving at all.  She volunteered to stay there and wait for me.  This was out of the question, both for safety and training reasons.  At length, I prevailed through a little persuasion and a lot of order giving.  She sulked forward (or rather, backward), stopping often, still complaining.

 

It took half an hour to reach the "beginning" of the road.  Sure enough, dipping at the end to a turnaround that had probably been made only recently when the new road was blasted through, it overlooked the new cut and the older freeway.  We could see the ocean, barely.  We stopped to rest and, in answer to a question about my behavior, ended up talking about my paternal grandmother.  The family had been unusual, grandfather Arthur Duncan and his wife Lethel Courtney Duncan and her sister, Johnia or "Da" all lived together most of their adult lives.  The house where they lived was held in Da's name all those years.  We had only learned this after her death; she had been the last to go in 1984.  My dad had been born just before this three-way living arrangement commenced.  Granddad had been an alcoholic up until about when I was born.  I told parts of the story looking to see if Viannah would put any of the pieces together, to see if she was paying any attention.

 

I tried a few repeaters on the radio without interest.  We took some water and headed back up.  Viannah was now happy to be going the right direction but continued to scold me for the extra distance.  I turned the conversation to pre-adolescence.  We talked about boys and proper behaviors of her near future.  She had more interest in this ‘little talk.’

 

The fully weighted down packs were not easy to carry but at least our feet were doing fine today.  My break-in walks to work had helped.  The new hiking boots were great.

 

After a few rest stops, some walks with talking and some in silence, we reached the point where we had first joined the trail.  Viannah announced that she was now ready to be happy about the route.

 

The fire road wound along on the east side of the ridge, in sight of the newly improved back road on which we had driven up then it went through a cut and came out on the freeway side.  Around another corner we reached another turnout of the back road where it met this one.  This is where I had once had a flat on my old Schwinn Varsity, hid the bike in the bushes, walked home, and came back later with the car to pick it up.  We had hiked here with the whole family before; it was only half a mile up to "the sunset," that is, the peak of Cerro Negro where we sometimes came in various groupings to watch the sunset.  This portion of the route ran behind another development nestled near the top of the hills.

 

Cars passed, drivers and passengers looked, trying not to show interest.

 

Once we reached the old fire lookout-tower now radio site at the peak of Cerro Negro we were back in familiar territory.  As we descended behind Descanso Gardens a helicopter arrived from the south and hovered near the hospital, just below our altitude.  It hovered for quite a long time, though it seemed to me that it must be obvious where the hospital was.  It turned out that it wasn't going to the hospital.  After what seemed like five minutes, it started a straight slope beeline descent towards a place that appeared to be on Descanso Drive but might have been in the gardens themselves.  What was this, a bride coming to the wedding?  A celebrity arriving at a party?

 

After several minutes on the ground, the helicopter lifted out of the clearing in the trees and headed back to the south without further delay.  Viannah was some distance ahead on the trail so I mused over my thoughts to myself.  'Wonder why it took them so long to come down?  Wonder what it was all about?'

 

Much later we learned from city council notes in the newspaper (of a session considering the banning of non-emergency helicopter landings in the city) that it had been something like that, some celebrity arriving at a wedding.

 

Rather than descending behind the hospital as we had before, we took the cut through the apiary where the bees were coming in for the night.  Viannah walked around rather than through, she had met bees here before.  Then we were on the steep but well traveled trail down to the dead-end side road of the freeway.  I was tired, the pack was heavy and the walking stick was a salvation.  I wanted to rest.  By the time we reached Indian Springs, Viannah was counting blocks and didn't want to stop again before we got home.

 

It was nearly dark and supper was nearly done when we slowly shuffled in after 7:30.  As usual, the radio had been useful in preventing unnecessary worry while we were arriving late but this didn't make up for the fatigue or the sore muscles.  I didn't think we'd have trouble on the "real" hike making that one superhuman effort on those three planned days, but I was increasingly worried about my scheduling inaccuracies.  Well, we would leave at first light, at or before five in the morning.  Surely that would make up for everything.

 

Lost Ambition to Hike to Alaska

 

For many years I had nursed a fantasy to travel to Alaska by bicycle as a great adventure of time and space.  Such adventures rarely fit within the lives we must live unless there is some other driver like a gold rush or an oil field to make them socially acceptable.  One day while riding my recumbent bicycle up a steep hill in traffic, feeling the difficulty of the bike that needed maintenance and my own physical weakness and vulnerability to cars, I decided it would be a better, calmer adventure to hike to Alaska.  I wouldn't have to take nearly as many tools and spare parts and, heck; it was an adventure, who cared how long it would take?

 

On April 15 I walked to work and returned home in full pack, part of the training. As I mounted a steep hill early in the day, similar to the ambition-quencher I'd had on the bike, the desire to walk to Alaska was gone too.  I was getting plenty of walking in connection with this much smaller adventure, and wasn't even camping out in snow yet!

 

The End Plan

 

It was mid April, we had about two months left, eight or nine weeks.  My thoughts returned to the end plan for training and the lessons that we still needed to learn from our outings together, and the hikes I had been thinking about that we hadn't done yet.

 

We needed an actual backpacking overnight trip.  We needed to do an ascent of 5000 feet in one day in full gear.  We needed to get "full gear" organized and take our actual food, clothing and accessories.  We needed to try out those backpacking meals.

 

Late one evening we sat down with our packs and our family camping list and started working on what we would take.  This was one of those sessions where everybody brainstormed for a while, then got up to go get things and pile them on the floor in the staging room.  Viann and I were interested, Viannah had to be coaxed along, not seeing the urgency of this step of the planning so far away from the time we would get in the van to go.  A grocery list was made.  The packs were filled.  The first cut of non-essentials was made and it was a fairly substantial one.  We were ready for a large, but not overnight, training hike the next weekend.

 

There was a Highway 39 through the nearby mountains from Glendora up to Highway 2 more than half way to Wrightwood.  We had seen both ends, one when house shopping in the Glendora area, the other on a camping trip through the National Forest.  An earthquake-associated landslide had closed the road several years ago and the northernmost part was closed to vehicles.  It was like a well-improved fire road.  I had always wanted to go that route, though it was something like 20 miles in total.  Perhaps we would go as a family to camp out at a nearby campground Friday night then Viannah and I would hike as far south down the road as we could Saturday, to be picked up near the end of the day by Viann and the others who would have broken camp and driven home, then around to the auto-accessible end.  Surely we would reach the landslide and be well down the road by then.  Then we would go home and camp in the back yard using only the equipment and supplies in our packs.  We would try out the camping meal that night.  Sunday morning we would break the routine by cleaning up and going to church.  This would simulate the rest day at the bottom.  Then Sunday night we might or might not camp out, but very early Monday morning we would load up our packs with all that same equipment and all of our real or simulated trash and go hike from Altadena to the top of Mt. Wilson, another trail still on our list.  To do all this, I would only need to take off one day (and take Viannah out of school one day as well) and try to get away from Friday a little early.

 

We studied our calendars and decided that the weekend of May 2 was going to be as good for this as any remaining date could be.  All schedules were relatively clear and I wanted to do this most-major preparation as soon as possible so we would have several weeks to adjust to whatever we learned.  It was penciled in.

 

I also thought it would be fun to hike to church one Sunday, perhaps the last one before the trip itself, or the one before that.  This might not be a full pack event but we would have to get up very early to arrive at church, nine miles away, in time for my 8:00 a.m. rehearsal.  Leaving as late as 4:00 a.m. might be pushing it.

 

Viannah was interested in this idea and Viann suggested that we might go to lunch and then hike home that afternoon.

 

Eighteen miles plus!  I said, "Let's not plan on that, this is supposed to be a late warm-up walk, let's just see how it goes."

 

A colleague at work had mentioned the nearby Mt. Baden-Powell as a suitable training site for Grand Canyon preparation.  I stuck this in the back of my mind at third priority, maybe for a family camp out up at Buckhorn again.  And there were clearly other hiking trails not so adjacent to our house where we could drive, go six or eight miles in a circle or out-and-back, then drive home.  There was enough material for the short end-hikes; it was just a matter of finding and choosing.  And I would hike to work in full pack once a week or so for the remaining weeks too.

 

Still, it would be a busy month of May.

 

Up Gabriellino Trail

 

And so with our packs prepared for a "real" backpacking walk, we drove to the JPL end of the Gabriellino Trail, locked the car, mounted our loads, and walked north and up hill on the route that I had so many times done southbound, down hill.  I had history on this path, Viannah and I had history here too, but none of us had ever gone north, up hill, or seen the views from this direction.  It would be an all-new experience with some familiar landmarks in surprising arrangements.  There would be times when I would think I was lost despite the strong linear connections from place to place.

 

We started out early.  No one had gotten enough sleep any single day that week and, with all this training going on, Saturday was no longer an exception or a time for catching up by sleeping in.

 

The day started gray and cold but by mid morning was sunny and cool.   I was hoping for a heat wave to test ourselves and our gear in Grand Canyon-like heat, but it didn't get above 55 F all day.  We were warm walking and cold resting.  All the familiar stream crossings, dirt and gravel sections of road, and bridges that always came late in the tired part of the hike were soon dispatched in the energy of the morning.  We were getting accustomed to the aches and pains of packing heavy loads and the slight net upgrade.  We had tent, pads, five meals worth of food (including a full bag of Oreos at the bottom of my big pack), snacks, toiletries, radios and junk.

 

We had a long lunch and rest at Oakwilde.  There had not been enough rest stops during the first half for Viannah.  During the coming second half there would not be enough for me.  We gained experience with our food and trash packing.

 

As the afternoon wore on, we talked about the four things Viannah wanted in life.  They were to be a sixth grade history teacher, to play the piano like I did, to have a horse and to be bilingual.  We talked about the costs of such things, about the financial costs, the costs in work and time, the impact of marriage and children on such dreams.  Viannah said, "Well, I just won't marry anybody who won't allow me to do these things!"

 

Going up a narrow canyon, my hat blew off into the stream thirty feet below.  It was time for a rest anyway.  We took off our packs and climbed down to recover it floating on top of the water.  Too bad it wasn't hot, this would help keep me cool.  The hat, soaked on the bottom, lost its shape and looked shabby as we climbed further.

 

From experience, I knew that radio would not work well once we were at the Brown Canyon road junction near Switzer's Falls.  Just before the trail turned to go up the canyon, we made radio contact with Viann and estimated the remaining time based on what we knew of distances and how well we were covering them.  Something like ninety minutes were left.  There was no irritation today, the time and effort had been well estimated for once.  The contact over, we turned to the rest of the trail, crossing precarious landslides, then the stream, then up the streambed, continuing to talk about the things of life, boys and what to expect from them and so forth.  Towards the top, the trail got more and more populated with less serious day hikers.  The conversation slowed and turned to more trivial matters.  Other dad's we met would eye me with understanding or quizzical looks as they overheard five words of a daylong discourse in passing.

 

Finally we reached Switzer's Campground and day use area.  It had been closed to vehicles this season, perhaps because it was too popular with users pushing the edge of the day-use rules.  Viann drove into the upper parking lot on the highway just as we walked out.  She had needed to go back for gas.  Radio contact preceded the pickup by only two minutes.  Viannah walked out briskly, fresh as I had been at the beginning of the day.  I was on my last gasps, developing blisters and sores.  We had climbed 2500 feet over nine miles in eleven hours.  Extrapolating and ignoring the fact that I didn't have much left in me already and particularly considering the excellent hiking temperature of the day, that would make the climb out of the Grand Canyon about fifteen hours.  We would have to do better.  In two weeks we would attempt the big simulation.  More miles, less grade, refined packing.

 

Going home, I was dropped off where we had parked the car in Altadena overlooking JPL and drove it home.  On arriving, we found the septic tank overflowing into the street, the first time I had ever seen this.  Apparently the downstairs commode had not shut off as everybody was leaving to pick us up around 5:30 and it had been running for 90 minutes.  I estimated tank size and capacity and couldn't guess at how long we would have to go easy on wastewater to get this under control.  Maybe never, maybe this would be the time to pump.  We were careful for a couple of days then forgot about it and had no more trouble.  Never again would a plumber tell me that some problem was the fault of a full septic system if I could look at the driveway and not see green water flowing out into the street!


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