Skyline-to-the-Sea New Year's Hike 2020

[lizolas]

Skyline-to-the-Sea

January 1, 2020

My start-of-2020 plans didn’t go any more smoothly than my plans usually do. I planned my New Year’s activity around shadowing an ice climbing trip in Lee Vining that ended up getting postponed by over a month. In addition to avoiding the 4-hour detour that driving into the Valley would require, I wanted to keep in line with my previous vow to “have fun.” The sunrise on Clouds Rest my first year was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever witnessed, but as far as the actual hiking, I don’t like it. I don’t like traipsing through the forest alone for hours. I don’t like climbing up snowy rocks in hiking shoes. I don’t even really like snow that much. My ambitious plan for a Valley-Clouds Rest-Tenaya Peak-Valley hike seems far better suited to the summer, with more daylight and quicker hiking sans snow.

This would be a chance to do something closer to home that I thought I’d missed my chance for this year. Joe - with whom I did Skyline-to-the-Sea in 2018 - had already done SttS for 2019 a few days after Thanksgiving. Since he’d just recently done it and also loves driving, he was the perfect person to ask about being the shuttle driver for my hike. He gladly agreed, saying he wanted to be “on the other side” of the hiker pickup for once. I think that means he hoped to see me suffer. Lacking a car of his own, he was going to ride a motorcycle up to my car, take my car to pick me up, and then we’d return to his motorcycle and hope it hadn’t gotten a ticket.

I’d had the foresight to procure my snacks the night before, as most 24-hour grocery stores closed overnight for New Year’s Eve and didn’t reopen until 6 am. I hadn’t considered gas, though, and had a bit of a detour finding a place that was open that early. As I realized my plan to start an hour before sunrise wasn’t going to happen, it occurred to me that I could attempt what Joe wants to do: Skyline-to-the-Sea entirely during daylight. Counting “daylight” as sunrise to sunset, I waited briefly in the car before heading out at 7:22 am, exactly sunrise in Los Gatos.

While the official trail goes from Saratoga Gap to Waddell Beach, for some reason we’ve decided it should start the slightly longer way in Castle Rock. I had a map on my phone, loaded in Gaia, using my gpx file extracted from 2018’s hike. That allowed me to stay on course when I wasn’t sure which trail to take at a junction, although I did once get lost anyway, missing a small trail that was actually my turn.

I intruded on a mating pair of banana slugs

My main concern for the hike was that a mysterious foot/ankle injury I’ve had for a couple years (and am finally getting around to seeking medical attention for) would start acting up somewhere that it was inconvenient to bail. Toward the beginning of the hike, I’d simply turn around to my car, then text Joe on the way down that he shouldn’t bother coming to perform the shuttle. Closer to the headquarters, I’d either have to continue for a few miles or backtrack for a few miles, then try to use a payphone or the Rangers’ landline to contact Joe and let him know I was stopped at the HQ, not the beach. If something went wrong toward the end of the hike, I had confidence in my ability to resolutely limp the required distance out to the beach. Naturally I didn’t pack my Owie Kit with the Ibuprofen. I’d gone for an 8-mile test hike of sorts 2 days prior, and it hadn’t acted up then. However, less than a mile into this hike, I found that stepping a certain way with my forefoot caused an immediate flare of pain. The pain didn’t last, though, so I resolved to step more carefully and willingly bail if it got worse. As much as I wanted to do my usual “play it safe” thing, I also wanted to finish this hike, and I didn’t feel that I was making an injury worse this way.

I was trying to return to my previous year’s goal of making videos documenting my process in outdoor activities. Here, I figured, I wouldn’t be faced with the cold temperatures that usually make my phone shut down and refuse to function outside of my inner pockets. Instead I miscalculated the amount of battery my phone would use and brought only a half-charged smaller battery bank. With the battery blinking on the 1 of 4 lights and my phone at 40%, I needed to conserve power before I was even to the Park HQ. My phone also can’t run the camera when the battery is much below 40%. This meant no more videos and only a couple pictures for the remainder of the hike. While I think the Castle Rock side is pretty, the Waddell side has more diversity in scenery.

Berry Creek Falls, a short distance off the main trail on the Waddell side of the HQ

Joe had mentioned that the collapsed section of trail we’d bushwhacked around the previous year was still unrectified. I thought I remembered that being shortly after the two off-road vehicles, but it turned out that the detour came later.

The two cars along the trail, a couple hundred feet from each other

Reaching the Big Basin Park HQ at 1:30, I was feeling a bit behind schedule. It was still a reasonable time to expect to finish in daylight - assuming I didn’t slow down too much from pain or fatigue - but I wasn’t going to have the hour or more of buffer that I would have had with my original start time. While I wasn’t moving slowly by any standard but maybe Bob Burd’s or an ultrarunner’s, I felt like I was walking more slowly than I normally could have been. The hike 2 days prior had left my unconditioned legs sore, somehow mostly in my shins. I could be straying into “physiology for engineers” territory and making things up, but my idea is that walking downhill is basically body-weighted negatives for your ankle flexor muscles while uphill only requires them to lift the weight of your foot. Since most of the hike goes gently downhill, I felt that soreness most of the way. I was relieved that after the initial few wrong steps, my foot didn't hurt at all. It seemed like everything was going to be fine for me to continue and finish the hike. Slightly disappointed that I couldn’t buy a park sticker to commemorate the trip (for some reason although there were ample Rangers directing visitors, all the stores were closed) I left after a quick water and food stop.

Entering the Danger Zone

Leaving the headquarters, I discovered the detour that I’d been dreading. While I know that poison oak isn’t even at its most potent this time of year, the thought of being itchy scares me far more than the thought of being in pain. I didn’t want to do another bushwhack through plants including poison oak, since I’m always scared that every time I touch the plant will be the time I finally develop a reaction to it. Once I saw the detour signs, I recalled that the previous year we’d decided that the hike wasn’t pure enough if we didn’t take that portion of the trail. Without Joe’s sense of adventurous ethics, I decided to simply take the detour recommended by the signs since it wasn’t much longer than the intended trail.

Trail closures

I had a somewhat awkward encounter leaving the HQ in which a middle-aged man started asking me if I was going to some location I don’t remember the name of. I indicated that I didn’t have the same destination as he did, but he wanted me to help him read the signs (he spoke fluent English, he just wanted a babysitter or something), and then said he’d “just come along with [me] and see how far we got.” Not knowing how to say that I didn’t want the company of a complete stranger, I did the most Liz thing I could possibly have done and simply hiked too fast for him to keep up. Note that there are people all over the trails here as well as signs at every junction indicating the direction of the headquarters, and I wasn’t abandoning him to die of thirst in the desert or anything.

In total I had about 1500 calories of food with me - 2 bagels with cream cheese and 3 chocolate croissants. I’d meant to bring some other hiking snacks like nuts and fruit snacks but neglected to pack those at the car. I roughly divided my hike into 5 sections, starting with a croissant about a mile in and ending with the last croissant at Berry Creek Falls. It would have been nice to have had some extra food, but the amount I had let me comfortably do this hike. I wasn’t ever hungry or starting to crash.

Eating my last croissant at Berry Creek Falls

This latter half (really more like 40%) of the hike is the part I’m most familiar with. I’ve done the Waddell - HQ hike in its entirety at least 4 times, and hiked it from either end countless times. The portion to Berry Creek Falls went far more quickly than I anticipated, and I was surprised when I ended up at the turnoff to the falls about half as fast as I’d expected. Not according to my watch - I was still plodding along at about 3 mph - but based on how I felt the time was passing. I made my final food stop at the falls, knowing I could easily get out to the parking lot from there in under 2 hours (barring meteors). I had a headlamp with me but for the sake of finishing the hike in daylight, I hoped not to have to use it. The Waddell area is also the only place I’ve ever seen a mountain lion while hiking, and I did not relish the thought of walking through that same area alone in the dark. Fortunately, although I was hiking solo, I was rarely alone for very long, as there was a regular stream of people between Berry Creek Falls and the end. I got some reassurance from the fact that I still passed everyone I saw besides the runners and mountain bikers, meaning I wasn’t falling that far behind my usual pace.

The downside of the final part being the most familiar is that it’s the hardest to zone out and just hike. I started counting down the miles until the finish, even though I wasn’t particularly tired or in pain, just kind of bored at that point. The creek is much less interesting when you’re not 5 and stopping there as your final destination for a picnic lunch with your family. I still have a vivid memory from my youth of watching a truck (the trail up to there is fire-road width and grade) that was emptying a tank of Coho salmon into the creek.

The footbridge, site of many childhood picnics and also my senior portraits in college

From the creek, I know that it’s 3 miles to the end. Those are always the 3 slowest miles despite the scenery being the most varied there, as you pass from the redwood forest to the open fields of a farm, and finally to the scrubby estuary before the coast. Racing the sun for the last couple of miles, I arrived on the beach at 4:50, beating the 5:02 sunset. Joe wasn’t there yet, so I went to sit on a rock, charging my dying phone with the last little bit of power left in my battery. As I watched the beach, I noticed that it was full of spectators, but surprisingly no surfers. Within a few seconds I figured out why: there was a massive elephant seal in the water less than 100 feet from the shoreline. I’m not sure if he was massive by elephant seal standards or just massive by virtue of being an elephant seal, but he was very noticeable when he appeared out of the surf, calling in a low, deep rumble I had no idea could even come from an animal.

Finally finished


The only halfway decent picture I got of the seal

By chance, a few minutes later I turned around and saw a guy who was unmistakably Joe headed the wrong direction. I tried calling out, but he didn’t hear me. I ran after him, dropping my pack on the way. At least I wasn’t too tired and sore to sprint. Eventually I got his attention. He had looked around but just missed me sitting out of sight behind someone’s van watching the seal in the water. We drove back to get his motorcycle - thankfully sans parking ticket - then proceeded to find an Indian place “with no tablecloths” to fit our desired dinner price range.

The actual length of the hike still eludes me. The 2018 Strava activity indicates 30.5 miles, while the GPX file exported from that activity indicates 29.2 miles. The 2020 numbers are closer, Strava saying 28.8 and the GPX saying 28.6. That doesn’t make sense, though, because due to the 1+ mile of walking up the wrong trail plus the slight detour out of the HQ, I shouldn’t have ended up going a shorter distance this time. The profile on this page with details on the hike lists the distance from Castle Rock as 28 miles, so it seems that my numbers from this year are likely closer than the numbers previously.