That was fun!
12/27/24: Me and my 2 hiker buddies (Kim and Frank) grab burritos in Avalon at sun up and begin the 10.8 mile mostly uphill hike. Hermit Gulch campground is a ghost town-- it wasn't "full," it was closed for the holiday. When we reach the ridgeline, I feel pins and needles of mist-rain on my hands. This continues for 3 more hours and we abandon our plans of leisurely hot lunch at the park by Haypress reservoir (we arrive at it at 9AM anyway). Instead, we dine on a mouthful of protein bar and Kim captures a couple photos of 2 loan bulls hunkered down on the hillsides. Instead of putting on my poncho, I opt for my trusty Pata fleece which is cozy at first but in retrospect a mistake. Mud accumulates in heavy clods on our shoes-- a phenomenon I only encountered once while training. When we arrive at Black Jack campground around noon, we are completely soaked and for the first time in over a decade, my fleece has an odor. We mutter a few words of gratitude for the sprawling oak cover and the high ridge windbreak features. Then outside of a hasty jetboil meal and a sighting of two mule deer and a fox, we huddle in our tents waiting for the rain to stop, trying to dry our clothes with body heat, and fantasizing about hailing a cab from the airport in the sky the next day. Thankfully, the temperatures in Catalina don't dip so low that hypothermia was much of a threat.
12/28/24: At daybreak, it is still overcast as we put on our wet (stinky) clothes and book it the first quarter of our 8 mile hike to get to airport in the sky. I'm so glad I ran some shock cord through the contact points on the back of my pack so I don't have to stuff that wet muddy mess into the pack but just lash it to the back. I'm usually plant-based, but this day called for a bison burger while admiring an impressive taxidermized shoulder mount of the same over a faltering fireplace flame and some supplemental hot chocolate. We stay here 3 hours, waiting for our gear to dry, the sun to come up, and for me to stop making stupid moves as I learn 3-hand euchre. I understand a bit of the camaraderie described in through hiker travelogues now as we meet most of the hikers following a similar itinerary and learn a bit of their backstory and will see them again in 2 Harbors and along the trail. By afternoon, we are ready to finish the last 6 miles of descent into Little Harbor/Shark Harbor. We see a herd of 12ish bison we dub sausage fest because we don't see babies but learn from a guide friend later that this herd was mostly female. Shark Harbor is as far off the TCT as I could have gotten, but I make up for it with the PB cup s'mores and an adult beverage I packed in.
12/29/24: Another big climb day, but only 5.4 miles into Two Harbors and an hotel that boasts wine and cheese hour. We get the closest we have ever gotten to a loan bull on the ridge line on the way. Banning House was definitely worth the upgrade over the campground. They have the best chocolate chip cookies on the island and a really cool lodge great room/library that my cell gets some signal in. The groundskeeper worked at the same obscure Alaskan fishing lodge my buddies just returned from, so they spend most of their time comparing notes. We take long hot showers, dump an entire mini Bronner's soap bottle into the laundromat washer and adjourn for more burgers, brew, and euchre. At dusk, we meet Jasper, the unusually friendly fox and an unusual raven-pigeon cartel.
12/30/24: Slack packing with just a stove, 3.5 liters of water, first aid and rain gear on a 14.5 mile loop out to Parson's beach for lunch and back. The beach campground is deserted when we arrive and the leftover water jugs are plentiful (but what we carried was more than sufficient). We have Frank pose next to the scout camp he attended 40 years ago and count the 11 inlets we need to trace to get back to 2 Harbors. We hang with 4 Catalina employees, the only other guests at the Banning House, in the great room that evening. 3 of them recognize us from leading tour groups through the airport 2 days ago or serving us burritos in Avalon. Small world.
12/31/24: Our cab picks us up to take us back to Avalon and gives us a tour of back roads on the way. We have brunch at the lobster trap, do some souvenir shopping and more euchre in a biergarten before heading to our respective ferries.
So yeah, that went well!
I used just about every piece of gear I packed (outside of first aid kit)-- maybe I didn't need the extra backpacker meal, protein bar, and piece of pita bread but could have easily consumed it and more in 2 Harbors if Kim and Frank didn't insist on picking up the tab on dinners at Harbor Reef to pay DH back for taking them on a fishing trip. If I weren't smuggling gentleman jack, I would have swapped its weight for a travel size deodorant stick, but settled for spraying a bunch of lavender hand sanitizer on everything and making sure I did a bandana bath in the tent every night before changing into my dryish-cleanish sleep clothes. My pack weight was 22.5 without any water bottles filled (18% body weight).
I don't *think* I was boring. It would have helped if I were a better cards player. I think Kim and Frank were spooked by my sobriety streak but the 2 Harbors general store seemed to have an endless supply of 0 gravity Heineken so we found a way to not make this an irreconcilable difference.
Being uncomfortable was a thing with the soaked start, but I got to test all these truisms about wool and fleece keeping you warm even when they are wet. The switchback camping pad never created a hugely restorative night of sleep (even with a valerian tea and 2 tylenol PM), but with only two nights rough, it didn't compromise my mileage that much.
Shark week was pretty much right on schedule and my triple play (tampon, pad, period underwear) was plenty of coverage. Maybe some day I'll get back to experimenting with diva cups, but it is unlikely I'll need one to do long excursions before going menopausal.
The house was in chaos when I got home, but the kid and dogs were in good shape, which was all I expected DH to do. He also did some major yard landscaping for extra credit and planted a potted citrus Christmas gift for me.
The one area that surprised me was how little time in the total day we spent hiking-- 2.5 hours to 5.5 hours/day. If I were planning another excursion for myself, I'd want to see if I could push the mileage a little higher. I would put more thought into arrival and departure times from campsites and how they would work with meal times. But now I know that if climbs are involved, my average pace is 26ish min miles and if it is flat, plan for more like 23ish min miles.
I'm tempted to consider doing a longer excursion with fewer hotel stops, since there still some leveling up to do in terms of quickly breaking camp and packing equipment in a way that makes it easy to set back up (i.e. wet tents).
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