Touch and Go - Friday, May 9

Sally always says that no one ever goes hiking with me twice. Except her. Somehow on most trips we run into a "difficulty" that ups the anti of the trip.
I invited my good friend Ed to do a 24 mile hike one day. It turned into a 33 mile hike . . . and instead of having all day to complete it we had to be done by 3:30 because they were resurfacing White Pass and closing the road. My maps were off and how was I supposed to know about the road closure?

A few times trips have gone amiss, but most have been predictable and reliable. Most.
The problem is there are so many variables that are not controllable. The weather. The weather can send any trip over the deep end. The route. What looks like a good route on a map or Google Earth can always throw you for a loop. Unless you are just hiking a well maintained trail that you know intimately the route can throw any adventure into a tissy. Fallen logs, thick devils club, impassable streams, 30' cliffs nestled between 40' contour lines, etc.

It is hard to find the balance between a safe, boring, adventure-less trip and a hair-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck trip. I try to make sure a spirit of adventure infuses each trip. Sometimes it goes a little far.

Sally's foot and ankle are not well, but she feels they are sufficiently healed to hit the trail again, as long as we do so with moderation. We spent the morning trying to erase any sign that we had been at Bill and Sue's like a criminal wiping his fingerprints from the scene of the crime. Wiping counters and sinks, vacuuming carpets, washing sheets and making beds. By 1:00pm we were ready to leave.

Bill and Sue were going to drop us off at the locked gate on the road of the Mission Creek Preserve. From there we would hike the road/trail (it was hard to tell from the google earth images) for 3.6 miles where it intersected with the PCT. Easy.

All was going according to plan. With my GPS on my phone I could track our progress. It was going well. We were right on the road and making great progress. One thing Google Earth cannot show is a gate with threatening No Trespassing signs barring the road. So we left the road to walk on the sparsely vegetated desert floor. All went well for a while until the creek was squeezed into a narrower canyon and the way was barred with thick brush (in the desert? Thick brush?). So we dropped into the actual creek bed and slowly worked our way upstream.

Sally's ankle and foot were tender when we started but the road walking was kind to her and she was doing well. The desert floor walking was uneven and her foot and ankle began to complain. When we dropped into the creek the large, loose boulders torqued her running gear like a mad mechanic with a runaway impact wrench. Her ankle was screaming at her and she was channeling it to me. My plan to shave 5 miles off our reentry to the trail was faltering.

Finally, we regained a road, but the damage was done. The foot and ankle we were supposed to be babying were on fire.

We hobbled the final 3/4 mile onto the PCT and up to the first campsite. Sally went to the creek to soak her foot and ankle while I set up camp and cooked dinner. We were in bed before dark, rubbing anti-inflammatory creme on her ankle and foot hoping we had not re-injured it.

We fell asleep not knowing how well it would recover overnight.