Ventana Wilderness. I am a glutton for punishment. Why do I always return here? Brush as thick as thieves. Poison oak as abundant as bunnies in spring. Ticks as huge as dragon flies. It is not going to be pretty.
I left the house at 3:30AM. The fog is back. It is back with a vengeance. Visability was down to about 20 ft. I swear. This fog was thicker than we had it earlier this winter. At least from what I saw. I have not seen fog this thick since I was little. The fog going up the Rossland Trail hill in British Columbia where I lived was thicker than pea soup in winter. And my dad drove up it like gangbusters. Ha ha. Well I slowed down for this fog. And then it was gone. Just like that. And then it returned again further along. So this is how it is going to be, eh?
Highway 1 is open now. This cuts off about 30-40 minutes from my drive. I knew it was going to be a busy weekend there with the holiday and with it being the first weekend the road has been open in years. I was not wrong.
I arrived at the Salmon Creek Falls trailhead at about 8:30AM. There were already a lot of people here. I wanted to get a photo of the big waterfall from the bottom this time. I did not have a photo from there yet. I was able to get right up to it although it was not easy and involved a lot of creek crossing and boulder scrambling. There were tree branches obsuring the view but I expected that. So all was good.
I did make a huge mistake, however, and got into the poison oak. I was not paying attention. So before I even started my big hike I already had poison oak on me. I tried to wash it off but it did not help. I ended up getting a bad rash including some in my eye. Argh.
I had thought about bringing Journey on this hike but wisely decided not to. I was worried about the ticks. I have heard that the ticks are already horrendous this year and this is Ventana Wilderness. Tick Central. The worst place on Earth. The ticks are the size of dragon flies (almost). As it turned out there were not that many after all. I saw just one on the first day. The next day there were more, about ten, and one that got on me. Not really bad. I was expecting much worse. Even so, Journey probably would have gotten a few on her but that didn’t turn out to be the biggest problem. The hike was incredibly difficult, gaining 3000 ft. in elevation. I was dead tired by the end of the day. Journey has not done 3000 ft. before so I think she would have really struggled on the hike.
I arrived at Lion Den camp about 2PM. It did not occur to me until afterwards but it is not necessarily such a great idea to camp somewhere named “lion den”. This could get really bad. Why is it called this? There was one other guy already at the camp. For some reason he did not take the best spot. He left it for me. It was a fantastic spot up on a bluff with an ocean view. It may have been because he had a hammock but there was a spot on the bluff in which he could have set that up. I did not complain. I was treated to a very beautiful sunset. Apparently his water filter had broken and he was trying to boil water for drinking but not able to do so. I do not understand how you go backpacking and cannot boil water. Nonetheless, after I was finished using mine I let him borrow it so he could filter his water. I am such a nice guy! He was grateful but apparently not that grateful and I may have regretted being so nice. Stay tuned for the rest of the story …
