The Priest Shelter to Montebello Fish Hatchery

August 18, 2015 – Monday

Good morning hikers and campers! Up and at’em! This may be too much information, (Thank you for listening to WTMI – Way Too Much Information) but whatever. If the readers can’t handle the truth, that’s not my problem. So, I woke up with my bowels screaming! This necessitated an immediate evacuation of my tent to the privy, where another evacuation happened with minimal effort. That’s never happened before – my movement always comes after having coffee. (Remember coffee?) But not this time. So – of all the privies that have had the honor of my visiting them, this privy was the worst so far. In addition to being nasty, it has a METAL seat! Even in summer time, it is a VERY cold sit down. I can only imagine in winter time. One might have their bottoms frozen to the seat if precautions aren’t taken!

With that biological excitement (and excrement) out of the way, it was time to pack up and get out. We had a short day’s hike to our cars, relative to our last two days. We had an approximate 6 mile hike with minimal ups and downs. Our maximum altitude was 4000 feet and minimum was 3300 feet. It was nothing compared to the previous day.

We took down our tents, packed, ate and gathered water for the hike – all pretty standard stuff at this point. Although, it is still taking longer than it should. I’m fairly resigned to the fact that this is simply an issue which will fix itself once I start the thru-hike next year. Doing the same routine day after day for months just has to make it faster. These short section hikes simply are not long enough for any noticeable improvement. Here’s the first video of the day – me and Danny leaving the shelter site.

Only seconds later I made a hilarious but frustrating discovery – I’d left my trekking poles back at the shelter! I am *so glad* I made the discovery quickly. Had I gone much further on the trail, I likely would’ve written them off as a loss. After writing them off, I would then have taken back my loaner pair from my companion! *Evil grin* So here’s a video of dumb-ass, I mean Kelly, recognizing his error and going back down to retrieve them!

What a hoot – right? So shortly after re-joining the A.T., we passed a bolder formation before starting our descent off of Priest Mountain. Ha, if that tall one had been a little straighter and had the proportions of 1:4:9, I might have started hearing the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here are some photos.

We continued walking down and, only a few minutes later, the character of the trail struck me. It just had a certain feel to it – hard to put into words. So what better method that to take a video eh? Here ya go:

A short time later, only a mile into the hike, we arrived at the intersection of the A.T. with Crabtree Meadows Rd. This “road” is barely deserving of the term – seeing as how it is only appropriate for 4WD vehicles. (Although, sedan class vehicles will survive the assault on them! I know this first-hand!) Kidding aside, it was a milestone – both for our hike and for memory lane’s  sake. Looking down Crabtree Meadows Rd from the intersection caused a flood of personal memories. I’d previously been part of several car camping trips in this region. Most recently with my brother Victor in Jan. 2012, and before that with my friends Ryan and Curt in Nov. 2011. Going back many years prior to that, I went as part of a camping class I took at TCC in the mid 90’s. I actually took the class several times because it was such fun. Presently, I really wanted to hike down there for nostalgia reasons, but it was not to be. We had a destination, and side trips were not to be tolerated. The best I could do was to make mention of the above info in the next video segment.

Leaving the intersection behind, we embarked on a series of short ascents and descents. By the trail guide these climbs were nothing compared to what we’d done the previous day, but they still felt formidable. There’s just something weird about climbing. Even if the climb is short compared to a previous day, it is still a climb. I guess maybe it’s the fact that each individual climb is unique; no two are identical. So as with yesterday, the weather decided to play with us! An hour past memory lane, the rain came.

The Beatles have a song called “Rain.” I strongly encourage you to listen to it if you’ve never heard it before. This rain was not at all disagreeable and was even somewhat refreshing. I kind of chuckled to myself as the song played in my head and I experienced the lyrics, “When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads…” The song implies that the narrator enjoys the rain, contrasted by the others who try to get away from it. And heck, even if one wanted to get away from it, that’s just not possible out here. The rain also produced a calm, soothing sound within the forest. It is a sound to which I could easily fall asleep. The next video clip actually picks up the rain sound pretty well!

So – 20 minutes after that video, we encountered a split in the trail. To use the word “split” might be over-exaggerating, but here it is. From this photo, one might think, “A split? What split?” Well, it was enough of a split for us to song the song with the common phrases “high road” and “low road.”

A short while later, we found ourselves in a cool section of the trail – we were walking on a rock face! The trail maintainers had created the trail here by anchoring logs into the rock face, and then filling the between the log and rock face with gravel or dirt. Here’s a video visual:

We’d been hiking for almost two hours and the only stops we had made so far were a couple re-hydration stops and one stop to put our pack covers on. We finally decided it was time for a lunch stop – the first real break of the day. Stopping at places the have big rocks like below is great. These boulders are multi-purpose: They serve as a sitting place and as a table. In the distance, there is a ledge with a roughly 50 foot drop-off. Don’t get too close!

 

 

Only 15 minutes later, we arrived at the side trail which leads to Spy Rock. Had we known we were this close, we probably would’ve pressed on and eaten lunch here instead. The Spy Rock area is pretty heavily travelled and so there are lots of campsites here.

A short hike down the side trail we dropped our packs, since this would require a rock scramble. My first impression of the rock face we’d be climbing was this: “Whoah!” The four dedicated readers of this blog know that during my aborted Shakedown Trip #1, I did a rock scramble up Bearfence Mountain. Well, Bearfence was nothing like this. Bearfence was child’s play by comparison. Here’s a video of my first impression.

Whoops!!! The video mysteriously cut off! A quick investigation revealed the need for a larger capacity SD card in my computer phone. I guess shooting video at full HD 1080p quality really does use up space! Fortunately, my computer phone has internal memory. I quick check revealed plenty of free space, so I switched to internal memory and continued…

So the video says we would try to ascend on the left side. Danny had done this ascent many years prior, but didn’t remember the exact route to the top. Technically, there is no “exact route” – there are multiple ways to ascend any rock scramble. Each path is just a different degree of difficulty. From the bottom, it was certainly not obvious which way to best attack this thing.

The first attempt on the left side was a bust. Down came Danny and we headed over to the right side. In the photo below you can see our packs in the center of the frame, propped up against a log.

 

On each attempt, Danny was the pathfinder. He would ascend and decide if it was “good” or not.

Finally, Danny found a good place to attempt the climb. Here are photos as we ascend. Ha. Just like I said earlier, this rock scramble made Bearfence Mountain look like a picnic.

 

Finally, we broke above the tree tops. Looking back from where we came, there is nothing but a ledge. Down that ledge was were we’d scrambled up. I hate sounding like a broken record, but I just didn’t know how we’d get back down. but now was not the time to worry about that. The descending problem could be focused on after getting to the top.

 

 

Those are some great views above, but we still had more climbing to reach the top. But at least we were in an area where we could walk instead of crawl!

I love this next shot. It is so… I dunno, majestic, grand, stately, impressive – something along those lines maybe? This is Danny at the highest point on Spy Rock.

Finally we arrived at the very tip-top of Spy Rock. I really wish I’d taken photos from the top, but with a mind on remaining phone memory, I opted for short videos taken in the panorama fashion. Here’s the first:

The following photo conveys just how happy I am to have made it up here! It does not convey, nor was it intended to, my internal state of wondering how we climb back down.

In the first video just above, the clouds were obscuring a good bit of the view. With the clouds in constant motion though, the view continuously changed. Obscured areas would clear up, while clear areas would be obscured. So, here’s a second video showing a slightly different set of features.

We could’ve stayed up there for hours, but neither of us wanted to get home late – and it was a 4 hour drive back home. So we decided it was time to come down. We were totally determined to find a different and easier way down, though. We ended up descending on the complete opposite side of Spy Rock. That meant that Spy Rock now stood between us and our packs. How would we find them? Simple. We managed to circle around Spy Rock. At first it was tough – having to walk through tree limbs, over bushes and over boulders. But the further we went, trails became noticeable. It was obvious people had ascended/descended in this area.

We finally made it back to the packs. Strangely enough, the approach path to the packs was exactly the same path we’d used on the first failed attempt at ascending. Had we continued around Spy Rock just a little bit further, we’d have had an easier ascent. But hey, no time for second guesses now. We were just stoked to have actually bushwhacked part of the way back to the backs and we were most impressed. It was exploration at it’s best, and we felt super good about it. What a way to start winding down the trip. Here’s a video clip of returning to our packs.

All total, it was about 45 minutes from taking off the packs to putting them back on. It is strange though, because it felt much longer than that. Anyway, with packs back on, it was time for the final push: Get back to the A.T. then on to the cars at Montebello Fish Hatchery.

Half mile down the A.T. we come to the intersection with Spy Rock Rd (formerly Fish Hatchery Rd) – which is an unpaved and very rough road. As I noted with Crabtree Meadows Rd, this thing barely deserves the name “road.” After heading down the road for miles and miles and miles, (ok, it was really only about a half mile) we crossed this boundary. After crossing, I took a photo looking back up the way we had come.

And looking on down the “road” ahead. It kinda looks like it goes nowhere. But no – it led to our cars!

A bit further, we arrived at a fork in the road. This was an unmarked fork in the road. Worse than that, it was an unanticipated unmarked fork in the road. I’d studied maps and satellite photos of this area and never saw anything resembling a fork in the road. Based on a bunch of factors I won’t list here, we decided it “felt right” to turn right, so that’s exactly what we did.

We finally arrived at the bottom of Spy Rock Rd, and reached the parking area we’d left our cars at 3 days prior. I took no more pictures, but did take a final video showing the arrival to our cars.

And that is the end of Shakedown Trip #3. Well it wasn’t really the end. Want to hear the epilog? Really? Oh-Kay…

So, we both felt that a hot meal of some sort would taste good. A sandwich, hot dog, burger, anything – preferably something that could be eaten in the car due to the time crunch. Fortunately, Montebello has a general store with groceries, souvenirs and a café! So, we both drove to the store hoping the café would be open. I won’t drag this out any more than necessary. The café was not open.

What a let-down. See now why I didn’t want to tell the epilog? I hate ending things on a let-down, but you all made me! 🙂 From the store, I got a snack and soda to tie me over until I found a burger joint somewhere.

So that brings us to the real end of the trip. I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos, videos and writing!

 

Wandering On…

Kelly