Take a Hike in Southern California

Archive for August, 2009

What Tyler, Gar­rett and I learned on that Tar/Sespe Creek hike seemed like it could fill vol­umes, but we’ll just go through a few here that we feel like voic­ing in pub­lic. The first three most impor­tant things we learned were…

• Stay On The Trail!
• Stay On The Trail!
• Stay On The Trail!

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from the Mayo Clinic

Heat exhaus­tion is a con­di­tion whose symp­toms may include heavy sweat­ing and a rapid pulse, a result of your body over­heat­ing. It’s one of three heat-related syn­dromes, with heat cramps being the mildest and heat­stroke being the most severe.

Causes of heat exhaus­tion include expo­sure to high tem­per­a­tures, par­tic­u­larly when com­bined with high humid­ity, and stren­u­ous phys­i­cal activ­ity. With­out prompt treat­ment, heat exhaus­tion can progress to heat­stroke, a life-threatening con­di­tion. For­tu­nately, heat exhaus­tion is preventable.

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Leaves of three – let it be.

Leaves of three – the mantra. Just what does that mean? Our “off the trail’ scram­ble down to Sespe Creek ran us into poi­son oak that was fairly rec­og­niz­able because of the time of year – late sum­mer. It’s not always that dis­cernible when mixed with other plants and ear­lier in the year. It is nev­er­the­less just as potent. Some­times I can’t always tell it from other plants – espe­cially the ‘leaves of three’ part. I did some research and found good exam­ples of poi­son oak in dif­fer­ent set­tings and col­ors. I hope you find this as infor­ma­tive as I have. Color print­outs now go in my backpack.

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We could clearly see our goal, The Sespe,  and it didn’t really seem that far away. After lunch we started our quest. We quickly found our­selves slid­ing down the slip­pery slope. The sun was hot mak­ing it hard to keep the salt out of our eyes. With very lit­tle to grab onto,  the going was a lit­tle dan­ger­ous. I never knew dried grass mixed with loose dirt could be so treach­er­ous. I wasn’t sure what we had got­ten our­selves into. I’m glad I had bet­ter hik­ing boots with high sides. At least my feet were not slid­ing into the toes of my boots while I was try­ing not to slide down the mountain.

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I’m going to regress slightly at this point to talk about hik­ing readiness—or lack of it. I thought going into my first hike, Pole Creek, that I was in pretty good shape. Boy, was I wrong! I had been putting in 45 minute walks every day through­out the neigh­bor­hood that also included a 25 degree hill climb that was approx. 100 feet in length.

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We took a good look back up the ravine into the first falls. There were some high school kids jump­ing into the water, laugh­ing, yelling and hang­ing out under the falls. The small caves behind the falls are pretty cool when you are stand­ing behind the waterfalls.

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