Take a Hike in Southern California

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.

Stay­ing as close to Tar Creek as we could, also kept us fairly close to the ver­ti­cal drop-offs under the falls. Tyler led the way fol­lowed by Gar­rett and then me. Tyler seemed to do pretty well, but I was pan­ick­ing a lit­tle. It didn’t take long before Tyler was out of sight and I heard Gar­rett yelling as he slid down the side unable to stop. He said later that he had come real close to going over the side before he could get stopped. I wanted to avoid Garrett’s dilemma so I tried some bushes to my left, but they were very lit­tle help. I was begin­ning to tire.

The bushes were full of poi­son oak while out in the open, it was clear of poi­son oak. A dilemma. Poi­son oak – slip­pery slope. I lost track of the boys at this point and hoped like hell they were safe. I faintly heard them try­ing to stay in touch with each other. I did not know exactly how to pro­ceed down. Tyler shouted that Gar­rett was safe and where was I. I yelled to him I was try­ing to find a safe way down. From below he let me know there was a good way down if I headed in his direc­tion. I started toward his voice and then lost my foot­ing slip­ping down the hill­side about 15 feet right into a very sharp rock and my shin. Man that hurt! I gath­ered my wits and pro­ceeded toward another stand of brush only to find it full of poi­son oak. I forced my way through. This whole time down­ward, has been with bent legs – there is no stand­ing on this moun­tain­side. I finally reached Tyler and together we moved care­fully down. We came to a stand of Sycamores where Gar­rett was wait­ing and I found a rock to sit on.

We faced another scram­ble, not quite so steep,  down along side a large boul­der. I handed Gar­rett my stick, that used to be Tylers, and he laid it aside for the moment. Only prob­lem was, the stick kept on going right down the hill­side and into a crack between boul­ders. Where it remains still. Now, none of us have any walk­ing sticks when we finally got down to the bot­tom at Tar Creek and looked up at the falls.

I would never have believed that the boul­ders could have got­ten any big­ger or harder to nav­i­gate. Once again, I was wrong! I never again in my life will say that I want to boul­der hop!  We stopped and took a break to kind of wash the moun­tain­side slide dirt off of us as best we could. The boys dis­cussed how they were going to have to treat their clothes on the way home and then stick every­thing in the wash­ing machine to get rid of the poi­son oak. They are both pretty sen­si­tive to poi­son oak and have a hard time get­ting rid of it. I dis­cover later just how sen­si­tive I am to it as well.

I have to tell you about two boul­der hops we encoun­tered at this time. The first we had to sit on our butt and slowly slide down until we started to feel our­selves slip­ping. Then we had to push off as hard as we could and hope we landed flat footed on the boul­der below. We had to do this because it was a long way down and the boul­der we were on curved down and behind us. The boul­der we were try­ing to reach also curved down and away from us. You had to be there! If we hadn’t push off hard enough, we ran the risk of falling short of the lower boul­der twist­ing an ankle or worse. The next place was the steep­est yet. It had a ledge a few feet from the top. To the ground was quite a bit far­ther. Twist­ing our ankles or break­ing a leg was a big con­cern. But, there was a small tree at the far end of the ledge. So, Tyler again locked hands with both Gar­rett and me, in turn. He slid along his belly while we tip­toed along a two inch ledge to get as close to the tree as we could while not pulling him off. From there we lit­er­ally launched our­selves into the tree. Gar­rett told us later that this was the fun­ni­est part of the whole hike.  And it was. I can still hear myself say­ing. “OK…I’m going for the tree. I’m going for the tree.” Once we each landed in the tree, it swayed back and forth, and back and forth, until we climbed down the branches to the ground.

We headed toward the Sespe and got our­selves a lit­tle wet dur­ing the cross­ing. On the other side we took another break on a large, flat rock. This was where I started wor­ry­ing. I looked at my watch and it was 5:30. It took us 2 – 1/2 hours to scram­ble down what we thought would be a short trip to the bot­tom.  We were sup­posed to be back at the car by 6:30. No way were we going to make that. And…no cell ser­vice here. My legs were killing me. I can’t explain just how bad they were feel­ing. My thighs burned like fire. I had no idea how I was going to get myself back up that trail once we found it. It was at least a 1,000 foot ascent—almost straight up. I lost the map when both of my back pock­ets where com­pletely ripped off—boulder hop­ping I guess. I didn’t say any­thing to Tyler and Gar­rett. I took my cam­era out of my front pants pocket and put it back in my back­pack. There wouldn’t be any more pho­tos from me today. When we felt rested, we went to find the trail back up.

Luck­ily we found the trail fairly eas­ily. I looked up and thought to myself, “How am I going to do this?” Tyler took the lead and Gar­rett and I fol­lowed. It wasn’t too far into the climb that I had to call a rest. I had gone as far as I could—I couldn’t go any far­ther. And so it went– all the way up the moun­tain. I must have stopped the boys at least thirty times to take a break. I felt soo bad for them. I couldn’t believe I was that out of shape. Or, that we had been through so much that I was actu­ally hurt­ing this much. I just didn’t under­stand it.

Then it hap­pened! We came to a wall! Lit­er­ally. Right in front of us was this huge boul­der. Not the kind we had hopped over and around all day. This thing was huge! It looked like a gigan­tic loaf of Shep­herds bread and had a girth on it that was larger than our house. And, no trail around it—on either side. High brush blocked the way both left and right. Tyler hefted Gar­rett up six feet onto the rock. To find the trail, Gar­rett went straight across. Then he went North and then South. No Trail what­so­ever! I helped Tyler up onto the rock and he tried to find the trail. He had no bet­ter success—even when he hopped off of one side to what he thought ‘might’ be a trail. It wasn’t. I could not get up on the rock. I was barely able to keep standing.

We knew the gen­eral direc­tion we needed to go. We looked across the rock to the far moun­tain­side and could see what must be the trail because of the long, ver­ti­cal cut into the mountain’s side, and, in what we per­ceived to be the right direc­tion. But, how to get there. We debated going straight on across to meet it. After the 2 – 1/2 hours scram­bling we had already been through, that would have been an impos­si­ble feat. I could clearly see a ravine we would have to cross—not to men­tion what we couldn’t see. And, there was a sheer cliff on the other side of the ravine that we just would not be able to han­dle. Espe­cially me, since I’m barely able to stand as it is.

It was now 6:30—the time we were sup­posed to be back to the car. I was try­ing not to let the boys know I was wor­ried. I later learned they were too. I needed to keep my cool.

Then I remem­bered a smaller trail back a ways that went left. I knew there had to be a trail because it was so clearly marked on the map – the map I didn’t have any more. We fol­lowed the trail back to where it turned off. Luck­ily it wasn’t as far back as we remem­bered. We didn’t take this trail the first time because we wanted to make sure we stayed on the greater, more used, trail. We didn’t real­ize until later that the rea­son this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of trail ‘looked’ more used is because it was. Every­one had to back­track. One day I’m going back there and take some pic­tures of that rock.

Finally, we chose cor­rectly. It was the right trail and not too far along, every­thing lev­eled out and the walk­ing was easy for quite a ways. I took the lead so that I wouldn’t have to keep rein­ing Tyler in. We were feel­ing pretty good about our sit­u­a­tion and even reached into our back­packs for a lit­tle snack while walk­ing. I grabbed a cou­ple of apples and offered Gar­rett one since Tyler was already munch­ing on a banana. Gar­rett still swears that was the best apple he had ever tasted in his life. Soon we were at Tar Creek (where we turned off ear­lier). We had come full cir­cle and could almost taste the car. It was start­ing to get dark and I just knew Norma had to be pan­ick­ing, but still no cell ser­vice. Tyler still seemed to have plenty of energy, so I sent him on ahead. He had got­ten cell ser­vice ear­lier when we arrived at the park­ing lot. So he ‘ran’ all the way “up hill” to get to the car and called Norma to let her know we were okay.

Gar­rett and I walked a steady pace back up to the car. The uphill walk had a few gul­lies to try and nav­i­gate over. I must have looked a real site to Gar­rett. I was so beat and leg sore that I couldn’t trust get­ting my big feet over the boul­ders in the remain­ing gul­lies. I didn’t want to catch my toe on any of them and fall down. So when we crossed each one, I had to reach down and walk on my hands and feet until I was on the other side. I felt like a tod­dler just learn­ing how to walk. When we finally reached Tyler, he told us that Norma had already called Search & Res­cue. The chop­pers were in the air. Norma imme­di­ately called them back and got every­thing shut down. Whew!!!

We all had run out of water a ways back. Luck­ily, Norma gave us a 2 quart con­tainer of frozen water to leave in the car for our return. That was some good water! I could not get my knees to stop shak­ing so I asked Tyler if he would drive us back home. We still had some very tricky dri­ving to do due to steep drop-offs along the road out. We were so glad to be back home. Norma was glad to see us as well and she had three large piz­zas ready in the wings. She also threat­ened to not allow me out of the house again. HA!

Stay tuned for “Things we learned and are going to do dif­fer­ently for our next hike.”

I know there’s got to be some of you out there that has hiked the Tar Creek and/or Sespe Creek trail in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Please send us ‘your’ inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences. How was it ‘bad’ or ‘good’ for you?

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