Arroyo Seco
Ricky, Bojana, Jeremy, Jenny, (and their dog Rhimer) and Victor drove down after work on Friday. It is a 4 hour drive from Sacramento to Monterey and they got a late start arriving here at 10:30. I spent the evening reading and drinking caffine - I knew it would be a late night.
When they arrived I crammed my backpack into the car and we set off towards Arroyo Seco through Carmel Valley. The trip was uneventful although a bit uncomfortable with Jenny draped across the row of people in the back seat.
We arrived at the parking lot at Arroyo Seco and started hiking at midnight.
The Indian road is 14 miles long and runs briefly parallel to the river before swerving away to climb a mountain. The road was dark and overgrown but mostly flat and it ran uphill for many, many miles.
We saw no-one in the park. During the uphill hike in the dark I found myself a little ahead of the rest of the group and decided to step up to the side of the cliff to look over the moonlit landscape. In the silence of the moment the nearby groan was startling. Apparently another late hiker had decided he had walked enough and set up camp along the side of the road overlooking the same cliff. We held a short conversation and I warned him 5 more people were coming up behind.
At about 3am we were still going uphill and Ricky was about to collapse for sleep. We decided to head to the next ridge to look for a clear spot to set up camp. This ridge happened to be the peak and we rested while we discussed whether we should continue downhill. Ricky's argument was that if we didn't stop soon we would run out of darkness and wouldn't be able to sleep at all. Unfortunately I and several others weren't feeling that sleepy and he was convinced to continue walking. Though this made the hike extra brutal, this was a very fortunate choice - the trip would have turned into a 3 day excursion and we would have had problems dehydration.
The trail took us back down the mountain and onto a long straight cleared road with the occasional sparse bush standing alone in the barren ground. The scene was unreal illuminated in the moonlight. Adding to the unreality were the strange hot and cold breezes that swept up the canyon. A cold breeze would blow and we would reach for sweatshirts and ten minutes later it would be replaced by a hot wind making us sweat. The temperature difference was dramatic - 30 degrees F.
It was 4am and I was suffering from a dull fatigue-induced headache when we stopped on the road and checked the map. It looked like were close to our destination but we still had to pick our way through a series of downhill switchbacks. I was staggering down the path half-delirious when we arrived at Escondido at 5am.
Just before dropping off to sleep I could hear deep buzzing around us like we had camped in the midst of a swarm of bees. They were flies rising from the leaf covered roads and brush. I woke after only a few hours of sleep with fly bites all over my legs and with flies trying to get into my ears and eyes. The flies were the type that hovered continuously a few inches from your head or legs and were annoying as hell.
After swatting at flies for 30min while getting our stuff together we decided to just grab our packs and make the one mile trip down to the river in the hopes they wouldn't be as numerous by the water.
It was only slightly better at the river but we hiked down a bit farther and found a small shallow pool to pump water and eat breakfast. The river hike from Escondido is pretty overgrown with no deep pools and barely any water. We started at 10am and were bushwhacking more than wading in the trickle of water.
Eventually the trees began to clear and under the open sky we started to come across larger pools forcing us to swim. We each adopted our own methods for swimming with our packs. I preferred to take mine off altogether and float on my back pulling it along behind me. Jenny adopted a sitting position facing forward and rotated her legs like a riding a bicycle. Victor, who couldn't swim, kept his backpack on and used a frenetic dog paddle to retain forward motion and keep his bag from pushing his head underwater.
After the exhausting hike and bushwhacking through the undergrowth the waist or chest deep pools were very welcome. The extra buoyancy provided by the water took all the weight off sore legs and feet.
We had been struggling for several hours and it was about 1:30 when we stopped to eat lunch and Victor pulled out his GPS. It said we had only traveled one mile.
This was alarming. We seemed very off schedule and were going to have to really push to keep the trip from becoming a 3 day hike. As we hiked, the pools became wider, longer, and more frequent with short treks through overgrown creeks of jumbled rock. The loose boulders underwater were covered in algae and we suffered from bruised ankles and skinned knees from constantly falling down. I found the best way to progress was to try to step into the cracks between rocks to wedge my sandal into a position where it wouldn't slip.
We were totally exhausted when we started looking for a suitable sandbar to set up camp at 6pm. Most of us had painful blisters or cuts and Bojana was having problems with her ankles. On unpacking I discovered most of my ziploc bags had leaked - I even had water in the double and triple packed bags. Thankfully the bag with my wallet and phone was still dry. I even had some water in my dry bag.
While washing pots later, we discovered the creek was full of crawdads. It was looking like we may have to spend a third night on the river and I was upset I didn't bring any salt or butter - cooked crawdads sounded really good. I had only brought two days worth of food.
I also took advantage of the remaining daylight and pulled out my wet map and a compass and tried to figure out how far we had to go. The 'waterproof' gps unit Victor brought was filled with water and wouldn't switch on. I made a rough guess we were either 1/2 or 2/3 of the way down the river.
It was cold when we woke on Sunday and the prospect of swimming with our packs and blisters was not appealing. Fortunately the water was warmer than the air and the sun warmed up quickly. We started hiking again about 8am. The river continued with long, wide stretches of deep water requiring a lot of swimming.
Though we hadn't seen anyone the entire trip I began to see footprints in the mud and rocks along the side of the river and the rocks began to get steeper and more like a slot canyon. I don't think many people do the river hike from Escondido so the footprints were likely from people that had hiked up from below.
Before long, we stumbled onto a beautiful pool - one I recognized from pictures on the web - though I was too cold and tired to enjoy it. We also ran into another group of hikers that said they had left the arroyo seco parking lot at 7 that morning. From that point on, we saw many more people and even had to wait for a group to pass before entering the slot canyon.
The slot canyon is impressive if a little short. It's a narrow channel through the rock about 5 feet wide at the narrowest and opening out into large pools. Ricky and I climbed up the cliffside to jump off a ledge into the dark water below. The slot canyon ran for about 100 yards and then the river opened up again into large pools separated by short excursions through the brush.
We got back to the car, bruised, chafed, blistered, and exhausted by 5pm. I didn't have any blisters but the skin on my instep was rubbed off, and one of my toes had turned blue. Apart from the aches and fatigue of hiking, I had two areas each about the size of my hand of chafed skin on my thighs that were extremely painful.
We started this trip looking for an adventure and the river came through in spades.
New wisdom
- There is a $7 access fee to the park and an extra $15 fee if you park overnight. We arrived and left so late we never had a chance to pay.
- If we were going to do the trip again and just wanted to see the cool parts of the river it would be better to just hike up the river, spend the night, and venture back down the next day. I appreciated not seeing anyone else on the river but the rushed hike in and out over a weekend down was a pretty brutal.
- Making the long hike in overnight is not recommended. It would have been better had we started earlier but the hike is brutal in any case. It is impossible to accomplish in the sun without carrying many gallons of water. In retrospect we were lucky we didn't try to camp out on the road. We would have arrived at Escondido seriously dehydrated and many hours late.
- We found a hiking pole on the river and Victor found it very helpful for retaining his balance and taking the burden off his sore feet. I personally wouldn't want to bring something like this along but it might help others.
- Considering how many foot problems we had it's recommended you bring along a pair of comfortable tennis shoes in addition or in place of sandals.
- I brought goggles but hardly used them. Most of the pools were too shallow to to make them useful and we were rushing to escape the canyon and didn't spend much time enjoying the larger pools.
- Ziploc bags are no substitute for dry bags. Nearly all my bags leaked. Double packed trash bags rubber banded closed might work but I wouldn't trust them with my wallet and phone on the river.
Revised list of things you should bring
- backpack
- one large dry bag for your sleeping bag and clothing and a few smaller dry bags for food and sundries
- light clothing - I was fine with only a pair of trunks and a t-shirt
- sandals and/or shoes that can be comfortably hiked in and worn all day in the water
- sunscreen!!
- sleeping pad
- sleeping bag
- water bottles
- water filtration
- food for two+ days hiking
- extra plastic bags and heavy rubber bands for sealing them off
- A towel is nice but not mandatory
- misc camping stuff (whatever else you can fit and want to carry)
- a small first aid kit (we used climbing tape to hold the skin together on our feet)
Stuff you won't need
- climbing shoes and rope
- superfluous gear - packing light is the way to go and anything you really want to keep dry won't be easily accessible.
Return of the Death Hike
Ja and I and Jeremy and Jenny (na&J&J&J) hiked the arroyo seco river again last weekend (090807). It was painful fun.
This time we managed the 14 mile hike in on Indians road in four and a half hours. There were several new rockslides blocking parts of the road although other sections seemed freshly worked by large machinery. We started hiking at 11pm and arrived at Escondido at 3:30. Apparently one of the major big sur fires started at the escondido campground and it was closed. There were many signs with the cryptic warning, "Danger! Trees!".
Ja drove all night from Utah the night before and so had been awake more than 24 hours when he started the hike. He mentioned feeling a bit light headed. I was fully rested and had consumed a pot of tea before we drove out but I was still pretty tired when we got to the campsite and this contributed to one pleasurable experience. I only carried a pad and a sleeping blanket. I unrolled the pad, put a sweatshirt at the far end as a pillow, and spread out the blanket. Then I crawled in from the bottom and fell instantly asleep when my head reached the other end.
My bladder got me up in the morning. The biting flies were present but not as annoying as last time. I even found a spot in the sunlight where they rarely bothered us at all. We dragged our stuff over and had breakfast there.
The mountains all around are burned and brown. We could see the black and twisted limbs of manzanita where they loomed over the trail in the dark but it was difficult to judge the extent of the burned area. For most of the hike the area immediately around the river was still green but the hillside a few meters up was burned.
We chose to take a different path down to the river from escondido. Normally you follow a trail that travels along the river for a mile or so before ending in the shallow stream. We cut straight across and went down the hill - picking our way through the poison oak and dead-end paths until until we reached a rock lined pool. The path was steep and slippery and I discovered I had tweaked my knee on the hike in and couldn't bend it to step downhill. Dry leaves made the steep trail extra slippery and the experience was very painful and awkward.
The water was refreshing. I couldn't exhale after jumping in.
The pool led to some shallow wading and then into a large boulder field. Ja and I made a little better time when it came to the larger boulder fields because Jeremy and Jenny were stuck lifting rimer up and down over the rocks.
It was nearly 11:00 when we reached the point where the normal trail met the stream. This was where we started the hike last time and Jenny was a little upset that we were so behind schedule.
There was more water this year. This made some of the pools deeper. Deeper water is nice when it's about waist height. At this depth the water helps keep the weight off your tired joints. Otherwise the water was commonly thigh or ankle deep and the stream bed is littered with basketball sized, algae covered rocks.
Ideally we hiked alongside the river - pushing through the thick vegetation on the shore. When it becomes impossible to hike on the shore we settled for hopping along the rocks where they poke through the surface. When you ran out of dry rocks you were forced to wade along the stream bed and the best you could hope for were patches of flat sand or gravel.
Hiking in the sand and gravel is annoying because it shifts under your weight or gets stirred up and settles between the straps and soles of your sandals and your feet. This rasping sand quickly eats holes your feet.
When you can't find flat sand or gravel beds you're forced to try to step on the tops of submerged rocks. This doesn't work very well and I spent a lot of time sliding off into crevices or holes.
The extra stretch of river we walked in the beginning made Saturday an very long day. At 5pm we stopped and had a discussion about where we could be. Jeremy's gps unit removed all the uncertainty that goes into making a hike like this suitably traumatic. We decided to walk another hour to the same campsite we used last time.
Part of the reason for finding the same campsite was because of the hordes of crawdads we saw in the water last time. I had brought two vials of salt and butter. My knees and ankles were sufficiently stiff to keep me from catching crawdads but ja and Jeremy splashed around until they had roughly 15 collected in a mesh bag.
We boiled them in seasoned salt water for a minute or so and then picked meat out of their tails. We cracked the claws with our teeth.
Eating lobster after a long hike is a pleasant reward (only topped, in my opinion, by relaxing in a hot spring) and we ate until we were stuffed.
One thing I became aware of during the hike was a general sense of the number of calories we were burning. Hiking in the water on slippery stones is full body exercise and Jenny mentioned she felt like she had been beaten with sticks. Her arms, chest, and back were sore from doing what were essentially pushups all day; picking herself up after falling down over and over again.
I noticed I would begin to feel cold and lose the will to continue hiking a few hours after eating. Then shortly after taking a break to eat some snacks or lunch my enthusiasm would recover and I'd be able to continue. These spikes in metabolism were clearly noticeable on the river where you would often reach a deep pool. With a full stomach there's no reticence towards jumping into the cold water to continue downstream. On an empty stomach, it's the last thing you want to do.
On the subject of food. I now have a good idea of the types and quantities of food to take on a hike like this. If I were to do it again, here's what I'd pack:
- A hunk of my homemade sweet bread
- At least 4 inches of salami
- A hunk of hard cheese of some sort.
- peanut butter filled pretzels
- A single bowl of rehydratable noodle soup was enough for dinner
- two hot chocolate and two instant oatmeal packages
- two peanut butter, cheerio, and banana sandwiches.
- A bag of candy (I fantasized about jelly beans and gummy bears)
Jeremy brought a nalgene bottle with wine which was also pretty welcome.
The trip adopts an epic quality by the second day. Reaching a still pool flanked by a sheer rock face on either side I would throw in my backpack and jump in after. Holding the pack under one arm I would sidepaddle and kick down stream. Floating on my side I would watch the rock banks inch by.
There were two other groups that did the arroyo seco -> escondido -> river hike that weekend. One group took mountain bikes into escondido - stashing them for pickup later. We only rarely saw these groups and, for the most part, were alone the entire trip.
By Wednesday of the week following my injuries had mostly dissolved and though I had no plans for it, I probably could do the trip again, the entire 25 excruciating miles, next weekend.
