Day 1, Monday Feb. 9th.

You hear horror stories of people trying to pack their packs he night before they leave on a long trek and then having a nightmare time trying to fit it all. We scoffed at these people. Come on, it’s only 17 pounds. The pack is huge.

so naive

Fools. We were fools. There is no scoffing anymore. What was needed for this type of packing feat was an engineer. Luckily, we had one on hand. Andy has the degree and it shows. If I had to pack the stuff, there’s no doubt in my mind that tears would have been involved…or at least alot of thoughtless jamming and frustrated throwing.

We stayed up all night packing, reorganizing and making the final cuts on what will go into storage and what we are letting go of permanently. All those piles that kept getting moved from corner to corner finally had nowhere left to go and had to be dealt with directly. Actually, that’s a little bit of a lie. At around 2:30 or 3 am when our vision was getting woozy and our decision making powers began shutting down, we moved a few piles to the absolute last stop, the garage. Normally, the garage would be a bad place. It’s easy for things to hide and be forgotten. But, since it’s not our garage, it will be dealt with.

Our friend Nate, a dealer at The Rio, was off work at 4 am and was happy to drive us to the airport. We made it to our flight with plenty of time. From that point on, there was wild speculation as to whether or not we would make it to our final destination, Volcanoes National Park. I won’t go into all the details but share some of the highlights. The inter island connecting flight was a few hours late, and then had to be started by a special truck that was the equivalent of plane jumper cables. Andy had to sprint half a mile from a Walmart to the bus stop after buying fuel for our camp stove. He ran up, sweaty and proud holding two bottles of Heet. The bus ended up being twenty minutes late.

6:30 am, Las Vegas. San Francisco, Honolulu, Hilo. 6:30 pm, Volcanoes National Park.

It was dark, desolate, foggy and raining when the bus dropped us off in the park and pulled away  into the night. Sounds dramatic right? We wondered if we should hike the five miles to a designated campsite and continue on without the proper permits in the morning, find a unsanctioned place near the ranger station to camp and get the permits in the morning or, hike in, hike out for the permits and then hike back in and then continue on. While we were trying to decide, we saw a lone guy wandering around in the fog. He looked harmless and a little confused himself. He was from Pennsylvania and wanting to see lava. He unfortunately did not get to see lava but fortunately for us was kind enough to drive us to the campsite.

a success all around

We were unsure how setting up the bivy and the tarp was going to go in the rain and the dark. We had only set up the combo once before on a beautifully sunny day. But, our fears were unfounded. The set up went well with engineer Andy at the helm and the crew (me) sitting on a plastic bag half way under a picnic table boiling water for our Pad Thai dinner.

With our first day finished, we crawled into our sleeping bags and fell into an exhausted, satisfied sleep to the sound of tree frogs and rain tapping on our tarp.

Day 2 & 3 Feb. 10th, 11th

I’m lying in a shelter in our private cove next to the ocean. There are red ants (non biting) crawling over me (less than all the time, but not much less). I’m too tired to care and too hot to zip myself up in the bivy. At first I was really bothered by it. Now I’m putting my bare feet in my shoes not even caring if there are a few ants in there. It’s interesting to step outside yourself and watch social graces (or just graces in general) drop away without the familiar constructs to keep them in place. Sometimes I just find myself laying on the ground watching them run around. I told Andy it’s like watching Meercat Manor only really, really tiny.

Yesterday we woke up and hitched a ride from the campsite to the ranger station. It was the first time in my life that I’ve actually put my thumb out for a ride. I lived in Detroit for most of my late teen and twenties. Not many people hitch hiked in the hood.

Funny socks prevent blisters

It was raining, but only a little. At the ranger station we got our permit and felt pretty cool when the ranger told us that this was the longest back country permit she’d ever written. We called our emergency contact person and told her the date to call in if we didn’t turn up and then started to walk.

Unfortunately 13 of the 20 miles of trail that we needed was closed. Volcanoes release poisonous gasses. Depending on where and which way the wind is blowing, sometimes the trails need to be closed off so tourists at the very least don’t get sick or worse die. It’s probably bad for business to poison your guests. So for us, it was 13 miles of road walking, about 3 miles of amazing overgrown forest with spectacular cliff top views and four miles of sharp lava rock or chest high wet grass on an overgrown trail.

It was in the tall, treacherous grass that I fell. The lava rock was jutting perfectly out of the dirt so that the toe of my shoe caught under it. The grass obscured my vision and tangled my other food making it impossible to find balance. I went down hard, falling with all of my weight on my right knee. A knee that was in perfect position to land on another very hard and very sharp lava rock.

As I lay tangled and squirming in the wet grass sucking in and holding my breath, I thought I had shattered my knee cap, at the very least done some major damage. I didn’t want to scare Andy so I started yelling “I think I’m okay” a few times until my brain had a chance to process that I wasn’t hurt badly. Then I yelled “I’m okay” a few more times until the look of terror and panic left his face.

Looks worse than it was

He helped me up and we continued on to our first destination, the cabin. There’s not much to write about the cabin itself. Tin roof, thin walls with gaps to the outside. It was more like a hiker shelter with a door. There were two rusted cots with a board for a base and an ancient piece of disintegrating green foam. Andy set up the bivy and the bags on top of it while I started dinner.

As I was unpacking I began to get nervous because I wasn’t finding one of our most important tool: the Bic mini lighter. I asked Andy if he had packed it. He hadn’t. I took everything out of both packs, couldn’t find the lighter and also discovered the equally important coconut opening knife was missing.

The night was saved by a nice hiker or a conscientious ranger that left matches in the cabin. Despite the save, I felt miserable. I had one job, to take take care of the food and the cooking items, and I failed majorly on the first day.

After dinner and clean up, we gingerly got into bed. Gingerly because this was our first twenty miles of training with full packs and it kicked our asses a little. After you sat down, it was really hard to get back up again. We were both laughing at each other for making involuntary groans and “ouches” with each step.

I did not sleep well. Many times during the night I half woke up and felt uncomfortable, like I was sleeping on a board. Sometime in the early morning Andy woke me up to shift the Ridge Rest back in place. I had in fact been sleeping on a board.

In the morning, after a delicious and well rounded breakfast of a Balance Bare, we set off over the hills towards our ocean side campsite. It was a short 5.8 miles away. We set off at 8. I predicted we would get there by 10 easily.

Good morning sunshine

We limped in at noon. In my calculations I forgot to factor walking up and down 45 degree angled hills covered with crumbling, sharp, unforgiving lava rock. If you’ve never experienced this type of surface, think of golf balls covered in tiny razor blades. A little painful but, completely worth it. The black sandy camp sites were empty and we had the entire cove to ourselves. We filled our platypuses with water from the rainwater catch and walked down to the cove.

We dropped our packs, took out the snorkel masks and jumped in. The first thing we saw was a giant green sea turtle and it only got better from there. Later as I was untying one of the plastic bags that was holding the food packets together the missing lighter and knife fell out. I felt redeemed. I had the feeling that I had put them in a plastic bag but I was sure it was a clear zip lock. When I had taken everything out before, those were the only two bags I didn’t open. It didn’t look like there was anything in there but dehydrated food.

I don’t know if you would call it lucky or unlucky but the only rain we had been getting was at night. Amazing rain and wind that made us wake up several times to check our gear and tarp to see if everything was still intact. There were two casualties on the entire trip, a grommet on the tarp was pulled out by a falling lava rock and Andy’s sadly expensive ultra light merino short sleeve shirt blew away.

packed up camp

Although Andy claims that I probably hid it somewhere because I didn’t like it. This is in reference to a story I told him a long time ago about a ex-boyfriend.

He had these hideous raver pants that he liked and I hated. He wasn’t willing to not wear them, and I wasn’t willing to ask myself why….well, at that time, I wasn’t willing to ask myself alot of questions. One day when I was doing some laundry I threw them behind the dryer. When he couldn’t find them, I actually fake helped him look for them.

So bad. I know.

Day 4 Feb. 12th

In the morning, we woke up and set off early. This time, we figured the six mile ascent and decent through the same difficult stuff would take the full three hours, probably more.

At one of the highest points Andy found that he has cell service. He took the opportunity to call his sister. I took the opportunity to take off my pants. Any time I can run around without pants and not be rude or in trouble, I take it. When I got tired of looking at plants and bugs, I spotted the Ridge Rest disconnected from the pack rolled up on the ground. Without looking, I sat down. Andy yelled “NOOOOO!” and tried to grab at me while I flailed my arms wildly trying to stand back up.

Three inches behind my naked rear was a green and black caterpillar with a spike coming out of it’s head (or butt, I’m not sure) and claw like feet. It was almost twice the length of my index finger and as fat as my big toe.

juicy

I still get a little grossed out thinking about sitting down on that thing with my naked ass.

We got into the next cove beach camp a little after noon. It’s by far the most popular choice of all the back country sites but was completely deserted besides us. Palm trees and coconuts are plentiful and most of the sites are sheltered by the jungle foliage. Once again after dropping our packs, we put on our snorkel masks and jumped in. The tide was out so there wasn’t much to see. We came back, set up camp and ate lunch Andy read a book while I spent an hour bashing open and eating coconuts with a tent stake, knife and a lava rock.

Day 5 Feb 13th

We’ve been out here for five days. Although the final consensus is positive, I definitely have mixed feelings. Today is a zero day, a day off of all hiking. These few days have given us a taste of what the PCT will be like. I’m struggling to come up the word to describe what I’m feeling about it. Humbled, nervous, serious, cautious….none of them fit exactly. I should probably get more clear before I just start rambling on. Anyway, much of this nebulous feeling has very possibly been induced by lack of calories. We didn’t quite pack enough food. The engineer sacrificed the human element near the end of packing because he finally succumbed to the frustrations of everything not fitting quite right. After this trip though, things are figured out and everything (calories and all) will fit for sure.

The brave coconut hunter

…It’s true. After eating a coconut that my manly husband got down for me, and my share of a bag of long grain rice and vegetables, the world is a glorious place. All feelings of trepidation have ceased and I feel ready and excited for the PCT.

Andy was telling me that he’s read about through hikers really becoming addicted to it. They say there’s really nothing else that can make a day of laying around and eating food quite so magical as six days straight of hiking. Magical like when you were a kid playing outside all day in the summer. Time stretches and warps. It feels like a minute and a century has passed all in the same amount of seconds . Everything is brighter and more vivid.

I really hope that last “magical” paragraph doesn’t bite me int the ass later on when I’m freezing, crying and starving on a mountain top.

Day 6 Saturday Feb. 14th

We fed prawns coconut pieces by hand in this fresh water pond while snorkeling.

Yesterday we ended up snorkeling with schools of needle fish. Every time we go out, we get a little braver to out into deeper water. It’s a intimidating and frightening feeling to pick your head up out of the water and be surrounded by the dark open ocean. Gauging the distance from the shore, it looks like nothing but, being in it is a whole different story.

Last night’s dinner was a huge disappointment. I’m not sure if anyone reading this will find talking about dinner interesting but when you’re outside burning massive amounts of calories, dinner becomes a huge deal. We’ve been eating dinner every day around 5:30. Usually I start looking at the clock around three, counting down the hours. Yesterday was black bean and corn chowder.

I had a whole paragraph of full of vitriol for the likes of the black bean chowder, but, it’s probably boring and I’m over it. Just trust me….bad chowder, mess you up.

Oh, man 4:17. Still some time to wait before cheesy potatoes with broccoli.

There was no rain last night, but the wind was fierce. Most of the days here, the wind has been gusting. Sometimes it’s hard to get to sleep with the tarp blowing in the wind. It sounds like someone is crinkling a large amount of plastic bags. The trees creak and the leaves rustle. The peaceful outdoors is sometimes not so peaceful.

a very theraputic and tasty process

I got up at three or so. I came out of the shelter to find a big black rat eating the remnants of my coconut bashings. I didn’t do a very good job of clean up. A pardonable sin for a terrain where the most harmful animal is a rat or a mongoose. Not so much in bear territory. Andy got up and hung our food from a tree.

Our next campsite was only two easy miles away. The ranger had told us that Halape was the best site, we disagree. Keauhou was by far our favorite on this trip. Although to be fair not everyone rating the sites are bringing snorkel gear with them. The swimming conditions are a big factor for us. We set up camp in a shaded forest with places to sit and a “kitchen” built up from lava rock. We were completely sheltered but the beach was a fifteen second walk away.
We swam all day. The first second I put my mask in the water I saw a huge green back turtle. Andy and I followed him lazily until we were distracted by huge schools of yellow tang.

This is not our video, but is pretty representative of what we saw. Although we had snorkel gear not scuba and only swam near the turtle and didn’t feed him. Although it would have been fun to hand feed some ocean creatures, I think it’s a better practice to leave them be.

There are people showing up here. We didn’t even know it was a three day weekend. These are the first people we’ve seen for five days. I didn’t even know that I was missing people before they started showing up. I feel like a dog wagging it’s tail excitedly….”Hi, hi guys, hello. Hey!”

Day 7 Sunday Feb. 15th

lava

In the morning we hiked three somewhat easy miles to the next site. It was all relatively flat, glass like lava. During the entire trip the wind was blowing madly and today it seemed even stronger. The site we were walking to had no rain water catch so we were more loaded down than usual with six liters of water to take us through two days and a night.

We arrived around 9:30 and weren’t overly excited. The sites were exposed and the cove wasn’t protected. It made for some amazingly huge crashing waves but also made it impossible to swim in anything but a small shallow pool.

After laying around a half heartedly set up camp and eating extra rations of food we decided we felt a little hot and bored and started discussing the possibility of coming out early and spending time in Hilo. We decided it was the right thing to do.

The trip had accomplished it’s purpose. We had gotten familiar with our gear, finding out what worked, what didn’t and what we still need (some sort of bug shelter for sure). We found out eating ten or more nutrition bars a day is feasible (more-so for me than Andy), and which foods we will be buying in bulk (pad thai and vegetable lasagna), and which we will be avoiding like the plague (black bean corn chowder).

After a short swim in the actually not so bad shallow pool, we set off for the road. It was only a six mile hike but walking directly into 30 mph headwinds made for an interesting day. We were at Chain of Craters road by 4 pm. We hitched a ride with a geologist and her husband to the visitor center. She schooled us on how lava rock is formed and the different names for the different states of it.

Hitching to Hilo

After a quick stop to buy salty junk food at the gift shop, we set out for the main road to Hilo. Within a few minutes a pick up truck stopped for our out turned thumbs and drove us the 28 miles into town. He dropped us off one block away from Andy’s Mecca….Taco Bell. He told me his usual bean burrito with sour cream and Mexican pizza with no meat never had tasted so good. Root beer was like manna from heaven.

From there, our original plan was to walk to the airport and rent a car. On the way, we called and all the cars had been rented so we just kept walking into the city. From the Taco Bell to the hostel was about five miles, usually not a hard walk, especially not on pavement. Although for us, it was getting late….good god, it was nearly 8 pm. We got the last two top bunks in a dorm style room. Andy convinced me to go down the street with him to get some pizza and we both nearly fell asleep sitting in our chairs.

Day 8-10 Monday Feb. 16th-Thursday Feb. 19th

The next day, we checked out of the hostel and found a hotel that was only $30 more a night. We decided to stay there our remaining few nights and spent one day walking to the planetarium, one day hiking out to a good snorkeling cove

Thursday morning it was a down pour. The first real daytime rain since we had flown in. We shared a cab to the airport and got home with no problems.

9:40 am, Hilo. Honolulu, LA. 12:07 am Las Vegas.

Aloha

*The title is in reference to one of my favorite scenes from Burn After Reading. Don’t click if you’re offended by the “f” word. Also, in reference to the title….I’m not calling you guys “f”ers, no disrespect.

If you want to see the rest of our pics, you can here.