Stephanie was in town touring for people she hasn’t seen in years and for Santa Cruz she decided a hike in Big Basin was the thing. Making the trek were Stephanie, Tammy, Brick, Brick’s friend Mike, Nicole, and myself. Mike led the way for about the first third and I’m not sure we ever were on the trail we set out for. After awhile and a number of discussions at crossroads we ended up at a “You are here” map, only the part that indicated your location was rubbed off, making it useless. Later at another of these maps the location indicator was also rubbed off. For about $10 in plexiglass that could have been avoided.
From there Brick took over the navigation and it wasn’t long before we had looped back to the first big decision point which allowed us to take the only remaining option that led up. Quite a hill it was too. I think we were climbing that hill for 10 minutes. When we got to the top there was some more climbing, and then a decision point led us to a decision to climb the last 0.7 miles to the summit.
Once we got up there and Tammy located some shade at the actual summit, we sat down and ate and the views were definitely worth it. You were able to hear an occasional airplane in the distance but aside from that the only sound was birds and the moan of wind rushing through the trees.
After lunch and the photo-ops, we headed back down along a much more direct path to the park headquarters. I didn’t need an inhaler (yay!) and today the only major muscle soreness is from lateral stabilizing muscles in my hips. Not bad.
I’m glad I got to spend even the short time with Stephanie and others I haven’t seen in awhile and I hope it isn’t as long before it happens again.