FreePress Blog

We got back today from hiking the North Fork Matilija trail, and I have to admit it was tougher than I expected. We started at the south (at Matilija Road) and hiked up to the Maple camp spot on Saturday, staying overnight and tackling the rest of the trail this morning, which eventually led out to the 33 where we were picked up. In retrospect, we probably should have gone the other way, since it would have been downhill rather than uphill most of the way, but it was a learning experience, and the challenge probably added to it in the end.

It was pretty obvious at the end of the first day that I was not in great shape. After a series of switchbacks up the mountain, my legs started cramping pretty much for the rest of the day. I tried stopping to stretch them out, but if I stretched one way the other muscle would cramp while stretching, so I pretty much just ended up walking the rest of the way to the camp despite the cramping. Luckily, Randy hung back with me, in case I eventually collapsed, so that he could either revive me with his first aid kit or give me an honorable death with his ninja sword.

The next day (today) was quite a bit easier, I think mostly because I paced myself a little better and took more frequent pauses to try and avoid letting my legs start to cramp in the first place (rather than trying to make it stop after they started), and it worked pretty well.

Christian went along too and he did great (better than me). He even had a pack with his sleeping bag and a small bag of food to carry; my pack was about 30 pounds. It was pretty cool to be camping at a place that you can only get to by a pretty serious hike (no cars, etc.) All in all, it was pretty fun; but it definitely awakened me to the intensity of my out-of-shape-ness.

Here’s the Flickr photo pool, with just my pictures so far, but more should be added soon. The nature views were pretty awesome, so I’m looking forward to checking the pictures, since I was probably too tired to take it all in at the time.