Meghan – Page 7 – Team Westlander

Testing our gear and ourselves in Wrightwood

Almost seven years after hiking out of a blizzard into Wrightwood, CA and missing 22 Miles of the PCT due to snow and ice, we returned this past week to complete that section of trail. This trip allowed us to test our gear as well as ourselves… and boy did it ever.

If I had but two words to describe this hike, they would be: 1) windy and 2) cold. Given a third word – beautiful, maybe rugged. Those two tie for third place.

Our plan was to hike from the middle of this 22 mi stretch to one end (the Acorn Trail turnoff), double back to the other end (Islip Saddle at Hwy 2), and then hike back to our car (Vincent Gap). Within this section, elevations range from 6500 ft to 9300 ft as the trail climbs both directions: north up Mt. Baden-Powell and south toward Mountain High and our Acorn Trail endpoint.

This hike contained moments of amazing wrapped in stretches of sincere effort and discomfort (but who hikes for the comfort of it?). Actually, even the uncomfortable parts were sometimes amazing.

I’ll recap the amazing:

Smoldering Campfires: Seriously, this is some of the stuff hiking nightmares are made of. You’re all alone in a campground and nestled in your tent with the wind whipping by outside when you think you smell smoke. You ask your partner, but he doesn’t smell anything. So you wait thinking you were dreaming it. The smoke smell doesn’t go away, but it does get stronger. You shake your partner fully awake, and he crawls out of the tent, looks around and says, “Oh s***. Someone’s campfire reignited.” We were the only ones left in this primitive campground that night and therefore the only water source to put out this fire. A gallon of water later (extra because the weather was cold enough that we did not need to drink it, thankfully) and some serious stirring and all ended well. But Smokey the Bear would not have approved. If you know anyone, especially a novice camper, heading out this season, please guide them to resources teaching how to properly put out campfires… and reiterate the importance of doing so. We thank you.

The PCT Hiker in Its Natural Habitat: After that crazy night, we were delighted the next day to be interviewed (along with other hikers) by different school groups doing lessons on nature and the Pacific Crest Trail. We were definite spectacles to the students whose teachers were so excited to run into “actual PCT hikers.” We answered all questions but shrugged off some of the labeling. We won’t really feel like “actual PCT hikers” until sometime tomorrow. But it was so heartwarming to find out that elementary students were learning about the trail in school and to see educators so excited about the PCT and its hikers.

Summiting Mt. Baden-Powell: This was definitely the highlight of the trip. The climb is intense with few views until the last mile or so. But the last mile makes the climb well worth it. There were great views all around:

The Best Laid Plans: Remember how I mentioned our plan above? Well, we’d intended to stretch it out over about 5 days of hiking – taking our time, hiking shorter miles, getting used to multiple days of hiking, etc. Mother Nature had other plans. The weather turned ever colder and windier as the week wore on. The morning of our second full day of hiking we met some rangers and checked in on the weather for the rest of the week. Stormy, they said. Snowy, they said (again?!). But not until Thursday night, they said. Hmm. Thursday night we were planning on camping just below 9000 ft and hiking down Friday morning. Not a good idea, they said. And then this, “But if you get stuck out there, you can just call us. That’s what we’re here for. We can come get you.” Right. To air lift us off a mountain in a snow storm. Exciting as that sounds, we’ll pass. We’d like our first helicopter ride to be… how should I put this… ah yes, scheduled. So we change our plans. We shorten the trip by hiking a little farther on day 3 and then going all the way back to the car on day 4 (Thursday), instead of waiting until Friday morning.

And then, on day 3, we hiked the beautiful, rugged, windy, cold section from the top of the mountain down to the highway (~3000 ft down). It was spectacular, and made us ache, and I didn’t take my warm hat off once all day. We were about 3 miles from the highway enjoying a respite from it all in a sunny spot when Brian turned to me and said, “There is no way in hell I’m hiking back up over that thing. Let’s hitch.” And so we did… ending our hike on day 3 with a celebratory In-n-Out burger, a shower, and the best night of sleep all week.

Since coming in from the Wrightwood section, we’ve debriefed, adjusted our gear and strategy a bit, and are prepped to head out again. Today, we leave for the beginning of our two-month long section hike. We start from Sierra City and will check in with you again in Chester!

Adventuring Back on the Pacific Crest Trail

In 2008, Brian and I set off on a three month adventure north on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). This adventure took us from the Mexican border to Sonora Pass, 1,018 mi, where we left the trail to meet the then new adventures of graduate school and southeastern living. Our journal of that hike can be found at http://trailjournals.com/westlander.

We’re now gearing up for a second long hike along the PCT. This next section will take us further north from Sonora Pass to wherever we happen to be when we need to leave the trail again at the end of July. We’re preparing our minds, bodies, and gear for a 2+ month trek but are trying to stay flexible.

Here on our blog, we’ll share our experiences on the trail along with photos of this latest adventure.

Adventures in Ice Cream Part 2 – Vanilla Can still Be an Adventure

(Continued from: Adventures in Ice Cream Part 1 – A Little Back Story)

Sometimes vanilla is the perfect flavor. For me, those times are few and far between. For Brian, they’re a little more frequent. And if we’re lucky, they coincide. Our decision to make a simply vanilla ice cream for dessert that night was two-fold:

It fit. Very flavorful beefy dinner + gentle creamy dessert = smiles
It cut down drastically on the number of variables we would have to deal with to make the ice cream, and hopefully make it good.

Okay, it was more the latter reasoning that prompted the flavor decision. I mean, if we could produce a good, solid, vanilla ice cream, there was serious hope for building a hobby. If we repeatedly fail at vanilla, that hope greatly diminishes. (Plus, we’re not really that talented at pulling together the perfect blend of flavors for a complete meal. We’re more the I-like-this-and-you-like-that–presto! type.)

We dusted off Jeni’s book and flipped to vanilla. Realizing the risk of a serious texture fail if we followed the recipe word for word, we sought modifications from our good friend Google. We were not let down, and thankfully, the fix (or at least experimental tweak #1) was easy – reduce quantities of anything beginning with corn or ending with gum. Excellent! Our recipe called for cornstarch and corn syrup. So we cut those down a bit. We weren’t really scientific about it, just left a bit out… cut it to around 3/4^ths of the original or so. We followed everything else as it was written with a dash of crossed fingers.

Ice cream should be made several hours ahead to allow time to fully harden before serving. This doesn’t tend to mix well with our MO of scrambling to pull everything together last minute (we’re working on that one). So we finished this batch with the minimum ‘several hours’ to freeze before serving – meaning we got to taste the finished product for the first time along with our friends that evening.

Now, our friends could care less whether the ice cream (or the whole meal for that matter) was good. They’re our friends. They’re our friends from college. Think about some of the things you did with your friends in college. Yeah. Those friends. They don’t judge you based on quality of food. And – bonus – they’re typically honest with you.

The result? They liked it! In fact, they actually said it was very good. Of course, we’re our own harshest critics, so I should add: we liked it too! Did we completely nail it? No, not quite. Was it way better than our first batch? Yes, definitely. Was it the launchpad of our latest and greatest addiction hobby? You betcha!

Adventures in Ice Cream Part 1 – A Little Back Story

One of the hobbies we’ve picked up over the last few months has been making ice cream. We originally had written down on some to-do list – perhaps even a New Year’s resolution list – that we wanted to “make more ice cream”. It seemed more of a distant when-we-have-more-free-time-hahaha-when-do-we-ever-have-free-time kind of resolution. But then we decided to have our friends over for dinner (because we love our friends, and because it seems to be our only real motivation to clean our apartment, or at least throw everything that was in the living area into the bedroom), and we decided to try making ice cream for dessert. Now, we are not really newbies when it comes to making ice cream. We’ve tried recipes out of several books, including the ice cream maker manual (more info on the ice cream maker in later posts). We’ve experimented ever so slightly on our own, and we’ve gleaned a bit more from the internet. That, however, has still been a fairly sporadic journey spanning several (10?) years and has produced only 3 batches of ice cream that I will confidently describe as really really good. So even though we are not new to making ice cream. We are quite new to making good ice cream.

Enter Jeni’s Splendid ice cream making book. We found this book about a year ago in a fantastic little store in Durham, NC. We were both instantly drawn to its clean artsy look, the interesting flavors, and the first section describing many of the essential tools and processes of making ice cream. We splurged. We read it cover to cover. We picked out a nice summer flavor to try-Basil and Candied Pine Nuts. And we made it. We followed the directions as exactly as we could. It turned out, well, okay. The flavor was good, but the texture was simply gummy. And yet, it was the kind of ‘okay’ that leaves you thinking you can fix it-that there must be something you can tweak to turn it from ‘okay’ to ‘iscream’. So we were not entirely turned off of her method. But we did put the book down for the rest of the year. We’d look at it now and again, but we were busy, and we didn’t have time to tweak recipes, and we were always full of excuses.

That is until we decided to try it – let’s see if we can get it right – for our friends.

(Read on: Adventures in Ice Cream Part 2 – Vanilla Can Still Be an Adventure)

Adventure Re-cap: Westlander Winter of Fun

Ok, I do believe winter has officially packed up and left. I opened the windows for only the second time this spring, and only the first time in the morning, and I realized that the Westlander Winter of Fun (WWF) has officially transitioned. Trees are blossoming. The daffodils are out in force, and the exploding sound of birds everywhere almost drowns out the traffic. Ok, that last one was definitely an exaggeration. But they are loud.

So I think it’s officially time for a brief re-cap of the WWF in all it’s glory.

First off, we spent numerous days making various flavors of ice cream using Jeni’s Splendid recipe book. We even did a trial of 4 batches of the same flavor (The Richest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World) and taste tested those against each other and Jeni’s own with friends. More on everything ice cream in another post.

You’ve already heard about our adventure in x-country skiing and snowshoeing, but two other winter sports also managed their way into our schedule making for great times – downhill skiing and ice skating. We have an ice skating rink a block from where we live! Next winter, lots more ice skating.

We took one particularly cold day and stayed in and made a fort in the living room. Yes, the kind with blankets and pillows held up by chairs and stacks of books and such. Yes, it was just as awesome now as it was in childhood. Yes, there were cookies and milk involved. Yes, we pretended the floor was lava and lept onto pillows and towels to get around. No, we don’t have kids.

The sheet fort in all it's glory. — The sheet fort in all it’s glory.

Accessing the fort while avoiding the lava flow. Fire island FTW!

Since we didn’t know too many people in the city we’ve pushed ourselves to get a bit more involved. This manifested itself in a couple of hikes with a Philly Hiking and Adventure Meetup Group, a night out with the New In Town Meetup Group, a few nights out with a knitting Meetup Group (that was just me though. Brian wasn’t quite as excited about that one), and several Sundays worth of platforms with the Ethical Humanist Society followed by brunch anywhere and everywhere downtown.

And speaking of brunch, there was, of course, a lot of food delirium to be had. And I’m not really talking about the food we made here at home, though that was also awesome and kept us eating relatively healthily through the winter. I’m talking about restaurant meals we’ve ooed and aahed over as we sampled the city’s treats: Amada (a special dinner for the birthday boy), Parc (a special brunch for the birthday girl, though this really falls under spring), Raw (delish sushi!), Pat’s and Geno’s (a full cheesesteak experience, but we like Jim’s more), Farmicia (the burger, oh that burger), and Dandelion (the fish and chips), to name a few. A special thanks goes to our wonderful family for the Christmas gift certificates that have allowed us to enjoy this deliciousness!

We’ve also tried (and for now at least failed) to build a bit of a yoga practice (body bending, stretching, and resistance is always an adventure for us). We’ve tried out meditation and have had a bit more success sticking with that-the Monday night classes that is. Practicing beyond that has still been a struggle. And as the colder weather has subsided a bit, we’ve gotten back into attempting to build up a ~~running~~ jogging practice. Fingers are crossed for an injury free experience! (This does mean far fewer TED videos, though.)

And finally, we spent some time with long-time friends both local and remote (and their babies born and unborn!). And that, of course, kicked a**.

Admittedly, the WWF was a blast. However, if all that sounds like a whirlwind-especially since it falls on top of two full time jobs and one long commute-you’re right. It was. While I realize it might sound like we’re tooting our own horn with the re-cap, we will humbly lay down that horn and admit that we are definitely exhausted by it all. And now, really, we sort of just want a nap. So we’ll be hibernating for the next few weeks while we take a bit of a break from the WWF. And maybe for the rest of spring and summer we’ll take a longer term approach to our adventures.