Point Reyes National Seashore

Date: April 19th 2008

Time: 8:30 am - 12:00 Noon

Distance: 8 miles

Elevation change: ~1500 feet

Weight: Mehul 22 lb

It was Saturday evening, and I was alone. Priya and Ved are still in India, actually just leaving for their return journey. Kamal / Vandana were busy with Vandana's grandma, so when I didn't receive Kamal's call the night before, I didn't bother to disturb them in the morning and started my solo journey to Point Reyes National Seashore.

I've an attraction for Pt. Reyes somehow! Especially the road that leads to the location is very beautiful. On the way to the Pt. Reyes, I went thru SF, Golden Gate Bridge and Hwy 1. Driving on GG Bridge at 7:00am reminded me of the SF Half Marathon. Enjoying the beautiful view of seashore on highway 1, arrived at Bear Valley visitor center of the Pt. Reyes at 8:30ish. I grabbed the map from the visitor center and started hiking on Bear Valley trail. Temperature was about 46 ⁰F and it was a bit windy, so I put on another layer of clothing on top of my running attire.

Bear Valley trail is an almost flat trail that leads to the seashore – roughly 4 miles from the visitor center. The vista at the seashore where Bear Valley trail ends is gorgeous – the creek creates an arch in the rock and meets the ocean. But I wanted some elevation training, so after going just 0.2 miles on Bear Valley, I turned right on the Mt. Wittenberg trail. Besides, I’ve been on the Bear Valley trail may three or four times, so wanted something new. Mt. Wittenberg trail was totally awesome – sudden elevation gain (about 1350’ of gain in first 1.6 miles), much denser douglar fir forest and barely a foot wide trail. I was feeling the 22 lb on my back! J

After about 2 miles of uphill, I reached the Sky Trail, which goes on the top of the mountain ridge. It was very windy, but due to thick forest not much wind was felt at ground level. It would be a mini storm at the Pt. Reyes lighthouse. Well, I continued my hike towards the Sky Trail south. I met a few hikers / back-packers on the way. After about a mile on the Sky trail, I took right on the Woodward Valley trail that goes directly west to the ocean. I continued on this trail for a about a mile – and at 10:30 am or so, I stopped. I had some time constraints, so didn’t go all the way to the ocean, instead enjoyed the view of it from the top, roughly a mile away from the shore and returned. At the junction of Woodward Valley and Sky trails, I found a nice cut log and had a mini breakfast on it. I got rid of my “plastic pants” as it was getting hot.

Then I started my journey way back on Sky trail. I was feeling very energetic and lots of creative, positive thoughts were popping in my head. It’s amazing what a 2 week India vacation and nature’s company can do J. Sky trail was not so wide in this area and I yielded to an elderly couple that was coming on the way. I just had shorts at that time and I brushed my right leg with a small plant. It gave me a very burning sensation though! It didn’t look like poison oak, but the burning was such that I realized that it’s not just a bruise. I poured some water on it and rubbed a bit. Another group of on-coming hikers told me that the plant was so-called “stinging needles”. It has a lot of microscopic needles that would cause skin irritation. The burning sense was gone after 15-20 minutes but there was a strange sensation and the area was extra sensitive for the rest of the day.

Anyways, on the way back, instead of taking the same Mt. Wittenberg trail, I took the Meadow trail on my right. The elevation loss was again very sharp. There were indeed a few meadows on the way. It met the Bear Valley trail on a junction of small creek meeting Bear Valley creek (“triveni”!). That spot was 0.8 miles away from the parking lot. There was a constant natural music of the creek flowing parallel to the trail up to the trail head.

I finished at Noon – so the whole 8 miles were done in 3.5 hours. I noticed that I had to stretch hamstrings, gluts and few other muscle groups. Right leg was complaining a bit. It felt funny after I removed my backpack for a while!

Girnar

Girnar, India

Date: March 27th, 2008

Time: 6:00 am – 10 am

Distance: Roughly 3 miles?

Elevation change: Roughly 2005 feet

Weight: Mehul 0 lb

Junagadh is now my home town in India – in the west most state Gujarat. Junagadh is on the western foothills of Girnar, which is a small mountain of about 2000 feet height. I had to Google a lot for the exact elevation. One site confidently reports 2005 feet. Roughly 2000 feet seems correct. Wikipedia reports 3600 feet, but I can tell that that’s way off. Girnar is a big pilgrimage place for Hindus (and Jain, if you consider them different J). There are wide, well maintained lava stone steps all the way to the top. Somehow, people believe that there are 9,999 steps to the top of the mountain. However, the steps are clearly numbers with the interval of 50 steps and it counts about 4,500 to the first summit (Ambaji temple). It’s pretty much straight up path (no ups and downs) and if you consider 6” height for every step, it would result in to some 2,225’.

Anyways, I wanted to climb Girnar couple of times during my 2 week stay in Junagadh, but it happened only once. One more time I went hiking on the “Pradaxina Marg”, a route that goes around the main mountain through the surrounding hills. Similar to Gir forest (http://www.iit.edu/~bhatmeh1), Girnar and surrounding hills are also covered with deciduous forest. There’s a big variety of fauna and flora, including a lot of mammals. Lions and leopards are found in Girnar too. However, they don’t dare to come near crowded pilgrimage places.

To avoid the heat, me and my cousin Maulik started the climb at 6 am in the morning. There was a faint twilight at that time and there were many people who started the hike. We kept going at comfortable speed and we climbed first 1000 steps in about 20 minutes. I had some time constraints and we weren’t sure whether we’ll go all the way to the top or not. But we kept going and soon we reached the straight vertical up lava stones portion of the mountain. Sun already rose by that time, but we were on the west side of the mountain, so sunlight was not hitting us directly. I noticed that besides two of us, almost nobody was wearing sports shoes. Most people were in their flip-flops. Other change that I noticed was that bottled water and “water pouch” were omnipresent. Old style water stops with earth-pots were rarity. Being environment friendly, we stopped at a place where a young village woman was selling water from the clay-pot. Her 1.5 year old son was playing in the “shop”. I asked her how can she manage to get water so high. She told me that it was from “Gaumukhi Ganga” (water dripping from the lava stones in a nearby cave). Indeed the water was cold and with a very distinct mineral taste of mountain stones.

Moving on, we met a monkey family enjoying the early morning sun. Took a few pics and video shooting of them. Then we moved on, and in no time, we reached the top (Ambaji temple). We noticed that we took 1 hour 30 minutes to reach the top. My regular hiking speed is about 2 miles per hours, so it must have been roughly 3 miles. There was a helipad built on the top, we enjoyed the view of the surrounding areas from there. I saw the “Bordevi” pilgrimage, where I enjoyed a week long scout camp during my high school years (a nice place in the middle of the forest, about 8 km away from where we begun our hike). We identified various dams in the area and couple of towns etc. I wasn’t so keen about going in the temple, but when Maulik insisted, I paid a visit.

On the way back, we stopped again at the water-woman. On the way to the top, I paid a little extra money to her. On the way down, when I had difficulty finding the change, she said it’s ok if I don’t have change. Her generosity touched me - she must be from a very poor family, she must have figured that I’m a “tourist”, and she knew that I happily overpaid on my way up. Still, she had no intention to rob us. Fortunately, my cousin had change to pay for the water and we happily move on.

We took it real slow to go down. It took us an hour to reach the bottom. It was getting real hot around 10 am – the temperature must be reaching 30 degrees centigrade at that moment (or may be more). This was a real prep for the Grand Canyon in that sense.