Came upon these little surfers’ shacks (surfers who get this far have to be pretty motivated). Check out the footing here. Sun getting low, so I started heading back. I got so immersed in beachhcombing I seem to have missed the cliffside trail and by the time I realized this I was pretty far south of it. Sun now setting and of course I had no light and there are very few exits from the beach on this stretch of the coast, with its crumbling steep cliffs. Hmmm… I made the decision to head south where I knew there was an arroyo with a (sort of) trail.
As it got darker, I started to run. Not looking forward to spending the night huddled under a cliff until dawn. Oh yeah, I was lightly dressed, had no cel phone, and it was a new moon, so no help in the luminosity dept. Dumb fuck!
Stress level rising, getting darker, shit! Then — is that a human figure up ahead? Yes, it was, I’d made it to the arroyo and Megan and her 2 kids were heading up the trail. You hop around a flowing creek going up and have to pul lyourself up in 2 places with anchored ropes. After walking through a muddy field, Megan kindly gave me a ride to my truck and I was able to come home to a warm fire, (ahem) big shot of cognac, and good meal.
If it don’t kill you,
it’s good for you.
Good stuff! As Yvon Chouinard says, it's only when you go out without the "ten essentials" that you can have an adventure.
Please at least bring a little flashlight with you next time. Get a Maglite, fer chrissakes!
I had a dream last night, which has mostly dissolved, but i was talking to an older woman, telling her about some kind of adventure that i had just had, which had ended with a "mishap". My face was some banged up, and i was saying to her, "Well, you have to fall off a bridge once in a while . . ."