The idea behind this run was to do the last 4 miles of the route we took for the Dirt Inspires 8 Miler. Sherri hadn’t seen it, and I was happy to revisit. We had the route map from the race, water and my memory.
It was quite a lot of fun, and we enjoyed conversation interspersed with checking the map at crossroads and me saying what I remembered from the route: there’s the incline, there are the irises, there are the crooked madrones, and now here we are at the ridge, and look, there is the ocean, you can see the beach! Wow, I thought, it must have been really foggy on race day, because though the view was lovely, you could not see the beach. Well, we’ve got another little hill and then we will see the mountain tops as before, and soon after that begins the descent.
Only that’s not what happened, we never got the mountain view I remembered, but immediately followed the main trail downward. Hm, not quite as I recall. Well, the different weather must be why. Look, here’s a familiar outcropping of rock! But followed by an unfamiliar trail sign and more sloping downwards, and you know, I remember the ridge drop off being on the left, and here it is more so on the right. I had enough doubt to convince Sherri to turn around, hiking back up the trail to find the little offshoot trail that heralds our descent. We must have just missed it. But the only trail we found looked nothing like the one we sought. After consulting the map some more and walking even further down we surmised we must have just not come to it yet, and found items on the map to support the theory. We did notice that the trail names on the signs were not on our map, but thought they just might be too small to have made it. We hiked back up the trail and then ran down to where we were before, passed the sign, and went around the corner, where we found something that very much surprised us. Can you guess what it was? That’s right, it was the End of the Trail. Oh.
Views from the ridge:
OK then, so we turned around again and hiked back up the trail AGAIN. Only at this point does it occur to us that we might be actually on the wrong ridge. So there was a wrong turn somewhere, but we were confused because we actually hadn’t made many turns and all choices were compared against the map and my memory. We at least know how to get back, and on our way we inspect all the trail signs to find evidence of where we should have turned.
At the crossroads of the Skyline to Sea Trail, we finally see that our trails were indeed on the map, just a totally different part of it. Basically, we were on the right trail, just headed in the opposite direction from what we thought! Doh.
Mystery solved, we ran happily down the Skyline to Sea trail back to park HQ and our vehicle, which brought us to our ultimate goal, called bacon and eggs at Heavenly Cafe.
A brief summary of what we learned:
- Trust your instincts. Unless they’re wrong.
- Reading a map does not mean that you are on the part of it that you think you are.
- Going the wrong way does not keep you from enjoying where you are. A totally fun experience.
Epilogue:
Upon our return to the car, we wanted to look at the detailed park map that Sherri had brought (we left it in the car). It took us a few minutes of intent staring to realize that this was the map of an entirely different park. Haha!
