The weather Saturday morning didn’t look promising for the big Celebrate Anza event at my property along the PCT. — Low-hanging fog producing a heavy dew on objects within a few minutes, with the threat of rain, didn’t seem like ideal conditions for an outdoor party. But, invited guests were already beginning to arrive for the event, so the show must go on.

Carl and Don were left in charge of raising the big canopy tent and I started shuttling furniture and food from my house to the venue along the trail, with the weather improving a bit with each passing hour. Don ran down to the Anza cache to place a sign informing hikers of the free lunch just up the trail. By 11:30, the threat of rain had passed, and we were left with an overcast sky and chilly temperatures, but otherwise good conditions.

Banjo Player Extraordinaire Adam and I played for the assembled invited guests and hikers.

All told, there were 24 invited guests and somewhere between 25 and 27 hikers. (I lost count for part of the event when I had to run to the truck for my banjo.)

Many of the hikers and guests enjoyed visiting with my horse, Gracie, who was tied up to my hitching post for the event.

One of my favorite indoor-but-hiking-related activities is reading the blog posts that the PCTA aggregates on their site under a section called The Journalist. This time of year is when the blogging hits its peak — no one has quit yet (either hiking or blogging) and there is an interesting mix of people in their early days on the trail and those still one or more days away, trying to express the odd mix of excitement and dread they are experiencing, or denying it by obsessing on their gear choices.

I rarely follow these hiker blogs. Once they leave my neck of the woods and start describing landscapes that I cannot pull up on the backside of my closed eyelids, their adventures lose interest for me. Occasionally, once or twice a year, I stumble upon the blog from a hiker that hits a chord. I follow them.

I stumbled upon such a blog this evening as I was perusing the most recent posts in the aggregator. There are currently about ten of us, trail angels, Trail Gorillas, others who touch the trail in different ways, engaged in a volley of emails planning what to do in light of the failure of Tule Spring. All but one of the people mentioned in this post are on that email thread. So, now I am following the Zenlightened Voyager. I’m sorry I missed you at my place, but I am glad that I could touch you in another way.

On Sunday, “Trail Angel” Tom confirmed the worst — there was no water going into the tank for Tule Spring, which means either the spring is dry, or the obstruction is on the “tough” (upstream) side of the fire tank. So, it looks like water caches will be critical along this stretch of the PCT for the remainder of the thru hiker season. This picture, taken by Tom from inside the tank, tells the sorry tale.

So, strategizing how to keep the local water caches stocked is the next step.

Sunday morning, Trail Angel (to be) Allison and I went to the Sandy Road Cache at mile 143.1, so that I could show her where things were. Chip must have just been there, because the cache was fully stocked.

Got a text from Don on Saturday evening that there had been a report that Tule Spring (mile 137), a very important water source for thru hikers on the southern edge of Anza, had failed. So, I drove out first thing Sunday morning to check it out.

Tule Spring is set up to flow into a large fire tank, which in turn feeds a valve-controlled pipe, so accessing the water in the spring is actually done via this tank and valve. Sure enough, the water was coming out in drips, rather than the usual torrent. (I estimated a flow rate of somewhat less than a liter an hour. — Not nearly enough for the hikers who rely on this source.)

I had brought some water and other stuff with me, in the event that this is what I would discovered, so I immediately set up a bucket under the pipe outflow to capture every drop, in the hopes that, even at this slow rate, it would have time to fill partially between hikers.

 

 

I also scouted the best route down to Tule Creek, below the pipe, which still had a small flow. I wanted to try to prevent hikers from using the route closest to the pipe, which was very steep and was already showing significant signs of erosion just from a few sets of boots. We had had some rain the previous week, and I knew that there wouldn’t be water flowing in this creek for long, but in the meantime, hikers would want to access it.

I had brought some water with me and set up a small cache — 30 gallons — just enough to see the hikers who had not gotten the word at either Trail Angel Mike’s or Warner Springs about the failure of Tule Spring, and would not have enough to get them through to the next water source.

Once I had a cell signal, I sent confirmation of the ring failure to Don and pctwater, texted Trail Angel Mike to alert hikers going by his place to really stock up on water, and called the Warner Springs Community Hall to also alert hikers.

The last thing I did was up my cache to 64 gallons and top off the Sandy Road cache at mile 143.1.

What started as a VERY windy day on Saturday turned into an ideal day for a group hike of the PCT from my place to “Anza’s Grand Canyon” and back. The event was sponsored by the Anza Borrego Foundation, the non-profit organization that both handles fundraising for land acquisition and offers programming in and related to the Park, as this one. This event was part of their Hikes and Hops series, and ended with beers for the participants at my picnic tables after the hike.

Because of the cold, wet weather we had had over the past week, wildflower blooms were still very close to peak, with both wild canterbury bells and lupine putting on a great show, as did this manzanita.

After a large drug enforcement operation nearby 10 days ago, I had my first opportunity to take a close-up look (from the PCT, of course) of the area. It is so sad, seeing what the pot growers have done (and continue to do) to the segment of this wonderful trail in Anza. While the plants and the pot growers were gone (well, not quite — they were there removing appliances from one of their RVs while I watched from the trail), the RVs and grow houses still stand next to the trail. The plastic has been partially pulled away and is starting to break away from the frames. Soon enough, it will break totally free and become yet more trash that the pot growers have “contributed” to the area.

Here are a few pictures of what remains:

Our local paper, the Anza Valley Outlook, had a nice news story and op-ed about the bust and what the pot growers are doing to the area.

It is hard for me to write a post only about the ugliness that morally ugly people are bringing to the area, so I will close this post with a couple images I shot on the same day from our little piece of the PCT.