Got a text on Friday from Don that, after hosting 1500 hikers this season, Ziggy and the Bear, trail angels at PCT mile 210, were no longer allowing hikers to overnight at their place, so I put a sign up at my place, so hikers would be prepared.

A few of us hiked down to Tule Spring to do a closer inspection of the spring, after a thru hiker season with no functioning water source.

Despite pretty thorough investigation, we could not find the spring box anywhere. Some people had hypothesized that the spring was actually dry, but there is evidence that there is still plenty of water bubbling up from underground. We were able to locate several places where seeps were sending up a gallon+ per minute.

It’s hard to make out in this picture, but there is a small flow visible in the center that I estimated to be approximately two gallons per minute. There were a few other seeps in the surrounding 100 sq ft.

We confirmed that the fire tank is still empty, so the system hasn’t fixed itself. CA State Park does not seem interested in fixing it, which is a shame, since this is the only natural, reliable water source in the 38 miles between Lost Valley Spring @PCT mile 120 and Live Oak Spring @PCT mile 158. Obviously, several well-based water sources, including caches, provide water in this interval, including the (we had hoped) temporary cache where the PCT crosses Tule Spring Truck Trail.

I am usually the supplier of postcards, with my two custom cards that I give away to hikers who pass by. However, this week, I was on the receiving end: got a postcard from a hiker who wrote to express appreciation for the plant guides in my Little Free Library. Pretty cool.

PS – Got the book back in the mail on Saturday.

 

 

I left the notebook requesting hiker comments on PCT 145 Little Free Library for the upcoming article in Adventure Journal (described here) for a second week. When I checked on May 21, there were a few more comments:

I removed the notebook and copy of the issue of the magazine.

Following up on last week’s post about the article on my Little Free Library, I got some create comments on my Little Free Library. You can see the results here.

Thanks to Tom (who helped me cart the tank from Tractor Supply in Hemet to my place) and Carl (who helped me grade the raised platform for the tank), PCT 145 now has a new 550 gallon tank just below the picnic tables, available for hiker water.

The two signs on the tank read: “Tank is filled by hand from neighbor’s [read: MY] well. Please take only what you need” and “WARNING: Water in tank should be filtered before drinking.” It’s a little late for this thru hiker season, but it is in place now for the southbounders this year and all hikers and equestrians in subsequent years.

I filled it with ~170 gallons over three trips, just to see how the tank handles having some water in it. The spigot is working great, but one of the set of threads looks like it might be leaking every so slightly (a drip per minute), so I may need to readjust that. Once I think everything is good to go, I’ll fill it all the way.

As a security to keep people from accidentally contaminating the water, I screwed the plug for the upper opening in from the inside of the tank and put a locking mechanism on the top:

 

Not sure how this came to be, but Adventure Journal plans on running a piece on my Little Free Library in their next issue. I got an email from the article’s author asking for hiker quotes about the library. Since this weekend’s traffic was so light because of the weather, I wasn’t able to interview a hiker to gather comments. As an alternative, I opted to repeat a trick from last year’s comments notebook on water caches: I placed a small notebook and letter asking hikers to comment. The letter and notebook are attached to the copy of the Journal that they author left when he came to photograph it. You can see the results below. I’ll check it again in a few days to see if there is anything “quotable” that I can pass along.

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.