The weather over the MLK holiday weekend in Anza was ideal for riding, so Gracie and I headed north on the PCT. Got this shot of Santa Rosa and Toro Peaks in the background from the PCT just north of the second Table Mountain Truck Trail crossing.

Saturday I hiked from my place PCT north to Highway 74. Sunday I decided to continue my reconnoiter south from my place to Coyote Canyon Road. Because the precipitation on this portion of the trail, which is lower in elevation and south facing, likely fell as rain, the chance of trail erosion from the 3+ inches of rain that fell that week was much higher. Plus, there is a nasty boulder that has been looming over the trail for years on the north slope of Nance Canyon, always threatening to let loose at the next big rain, and I wanted to check that it had not fallen and taken a portion of trail with it.

I left just as a heavy fog was lifting. I got a nice shot of an unnamed side canyon on Table Mountain (mile 144.3) with some fog still clinging to the mountainside.

The 3 mile portion of the PCT south of my place has been taken over by  large-scale pot growers and every time I walk this way, a new one has popped up (or a new grow house has appeared). The following pictures were all taken from the PCT with my iPhone. (All can be clicked on to view detail.)

FYI – If you are a hiker or equestrian passing through this area, the people at these pot farms are not nice. Stay on the trail and do not (DO NOT!) attempt to go and see what they are up to.

Once past all this nastiness, I had a lovely hike down into Nance Canyon. I was hoping that, with all the rain, Nance Creek would be flowing (as it has done reliably through the spring until two years ago), but, alas, it was dry. The picture on the left shows where the PCT crosses over the “creek”, now better named a dry wash.

The north-facing side of Nance Canyon has several boulders with beautiful displays of multi-colored lichens. Here is an example:

So many people pass through looking only for the vistas — the views on a grand scale — and the miss the beauty under their boot soles.

I hiked out of Nance Canyon to Coyote Canyon Road to check that the guard posts preventing ATV access were still in place. — Everything looked good, so I reversed my tracks and headed home.

The only damage from the recent rains was a very small landslide on the south face of Nancy Canyon. I pushed and kicked the fallen rocks off the down side of the trail in a matter of minutes and was on my way.

With our first El Nino storm of the 15-16 winter, I decided to spend Saturday checking trail conditions on the portion of the PCT from my place (mile 145.4) north to where the PCT crosses Highway 74 (mile). I assumed that most of the 3+ inches of precipitation that week had fallen in the form of rain, which meant possible landslides and/or erosion on the trail tread in “the usual” problematic spots that the Trail Gorillas need to patch every year.

The 2 miles up to the main ridge of Table Mountain was uneventful. — The trail was still a bit wet, but nothing significant. As soon as I hit the other (the north-facing) side of the ridge, I was surprised by 4 inches of snow. I’ve come to learn that the desert mountains are funny that way. — That side of Table Mountain remains permanently frozen from January through mid-March, even when just a quarter mile away (and at the same elevation) the south-facing slope is unfrozen — even balmy. Precipitation that fell as snow melts immediately because the ground is so much warmer.

 

I love being the first human to walk on snow, because the number of tracks show us that we are not alone. I followed this small canine — fox or small coyote — whose paw print is captured in the photo for over a mile on the trail that morning.

 

One of my favorite places on this stretch of the PCT is this overlook of Horse Canyon that I affectionately call “Anza’s Grand Canyon” for its beautiful erosion patterns and steep, cliff-like sides.

I made it to Highway 74 only to find several cars with adults and kids pulled off at the PCT parking area engaged in a brutal snowball fight. I was thinking of walking to Paradise Valley Cafe for one of their famous Jose Burgers, but decided I needed to get home, so I headed back, retracing my steps.

Because the precipitation fell as snow, there was no damage to report on this section of the PCT to the Trail Chief for California Section B.

With last week’s snow just a memory, I thought I’d spend this weekend prepping my hiker & equestrian rest stop for the winter. I removed the water tank I used for automatically watering the future shade tree and put a new coat of shellac on the picnic table. I also re-painted the front of my library, which had a lot of peeling paint. I brought my banjo with me, so that I could do a bit of playing after the work was done and shot this photo.

While I was practicing, my neighbor Carl rode up on his horse and we chatted a bit, then he rode off on the trail.

I noticed that two books that were very special to me, Thoreau’s Walden and Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude had disappeared from the library. In their place was a guide to identifying trees in the Sierra Nevada.

We got our first snow in Anza on the day after Thanksgiving. It was falling when I woke up at 6am and continued to snow until about 9am. All told, we got ~2.5 inches a fairly wet snow. The sun came out in the afternoon and it was mostly gone, except on the north sides of hills, by the end of the day. I went out with my camera and got some nice shots of snow-covered redshank.

 

My first nobo thru hiker season saw about 20 books swap out of my Little Free Library. Many of the initial books I used to stock the library were random paperbacks purchased a-box-for-five-dollars at my regional public library. — Not books hand selected for this “special” audience. So, I had the bright idea of inviting my friends and colleagues to contribute to my little free library, and sent out the following call:

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Dear friends and colleagues,

As many of you know, I own property abutting the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) in Southern California and offer thru hikers, local hikers, and equestrians emergency water, shade and — as of spring 2015 — a Little Free Library with a variety of books to take for free.

My property is 145 miles from the Mexican border and most thru hikers pass by during their second week on the trail. I enjoy interacting with hikers and talking with them about their experiences so far and their reasons for starting this adventure. I love the diversity of their responses — responses that point to one thing all the thru hikers have in common: transition. A PCT thru hike is marking a transition or serving as a means to force a transition from one period of their life to another.

I am seeking paperback donations to my Little Free Library on the theme ‘transition.’ If there is a book that meant a lot to you during a period of transition or transformation in your life and you are interested in participating in a brief conversation with a PCT thru hiker about it, read on. The book can be in poor condition, but it must be lightweight. (Thru hikers obsess about the weight in their packs.). Include a note with a few sentences describing the significance of the book to you. Provide me with your mailing address and I will place your note and a stamped postcard addressed to you in the book, along with instructions to the hiker who picks up that book to drop the postcard in a mailbox once they are done. (Note: there is no assumption that the book will be returned to you, so do not donate a book you are not willing to give away.)

If you wish to donate a book, reply to me and we’ll figure out a way for you to get the book to me.

Most thru hikers on the PCT hike south to north, passing by my property in late spring. A smaller group hikes in the other direction and will be passing by my property in the fall and early winter. I’m accepting donations now through spring 2016. I already have a large assortment of random paperbacks and do not need additional general books to stock the library.

Feel free to pass this “invitation” on to others you believe might be interested.

Happy trails,
Mary

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Time will tell how many contributions I receive. In the meantime, I went to my local used book store and purchased four paperbooks that have all been very meaningful to me in helping me develop into the person I am now. Here’s the titles I’ve added to my little free library:

• Thoreau’s Walden
• Emerson’s Essays (first and second series)
• Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
• Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude

I also bought a bunch of used nature guides to develop a reference section of books that are not supposed to be removed. Perhaps I was a librarian in some previous life.

Early April 2015 saw pretty light traffic on the trail near my place, so I decided I could afford to do something really lavish: set up some special treats for Easter weekend. I had a stuffed animal chick that I set up along the trail and left a note inviting hikers to some treats left by The Easter Bunny. I bought several quarts of fresh strawberries and raspberries, several pounds of grapes and bananas and some baby carrots and left them along with the “usual” thru hiker season treats (ice water, sodas and oranges) in a cooler under the picnic table. A came back a couple hours later and met several hikers hovering over the cooler. — Success!!

While I was at it, I bought a bag of those hollow plastic eggs and filled them with little hard candies — sour balls, fire balls, root beer balls, butterscotch disks — and hung them from the redshank next to the picnic tables, inviting hikers to “find” an egg.

Responses in my notebook shows that these special treats were appreciated.

 

Quite by accident, I got into the library business. I occasionally left topical reading materials in my hiker box during thru hiker season — an issue of Backpacker or Communicator — only to discover that missing the next time I checked the box and replaced with a different magazine or book. What was going on?

I decided to leave a couple books that had been swapped for the magazines and see what happened. Next week, those books were gone and there were other ones in their place. Apparently, there is a need for a hiker book swap, and who better than me, a former college professor, to set that up. So, I decided to make it official and encourage hikers to swap (or take) a book from my collection. A friend mentioned to me that there was an organization — littlefreelibrary.org — that was all about encouraging people to set up small libraries for people passing by to stop and, as the motto states, “Take a book – Return a book.”
So, I bought some construction supplies at my local Home Depot and created my very own little free library. I christened it “PCT 145 Little Free Library” with the tagline “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find” and got it registered with the LFL organization. It can be found on their “Map a Library” page if you search for it. (It is easiest to locate quickly if you search for Steward’s Name = PCT.) I initially stocked it with paperbacks I bought at a book sale held by my local library. In the meantime, I’ve come up with an alternate way to stock it with books that might be more relevant to PCT hikers.

It was set up in time for the height of the 2015 nobo thru hiker season and has been a big hit, both in terms of the number of times it has been photographed by hikers and posted on their blogs and the number of books that have been exchanged. This is definitely something I’ll continue in the future.

I re-stock my cache with fresh water every week. After a couple years of disposing of unused water by pouring it on the ground, I got the bright idea to plant a native cottonwood tree (a fast grower, I was assured by the woman who worked at the garden center) near the picnic tables to provide future shade, and dump the unused water on that. I was in the process of digging the hole to receive the tree when two sobo thru hikers, Dirt Stew and Dormouse, wandered by and we chatted for a few minutes. They documented my efforts with a photo on their hiker blog, https://just2hikers.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/idyllwild-to-julian/, and ambled off to leave me to the task.

This was a five-year-old tree, seriously root bound, with dozens of roots coming out the bottom of the planter and forming a tangled mess. Several hours later, and well after dark, I finally freed the roots of the plastic, tried to spread them out in the hole I had dug, and … voila! … celebrated as the tree started its new life.