Running Noses on the Santiago Trail

Posted on December 23, 2004 in Geocaching Hikes and Trails

It was absurdly easy to imagine ourselves as polar explorers, pushing ourselves against a blizzard except that there was no snow, just the wind. Just the lacerating, piercing, punching, and thieving wind.

I took George Ross out geocaching along the Santiago Trail. As we departed in the morning, a mild gale blew off the hill. It showed every sign of ending by 2 PM as predicted by the weather service when last I saw it. After I checked last night, however, the weather service extended its severe weather alert to 12:00 am on Friday. As we marched towards Vulture Crags and the two caches that I coveted, the intensity of the falling air picked up. Canyons across the divide aimed the gusts at our path: down on the plain, they eased along at less than 25 miles an hour, but on the exposed ridge they exceeded seventy miles an hour. Both of us ended up clinging to our hats. Our noses ran. The only consolation was that the Santa Anas kept them wiped. (Pity anyone downwind from us!)

We found the Fossil Hill and Vulture Crags caches with no problem. To check the loot and sign the log, however, required that we duck behind the two foot tall coastal sage. George played with a plastic slinky while I drew my trademark doodle in the Fossil Hill log; at Vulture Crags, he effected his Proud American pose. One image that I took from there showed the brush distinctly blurred.

The wind was not life-threatening like extreme heat, snow, extreme cold, rain, or a thunderstorm. “It is,” I said to George as we turned around, “an annoyance.”

Hours later, I still dabbed at my runny nose. It was apt that we left a toy of that name at the first cache. The green snot that flew from the wheels reminded us of ourselves.

We had not been Scott of the Antarctic, but it comforted me to think of us as Shackletons.