I haven’t been on a trail since a week ago Sunday because the rain just flat
refuses to go away. I have resorted to reading Trail
Journals entries to be reassured that somebody’s getting some hiking
done.
Here’s what’s happening at the moment:
Here’s what the clouds look like over the Pacific Ocean.
All that purple off the coast means rain for the rest of the week.
My consoling thought is that eventually physics will take over — the earth
will tilt on its axis as it does every year, the increase in sunlight falling
over the northern Pacific will cause the weather pattern to return to form and
dry everything up from the end of April till the middle of October. After five
weeks of rain, though, it seems far, far away.
Normally I’d just put on my mud boots and Marmot Precip and slog through it,
but the rain’s been so voluminous the past few weeks that it’s bordering on
a major breech of trail etiquette to chew up trails when they’re this soggy.
Mudslides are happening all over the Bay Area. San Jose usually gets about 2
inches of rain in March; this year we got 6. I know, trivial to rain forest
tribes and their relatives in Seattle, but more wet that we Silicon Valley types
have grown accustomed to.
When I started putting this post together the rain was pounding on the windows
pretty insistently. Now, of course, it has stopped. Murphy’s Law determines
that the minute you post an extended rant about how much the weather sucks,
the weather will change and expose you as a fool.
So fine, I’ll be a fool. I’m up for anything that dries up the mud.
I can’t wait for the sun to come out too. I haven’t been on a trail for a few weeks already. I’m thinking of hitting up Pt. Reyes for an overnight trip as soon as the sun peeks through.
For me rain means no crowds of people. My buddies and I did the Judge Davis trail last Saturday and Sunday. It only rained on us hard for 15 minutes on saturday (while we were setting up the tents as luck would have it). Sunday was misting for the hike out which was nice. Besides three crazy Kayakers running the swollen Cache Creek we saw nobody. Which is ust the was I like it.