North Ridge Big Sur 2023-04-22

Maggie started a new job with Pratham USA this April, and the role is remote but primarily west coast based. She is working on the charitable contributions team, and her first big event was this last weekend in San Jose. She came to visit the cottage for the month of April, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to drag her out backpacking. The weather lined up with some free time this weekend, so we decided to head out for an overnight trip.

Maggie hasn’t been out before, so I spent a while looking for a introduction trip. I love Big Sur and the Ventana wilderness, so I thought that I might be able to find something there. The recent rains have washed out sections of the road so the places I’m more familiar with are inaccessible. However, the road that traverses the northern section of the ridge is closed for the same reason. As such, I thought that we might be able to find a spot along the ridge.

We headed out around noon on Saturday. We had hoped to visit Marion on the way through Santa Cruz, but she was off surfing, so instead we stopped at 11th hour coffee and fueled up. I grabbed a coffee, and we shared avocado toast, a quinoa bowl, a biscuit and an earl grey cookie.

I wasn’t sure where the road was closed, so I had picked out a couple options. One was to hike up north ridge road; another was to park at the beginning of the closure and walk along the closed section of HW 1 to get to a trail that would head up the ridge. We got lucky, and the road was open past the Boranda trailhead. This trail would take us right up to Timber Top and the ridge line.

Hiking up on the western aspects as the sun worked its way to the horizon was toasty. I was sweating a bunch, and Maggie and I were both flushed. Despite that, I felt a bit like an overly excited puppy. Having a pack on my back and walking up hill shifted my brain into “backpacking” mode, and I was so psyched to be back out with all I needed on my back. The last time I was backpacking was with Songbird along the AT in New Hampshire, all the way back in June of 2022! Needless to say, it has been a while, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

We made great time up to the ridge, and headed north until we found a knoll off of the west side of the road. Ventana stretched out to the east, and the ocean was off to the western horizon. We set the tent up in a saddle on the ridge, surrounded by a couple big pines. I had bought new poles for my 8 year old Mountainsmith Morrison tent after losing the original set, and in setting up the tent I had to take a section of the poles out to get them to the right size. Despite some decent wind, we were swarmed with a cloud of biting flies as I fumbled around with the poles- Maggie was a great sport for the unpleasant experience.

After finally getting the tent setup, we dove inside and pulled everything out of our bags. We laid out our sleeping pads, fluffed out our sleeping bags, and changed into warmer clothes. I pulled out my hammock and set off to find some well spaced trees, but struck out. Instead I propped myself up against my backpack and read for a while in the tent. When the sun started to set, we made dinner. I introduced Maggie to the joys of hiker trash food- we ate instant rice/lentil/cheddar cheese burritos, sipped wine from a thermos, and nibbled on chocolate.

We settled deep into our sleeping bags when the starts started to come out, and soon realized that the bugs had disappeared. To get a better view of the meteor shower, we took down the tent and set our sleeping pads/bags on-top of it, giving us an unobstructed view of the night sky. Over the course of the evening, Maggie counted 6 shooting stars, and I saw 4 before falling asleep.

The next morning, Maggie and I ate our traditional Sunday waffle breakfast and shared a cup of hot cocoa. We had packed out some frozen waffles, and we toasted them over the flame from my Jetboil stove while shaking the sleep from our eyes. After we had sufficiently woken up, we packed up, hiked back down the hill and drove back up the coast to the Cottage.