Agua Caliente Creek: The Reunion

Heart palpitations took me to urgent care on Thursday morning. I had a thumping in my neck and chest that was occurring for 3 days before I Web MD’d my fate and immediately booked it to my nearest Kaiser Permanente. After two hours, I was laying titties out on a gurney, getting an EKG while my husband looked worried and a little amused when the nurse had to lift my boob to take off a sticky pad stuck under there to measure my heart rate or whatever. The doctor came in and told me I’d be receiving a heart monitor and I’d have to track the palpitations. “We’re supposed to go on a backpacking trip this weekend,” I said, “does that mean we shouldn’t go?” An even deeper look of concern registered on Travis’ face. “Oh no, you should be good. We don’t know why you’re having the palpitations but your heart seems normal.” Comforting? Uh, not really. Green light? Yes!

Fast forward to Saturday morning and we were going to go to the same location of my very first backpacking trip: Agua Caliente Creek on the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s approximately 4.5 miles north of the town of Warner Springs, CA. I had been hiking a trail of similar length and elevation gain for a while before doing this backpacking trip but man, adding gear on your back where you typically only have 1.5 liters of water to tote makes a big difference. Thankfully, my backpack was pretty squared away and loaded with water it only came out to 17 lbs. but still, that’s a 14 lb. difference from my usual hikes.

The first mile or so is pretty flat. It’s about 3.5 miles to get to where we were going to camp and it was along the Pacific Crest Trail. The next two miles are essentially all uphill. What was great about it though was that the grade of the trail was so gentle that my legs didn’t feel like they were going to explode at any point. I didn’t really feel a ton of exertion but the heart rate monitor on my watch said otherwise. Since I didn’t want to die in the middle of a trail and have Travis drag my size 18 body down a ravine and back to civilization, I decided to take things painfully slow. He would hike at his normal pace, which for me is practically jogging, and disappear up the trail and I would have Tokischa in my ear rapping about being a “Perra en calor” while I took minuscule footsteps to keep the heart rate down but stay on beat. Eventually I would catch up and we would take a sip of water and he’d bound off again and my sloth approach would continue.

There were several PCT hikers that passed us. Travis had been in that exact spot of the PCT, to that exact day, seven years prior and I pictured him as one of those hikers flying past me. It made me wonder what brought them to start their trail adventure to take my mind off not dying from my heart rate. When we finally reached the bottom of the hill where we would run into the creek, it was more beautiful than I remembered. We had to cross the creek a couple of times and the water was flowing. You heard frogs and the sun was still high in the sky but we were protected by the canopy of the trees. It was gorgeous. I highly recommend this spot. There’s plenty of places to set up and plenty of water around this time of year to fill up on. We went to the exact same spot that we had set up on my first backpacking trip and set up camp with our new tent. We were surrounded by thru hikers setting up camp as well.

We sat besides the creek to filter water and drink our post-workout drink mixes. Unfortunately, the water filters that we had were fucking awful. In the past we used Sawyers but this time we used Platypus and it sucked. It took me 20 minutes to filter 4 liters of creek water into two separate bottles. That didn’t include the refilling of water or the occasional unscrewing to let the water bottle inflate to add more pressure. My hands were cramping and I was so pissed I wanted to kick over my water bottle with the attached filer but the thoughts of getting Giardia if I didn’t properly filter my water haunted me. To look on the bright side of things, the stream was flowing and the air was cool. I couldn’t hear the Lynyrd Skynyrd being played at a nearby campsite and instead just took in the nature around me. How lucky was I that this reprieve was an hour and a half and 3.5 miles of huffing and puffing from my cramped apartment? We were able to talk to the thru hikers about their journeys and what was going on in their lives. We talked for what seemed like hours over dinner and snacks until it was too cold and the sprinkles from the sky began to turn into rain. Shout out to our PNW friend RJ who was hiking in a dress and shared her persimmons with me!

It began to rain lightly around 10pm. Lightly tapping onto our tent while we laid on our inflatable sleeping pads, the rain was lulling me to sleep. My eyelids were heavy and my down quilt was tucked tightly around me while I rubbed my legs together like a cricket with sheer delight. Then, when I was on the brink of being dead to the world, like a crack of lightning, the shocking urge to pee hit me. Like a woman possessed, I began the molting of the quilt cocoon, the trading of the down jacket for the rain jacket, the begrudging pulling on of the hiking boots all while trying to do so in a space the size of a MF coffin while my husband slept angelically besides me. I emerged from the capsule tent and was being pelted by rain while trying to find an area to pee but it seemed like everywhere I was looking to go felt too close to the PCT hikers. I eventually just said fuck it and turned off my headlamp and squatted because I wasn’t sure whether I was going to feel more wet from the rain or my bladder on the verge of exploding. The deed was almost done and then I heard something rustle behind me. I froze. Light on. The rustling got louder. Stream intensified. I heard heavier rustling that was approaching me. I shot up and bolted. I launched back into that tent soaking wet convinced that something was about to take a bite out of my ass and not in the way that I wanted. I felt like a little kid hiding behind a sheet from whatever thing lurked out in the night. Usually roaming outside in the dark is fine for me but damn, no me gusta.

In the morning, even after trading out my old closed-cell foam pad (which felt like sleeping on a sheet of paper) for a wide NEMO inflatable sleeping pad, I still woke up stiff. Travis looked over at me when he heard my old man groans and said, “That’s normal.” I woke up with a headache, my palpitations thumping even stronger in my neck, and nauseated. I didn’t think that was completely normal. I guess burning 3,000 calories from hiking the day before and not being able to hydrate as much as I would have liked because my water filter had the stream strength of a 90 year old man did not help. I forced myself to eat a protein bar and some Frito’s, the breakfast of champions, and to chug the water I did have. We began packing up and it was exhausting because I felt so sick. Travis decided then would be the perfect time to take an impromptu photo.

Thankfully, the walk back was not nearly as bad as anticipated. At the beginning, Travis was carefully avoiding the poison oak as we criss-crossed the creek and I was just barreling through it because I was going to wash with Dawn soap when I got home anyway. After walking for a bit, the nausea started to dissipate. There were some rollercoasters after we climbed up the initial hill but the majority of the hike back was downhill. Travis and I stayed together for about 75% of the time rather than him leaving me in his dust. We chatted and I had No Doubt playing in my ear and life just felt good.

Side note: Before I get poetic and close this out, I figured out the palpitations. Apparently, my dad gets them too. Whenever he gets severely dehydrated he gets the palpitations. With the combination of my medication, my exertion as of late with the increase of my physical fitness, AND being bad at drinking water over the last few months, it just finally got me to a pretty low level. So I increased my electrolytes and fluid intake quite a bit over a weeklong period following this trip and have maintained a higher level of hydration ever since. No more palpitations! Woo! Back to the regularly scheduled programming:

When we were only a half mile from the car and walking through a meadow where tall grass was blowing in the wind and it looked like waves of yellows, greens, and purples all over, I felt really lucky. The feelings of anxiety surrounding the palpitations in my neck and chest were still there but just a little quieter. My foot was getting a little blister but it didn’t bug me because I was proud that my plantar fasciitis was held at bay by my gentle training. With each passing PCT hiker I saw people hopeful of accomplishing great feats of perseverance and strength, mental and physical. I wished each person good luck and had an urge to hug them and tell them how proud I was that they were going on such an adventure. Probably because I know Travis was in those people’s shoes exactly 7 years before and knew what trials and tribulations he went through. But also the joy.

I don’t have a desire to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Portions of it would be cool to explore. My desires are different and not as grandiose. It did feel good to be mistaken as a thru hiker at times, I won’t lie. It was probably because of the gear that the pandemic bucks bought me but it felt good to see diverse bodies hiking on that trail and have people dare to ask, “What day did you start the trail?” When I don’t always believe in myself, others see it in me. It made me feel capable. It made me feel like I could do and see what I so desire to experience. Therefore, I will keep working to continue to adventure. I hope you do too. Happy Trails.

Agua Caliente Creek —> Beauty: 8/10 Difficulty: 8/10 Distance: 7.32 miles Elevation Gain: 607 ft.