The last trip I went on I slept cold so I got a new sleeping pad with a higher R rating. May I introduce you to the Thermarest Neoair Xlite Woman’s sleeping pad! Sleeping on it in my apartment is great but I really need to test it outside.

Weekends can’t come soon enough!

I told my good friend Dixie about my plans to go out and she was interested in joining! Awesome! She’d never been on a backpacking trip, in fact I think she said she’d only been on a car camping trip maybe once? a long time ago? I love taking people hiking and camping. Sharing nature experiences is the best!

The only thing about that weekend tho . . . the forecast spelled rain. I ask her if she’d be cool with that and she said yes! (Dixie’s mom is always giving her ponchos so this would be a great opportunity to use one of them! She has many many ponchos. I find this hilarious as we live in LA).

I decide we should camp at Hoegees because it’s covered by trees, we’ve been there before, there’s pretty water falls and it’s only two miles from the car (a pretty decent first time trip in my mind). You might recognize it from an earlier post 😉

We spend Saturday morning packing. Need gear? I’ve got ya covered. I have two of everything! My z-packs solplex tent isn’t big enough for two people so I decided to bring my old Black Diamond 4 season 2 person tent. This tent was the thing I bought with my very first paycheck way back in high school. It’s almost 10 years old and I love it so much. (It’s also 10 times heavier than my solplex tent too haha). It’ll be good training to cary it.

We set out and arrive at the trail head around 2 pm. The hike in was a breeze, sunny but cool and refreshing. I swear it smelled like bug spray at every single stream crossing though.

We get to the campsite and it’s completely empty. Dibs on the old cabin foundation spot! We set up inside the old stone walls and discover the floor is solid cement. No worries, the Black Diamond tent is free standing so we don’t use any stakes. We set about gathering sticks and leaves and pretty soon we have a fire going in the old fire place. A few people hike pass and take a picture of our set up. Yeah that’s right, we’re camping in an old cool cabin foundation.

Dixie brought this awesome fire starter her dad gave her. It’s a flint stick with magnesium you flake off into a pile. She got the fire to light right away! that never happens! I consider getting one to keep in my car for emergencies.

We eat macaroni and cheese with broccoli and bacon bits and talk about what it must have been like to be the first person to tame fire. The flames, they mesmerize.

 

It starts to get dark. We hope to see a few stars but the over cast persists.  I turn on my head lamp to help gather more fire wood and we realize a light mist has snuck through the camp.

Dixie finds an awesome snail I’d never seen before and I find a slow moving newt. It starts to sprinkle. Maybe it’s time to put the fire out. (Hoegees is great because they provide buckets and shovels to make this task super easy!) We mix the embers with dirt. I get a little lost trying to find the trickle of a creek to dump water over the mix. It’s hard to see in the mist! We manage to get the fire place decent before it starts to really rain.

Phew!

The sound of rain on a tent fly is probably one of my favorite sounds.

We stay up and talk about life and things and the world. It then starts to really really rain.

It grows from a relaxing pitter patter to a full out roaring cats and dogs down pour. I’m secretly glad I brought the 4 season tent.

I try to drift off but the rain is relentless. I worry this was probably not a good call for a first time backpacking trip. I even start to question whether rain on a tent fly is my favorite sound anymore.

Dixie shakes me awake. It’s still pouring out, everything feels damp. She points to the tent floor and. . . Oh. my. god. The tent is in 4 inches of water. How are we still dry? My 10 year old tent was keeping all that water out some how?! I could see it splashing up the sides! Now I’m openly glad I brought the 4 season tent. Whenever one of us moved the other would kinda bob up and down from the water displacement. It was like we were on a water bed! or the tent was turning into some kind of boat made out of fabric. What is happening? is the creek flooding? I’m completely stunned.

We have to move. It’s 5 am, still pouring buckets, cold and dark out. Am I really going to make us get out of the boat tent? We talk it through a bit more and decide to wait a little for the sun to rise. This is just craziness. We laugh and joke about it. What about our shoes? We left them in the tent’s vestibule, hope they’re still there! I’m scared to look!

The sky lightens. Okay lets do this. I open the door and yep. We’re definitely in a giant pool of water. Never in my entire experience of camping has this happened to this degree ever. Our shoes float hilariously in the vestibule like little boats in a harbor. I worry the water will spill in over the zipper. Packing everything up proves to be very damp and uncomfortable. I am so so glad we were just damp. The amount of water we were sitting in, we should have been soaked. It was a camping miracle! Good job tent! I wish I had gotten a picture but my number one priority was to get everything out of the water and it was still pouring.  Once we got everything packed and out of the tent I got a good look at our predicament. What had happened was, the cement floor prevented the rain from soaking into the ground. I anticipated that, but I didn’t anticipate the stone walls preventing any of it from running off down the hill. We were in a perfectly contained pool. Every where else? completely fine.

Just hilarious, what were the odds! How did I not think to check the stone walls?! I’m usually so good at making nice little trenches to help drain water away. If you ever plan on camping at Hoegees and it’s going to rain, do NOT set up in the chimney cabin foundation!

We lift the tent out of the pool and fold it up into my pack. It feels twice as heavy sopping wet. Well, this will be good practice for when I get wet on the PCT. We decide to head back to the car and do the longer loop another day.

Despite having slept in a pool of water we both are in a great mood. Dixie gets to use one of her ponchos and I get to test out my umbrella!

The rain calms down to a light sprinkle and the woods surrounding the trail sparkle with life. The creek transformed into a roaring stream over night and we carefully pick our way across it several times. I slip on some rocks and get covered in dead leaves. Oops! I love the challenge. Picking the best spots to step on is as much a mental puzzle as it is a physical one. I didn’t bring my hiking poles on this trip and I missed them. They’ll definitely be a stream crossing asset in the future.

  

The rain stops as we continue. The air smells amazing! We find a few newts slowly crawling across the trail. I almost step on one, they look just like tree roots! It’s a wonder to me how some things survive.  We get to the small road climb up to the parking lot and pass a ranger picking up trash. He sees our packs.

“Did you get wet last night?”

Dixie and I laugh.

“Oh did we”

Dixie stops me, what’s that sloshing sound? We pause to investigate. My pack cover had been collecting all the water from the tent in the bottom of my pack haha

You know you have a good friend when you can laugh through hardships together. We get to the car and lay out our things to dry in the sun while we heat up some water for tea.

I can’t believe this was Dixie’s first backpacking experience. I feel so grateful to have such a tough and positive friend! She’s already sending me pictures of camping food and saying “for next time.” ❤

Lessons learned?

-the coolest spot to set up your tent, isn’t always the best spot.

-if you take care of your gear it will take care of you.

-being in good company conquers any kind of bad weather

-and when shit happens, sometimes the best solution is to laugh and carry on