Trans Catalina Trail (TCT) – Day 2

Welcome back to the blog!

Yesterday I wrapped up the first day of the trip with a relaxing evening by the campfire with some rather questionable food.  So begins the second day of our epic voyage.  Here is a highly detailed map (sarcasm intended) of our journey so far.  Although I will say this, the trail truly does wind back and forth like that.  It’s like they did it on purpose just to make it longer.

As you will remember from the previous post, we were staying at the Blackjack campground which is roughly 13 miles into the trail.  We rose up early in the morning and had a very basic breakfast due to our stove situation.  In fact I believe that I had trail mix, dry top ramen crunched up in a bag and some lemon water with chia seeds.  Yum.

After our kingly feast and quick departure we made our way towards the Catalina “Airport in the Sky”.  Here’s a little interesting fact, the airport is actually privately owned.  Although the general public is allowed to use it for a nominal fee of $25 per landing.

As we made our way towards the airport the island started to heat up.  Like I mentioned in my first post, the interior of the island is basically like the hills of Southern California.  So the beginning of our second day wasn’t really that exciting.  We were just walking along a dirt trail through brush and cactus for the first half of the day or so.  It wasn’t bad hiking and the weather wasn’t unbearable by any means, it was just quite a bit different than what I was expecting.

The major highlight of this day was our lunch at the airport café (see how I got fancy with the little mark thingy above the e).  I was so thirsty and hungry for real food by the time we arrived that I forgot to take a picture of the food.  But I tried a bacon bison burger which was incredible.  I also downed at least 3 large iced teas.  The water on the island, although potable, was beyond nasty.  I’m talking to the point of dehydrating myself to avoid drinking it.  So I was drinking just a enough to get by.  Needless to say filtered iced tea was like liquid gold.  From this point forward quite a few of my pictures are blurry, this is due to the fact that I also forgot a hat so I was plastering on sunscreen like crazy.  This sunscreen in turn ended up getting on my camera lens and was incredibly hard to get off with my dirty clothing.  So here are a few blurry photos of the inside of the airport.  As you will see in the last photo we also took the opportunity to charge our phones and call our loved ones:

When we stepped back outside I came across this awesome tile map of the island.  I also took some pictures of the hanger and cafe from the outside:

After relaxing for 30 minutes or so we hit the trail again.  Here is an overly dramatic picture of me looking out over the trail ahead.

The second day of the trip was probably the most challenging.  Not only because we already had traveled so far, but because this section of the trail had the most elevation change both in the gain and loss categories.

So we hiked down from the airport to Little Harbor and definitely encountered some beautiful scenery along the way.  This cactus in particular really caught my eye.  It was so vibrant in color, I promise that I didn’t touch up this photo at all.

This is actually where it started to become abundantly clear that the interior of the island was very much like home.  Apparently Catalina has been having more drought troubles than the mainland.  I did some research after we returned and found out that there is no natural fresh water source on the island.  All of their water is provided by reservoirs, but due to the lack of rain they were completely dry.  So the majority of their water was being shipped in by boat.  In fact they weren’t allowed to sell me a cup of water at the café, I had to buy a bottle.  They still had some larger reservoir tanks on the island that provided water, but they were being filled periodically by water trucks.  And that water, as I said, was just plain NASTY.  I can’t stress enough, if you go on this trip make sure to bring some kind of flavored drink mix.

Anyways, we passed many mile markers before finally arriving at Little Harbor.  I tried to find all of them but they were a little hard to spot sometimes, so I only missed maybe 95%.

The hill going down to Little Harbor was nice and gentle, so this particular part of the trip was quite enjoyable.  Except for the fact that we were walking into the sun pretty much all day and like I had mentioned, I forgot my hat.  But it was beautiful.  There was a cool ocean breeze blowing in our face and we were able to see the water well ahead of our arrival.

Once we actually dropped into Little Harbor we took the time to rest in the shade and then soak our feet in the water.  This was unbelievably refreshing after 20+ miles of hiking with a 30 lbs pack.  I apologize for the clarity of this image, this is where my sunscreen/lens dilemma really showed the most.

We even came across this relic from the past:

And of course it wouldn’t be Catalina without wild bison roaming through the campground:

This was, in a way, the halfway point of our journey.  We had a very steep uphill climb ahead followed by an equally steep downhill descent into Two Harbors.  Goodbye Little Harbor, you will be missed.

As we ascended the view kept getting better and better.  In fact I took some of the best pictures of the trip on this section of the trail.  This one in particular is probably my favorite:

So we reached the summit rest area and kept going until we started the descent into Two Harbors.  And we continued to pass many mile markers along the way.  One thing that we never really even considered were the effects of  descending that far with a pack that heavy.  As you will see a little further down in the story, I ended up with some pretty impressive blisters as a result of this section of the trail.

We visited the only restaurant in town, the Harbor Reef, as soon as we arrived.  The food was amazing.  I was so exhausted at this point that I don’t even recall what I ordered, I just remember it tasting amazing.  Although I do remember drinking around 5 glasses of iced tea.  Not bad for a backpacking trip right?  Lunch and dinner at a restaurant while still experiencing the outdoors.  This is why I would recommend this hike to someone who is just getting into backpacking.  You get to experience a long distance trek in the wilderness, but you are never too far from aid if needed.  That is another reason that I chose this trip, because I was that first time backpacker.

After enjoying our meal we visited the general store to check and see if they sold the fuel that we needed to use one of our stoves, and they did!  This was one of the happiest moments of our trip.  We were finally going to eat some real food!

After purchasing our fuel we then attempted to locate the campground.  Being that it was now night time and they didn’t have street lights, this turned into a tougher task than you would think.  But we finally succeeded and set up camp.  This is when I pulled my boots off and discovered why my heels hurt so badly.  It’s kind of hard to see in the photo, but that is one continuous blister forming around the entire back side of my heel.  And the other foot was no better.

So we unpacked, cooked some food:

We didn’t have any firewood at this campsite and it was kind of late, so we just went straight to our tents.  You could actually see the city lights from the mainland, but my camera doesn’t do very well in low light so I wasn’t able to capture it.  And so ends the second day of our epic journey.  Stay tuned for day 3!