Moving into Spring

Winter time in Southern California is not very wintery. Sure there’s snow on the mountains, some mountains, not my mountains. But here on the coast, I’d say we’ve moved right into spring 2023.

4 miles in the local hills:

Am I Out?

I’ve grown weary with the piled-on injuries status, and a little worried too. I mean, is this how it’s going to always be now, am I out?

With the mountains turning green and starting to bloom in December in my state, I’ve also been growing rather anxious watching spring from the sidelines. This is how I’ve been talking to myself as the weeks turned into months: “Calm down Lauren, you’ve seen spring in the mountains many, many times – in fact, you are blessed with mountain springtime experiences, don’t be so selfish! You are extremely blessed with what you have already been given!!!”

This past Saturday (3/19) I finally got out to walk on some dirt – a short hike really, and I didn’t want to do it. I had to force myself out the door. And then I drove 5 minutes to the closest trails. I just wanted to test out my physical abilities.

The worst of my physical pains is my left arm. Thankfully, though I need my arm to run, I don’t need it so much to hike. Removing the pack can be a pain – a minor inconvenience!  What I really wanted to do is put a few miles in on hilly terrain. I wanted to see if my torn calf had indeed fully healed. I can say after my first experiment, I believe it has healed. 

The hike was a beautiful 4 miles just before some rain came in that night. Lots of mountain bikers were out, a few e-bikes as well. On the way in, I had a nice long conversation with another hiker about coyotes, fishing and bears. In the end, it was good to get out and I felt relieved.

Experiment 1 is complete. Step 2 is to get out again to make doubly make sure the calf is good.

Some pics from Experiment 1:

Las Ramblas in Between Rains

Well, heck, we've had a lot of rain lately in the state of California, the place that supposidly doesn't get any rain. Only problem with the no-rain claim is that I have lived here all of my life, and we get plenty of rain EVENTUALLY.  People just have short memories, else they are just too young to remember the many, many times we've had lots of rain. 

It's a good thing that we're finally getting rain. We've been in a drought for a while. The creeks are now all flowing, water falls are falling. Everything is green. It's beautiful. But most of the time on our rain reprieve days, my local trails are closed due to "wet and muddy conditions." I had a hunch though that Las Ramblas Trail wasn't closed. Las Ramblas trailhead is at the edge of Dana Point, right on the border of San Juan Capstrano. The trails associated with Las Ramblas run just inland, overlooking Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente. The view of the Pacific Ocean is immense. But there are no trees. Literally, no trees. There's a few tall shrubs here and there, but really not much shade to speak of. This is why I rarely ever hit Las Ramblas. But there are no rangers for these trails (that I know of, as I believe they are city trails), which meant that possibly they were not closed due to wet and muddy conditions.

Las Ramblas did not disappoint. It was open as I had hoped. It was cold, it was muddy, and at times it was gray. But add to that gray, a sea of green -- and that's not a sea as in the ocean (the ocean was a silver-gray). The sea of green belonged to the hills, they were covered with fresh new growth. Of course, the dirt trails were completely saturated, which meant mud. Boy was it muddy. 

In all I got in 7.59 miles with 1,591' of elevation gain.