The Giant Forest Trip: Spugly Heal Thyself

Waxing Crescent Moon

Not content with just a little taste of the Giant Forest last month, I was compelled to return this week for a loop hike between Crescent Meadow and the General Sherman Tree. I read an account of one person's walk online and decided to do one of my own. I figured it was do it now or wait until next July when this winter's snow will finally melt. But first I had to get there, a drive of just less than two hundred miles, over the Diablo Range, across the Great Central Valley, and up into the Sierra Nevada.

Pacheco Pass in the Diablos is about 25 miles from my camp in San Juan Bautista. Usually, it is only a modest challenge for Spugly the Spectacularly Ugly Palomino Transporter. On Tuesday morning, however, something was wrong. On the way up the grade, I had to downshift to 4th gear to get enough power to maintain a respectably swift velocity in the slow lane. That was weird. I can normally stay in 5th and still go 55 mph. Tuesday, I was barely going 45 and a little nervous. Shiny little SUVs were whizzing past in the fast lane, as were greasy old tractor trailers. The Check Engine light came on for the first time ever and shortly after that, Spugly started having convulsions, sputtering and losing power, shuddering its way to the top of the pass. The temperature gauge was fine. I had just paid for an oil change and the radiator was full. I flashed back to the cheapo gas station I used in Hollister to fill up the tank Monday. Was that the culprit? What was going on? Should I turn around?

I kept going past the pass and down the other side, under I-5, and into Los Banos. At a stoplight in town, Spugly was choking and vibrating violently. I pulled into the first automotive place I saw, a tire shop halfway through town. As I came to a stop, not only was the Check Engine light on, but so was the Battery light and the engine just died right there where I parked. Oh God, instead of hiking in the Giant Forest, I was going to be stuck in Los Banos. I popped the hood, did a cursory analysis of the two or three things I know about an internal combustion engine and went inside the shop to seek help.

Then is was hot potato time. Nobody now alive actually knows how to figure out what is wrong with a messed up car. They hook it up to a computer and "run the diagnostics" then they try to fix it doing what the computer says needs fixing. That is all fine as long as your particular car was made in the 21st century. But Spugly was made in 1987 when computer diagnostics was in its infancy. Nobody working in this tire shop was even alive then. They sent me to a series of nice, but similarly head-shaking mechanics on Mercey Springs Road, all of whom said the same thing.

Somewhere in this time frame, Spugly grew tired of getting passed around like a hot potato. It coughed its last cough and returned to the smooth-and-cool-running state which is its nature. I was perplexed, but pleased. After 45 minutes of talking to nice but similarly head-shaking mechanics, I blew town and headed for the Sierra. No Check Engine light, no Battery light, no full body palsy tremors, no problemo. How did Spugly, a thirty-one year old mini-truck of Japanese descent, manage to rid itself of whatever ailed it in such a reasonable time frame? Is Spugly actually an ancient Samurai warrior? A cleverly disguised Ninja?

I did a little research on the Weird Wild Web. Turns out both Samurai and Ninja legends stem from a single story featuring a character named Prince Yamato. To  summarize, the wily prince disguised himself as a woman to entice two bad guys into a...um...relaxed state, whereupon Prince Yamato hacked them to pieces with a really sharp sword. Dang! Could Spugly the Spectacularly Ugly Palomino Transporter be related to a cross-dressing swordsman/swordswoman from the 8th century A.D.? I guess that could explain the whole spectacularly ugly thing, if not the ability to heal itself from nasty, hacking, cough-spasms.

Regardless, I made it to the Lodgepole Campground in Sequoia National Park just in time to pitch my tent, eat a Mountain House Teriyaki Chicken and Rice dinner, and bundle up for a fuh-reezing night on the ground at 6,700 feet above sea level. Early on Wednesday morning, my little plastic REI key-ring thermometer read somewhere between 20 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Fully clothed with a fleece jacket, inside a Cocoon sleeping bag liner, inside my usually pretty warm synthetic car-camping sleeping bag, under a wool blanket, on top of a Big Agnes air mattress, on top of a Thermarest Z-rest pad, inside my bomb-proof REI Half Dome tent, I was as cold as a fudgesicle in Fairbanks.

The Sun worked its magic, though, and soon I was full of caffeine and eggs and heading south on the road to Crescent Meadow and the Giant Forest. Spugly, unphased by the cold night, posed for a photo at the touristy Tunnel Log. Zen and the Art of Mini-Truck Maintenance.

I did not have a map of the internet-dude's Giant Forest Loop hike, mainly because I was too cheap to pop into the Giant Forest Museum to buy one. I had scribbled down the descriptions of his turns and twists and trails, but soon found them fairly useless. So I depended on my compass and seasoned trail senses to wind along through the Forest and have one fantastic time. There are probably easier ways to loop through the Giant Forest between Crescent Meadows and the General Sherman Tree parking area, but it just doesn't matter. In every direction there is such dynamic beauty at an overwhelming, humbling, sensational scale that you really cannot go wrong. I'm just going to post some pictures and leave it at that. This place rocks.

Just off the Crescent Meadow Loop Trail is Tharp's Log. Tharp's Log, or, as I like to call it, Thog's Larp, is a hollowed out old fallen sequoia tree in which some old guy named Tharp (or possibly Thog) fashioned himself a little in-log cabin, complete with a stone fireplace and all the comforts of a home inside a log. It is SO cool. I love the Giant Forest and I want to move to Thog's Larp for the rest of my dying days. I will consult Spugly for secret Ninja instructions on how to heal myself from pneumonia and all those weird tick bite diseases everyone seems to be worried about lately. 

Peace, Love, and Sayonara,

Jim