Trailhead
New Boots • Gathering • Grapevine • Springer Fever
A.T. Companion • Headlamp Material • Work Trips • Side Trails
ANN AND I were eight days into our Pacific Crest Trail hike and having a wonderful time. After four 20+ mile days we were ahead of schedule. Why not take a day off for Mother’s Day?We had heard Kamp Anza was a great place to stop. Paul and Pat, who live there had invited hikers by E-mail to call them from the restaurant a mile off the trail. They would pick us up, and we could take a shower, wash our clothes, and buy supplies at the camp store. They’d bring us back to the trail the next day. Blake, a young man from Boston who was hiking with us, said he would come along. A restaurant meal would sure taste good. The first indication that something was wrong was a cardboard sign leaning against a post where the PCT crosses the Pines-to=Palms Highway: “The restaurant is closed because the owner’s dog died. You can get water from an outside faucet.” Well, I would have continued on to Idylwild. We had enough food. Why walk a mile off the trail and not get a restaurant meal? But about 9 o’clock that morning, as we crossed the fence-line at the northwest corner of Anza-Borrengo Desert State Park, Ann punctured one of her water bottles on the barbed wire. While we were salvaging the water a red four-wheel-drive pick-up with two guys in the front and a big dog in the back drove up. They were interested in our hike, and as they left I asked them to call Paul and Pat and tell them we were coming. So we felt like we had to go in. As we started walking along the highway Ann stuck out her thumb, and a white Chevy Suburban stopped. Blake got in the rear seat, I sat behind the driver, and Ann sat behind the driver’s wife on the middle seat. When I saidwe just needed to go to the restaurant to call our friends at Kamp Anza, the driver pulled out a cell phone and said, “What’s the number?” He dialed it but the line was busy. Then he turned off the highway and said he would take us all the way there. `Ann told him to turn left at Terwilliger Road. She remembers seeing a car coming and thinking he was cutting it mighty close. The next thing she knew she was strapped to a board in a helicopter heading for Desert hospital in Palm Springs. The driver’s wife had a crushed ankle. Blake’s face was all cut and bleeding. The driver and I were not injured. The air bag popped on the other car, shattering the windshield but saving its driver from serious injury. Martin, the first EMT on the scene, put Ann in his ambulance and hooked her to an I.V., oxygen, and a monitor. Her vital signs looked good, and she kept asking what happened. Martin said did she know what day it was. She said she didn’t know off-hand, but if he needed to know she would look at her watch and tell him the day and the date. At the hospital Ann said they ran every test know to man including spinal X-rays and a CAT scan. They asked her what she was doing out there. When she replied that she was walking from Mexico to Canada they thought her mind was still messed up. Back at the accident scene I gathered up our packs, gave Blake’s gear to a volunteer fireman, and got a ride with the highway patrolman to Palm Springs. Shortly after I arrived the doctor came in and said she had a concussion and must be closely watched for 24 hours. I was to wake her every 4 hours. The hospital got us a room at the Hampton Inn down the street and gave us a voucher for a taxi. Ann has been recuperating here is Palm Springs. We feel very blessed that she was not hurt more seriously. The motel serves a great complimentary breakfast, and I go for take-out meals to Billy Reed’s restaurant down the street. At 7 o’clock one morning the nightdesk clerk drove me to a shopping center in her Mitsibishi convertible. I washed our clothes, got money from an ATM, and bought groceries for the next leg of our hike. Walking back to the motel I could see the snow-covered mountains where we would be hiking in a few days. On Mother’s Day Ann got to talk to all her children, her brother, and our parents. Tomorrow Paul is driving over to take us back to Kamp Anza, where Blake is staying until his stitches are removed. Ann says before we left people were worried about the dangers of the trail. But it was not the 8 days of desert heat, rattlesnakes, gale-force winds, and freezing mountain weather that caused her head to hurt so bad. It was eight minutes in modern civilization.