From VIA Magazine – 1999 or so
I watched Sarah take the cure along Big Sur’s Pine Ridge Trail.For several years, her husband Arnie—my cousin—and I have backpacked into the mountains of California. For a week my cousin drops his corporate persona and becomes a regular backwoods guy. Sarah lives each trip through the opportunistic caterpillar, stray duff, and woodsmoke that hitchhike home on Arnie’s gear.
One recent summer weekend, Sarah agreed to a three-day go at this activity that transforms her husband into a paragon of serenity. I chose for us the Pine Ridge Trail, reached along the bluff-jumbled Big Sur coast. On this popular trail, Sarah would have lots of company as we traversed redwood-shaded glens and fern-filled gullies, held our ear to the roar of Big Sur River’s cascades, gazed across a canyon to chaparral-mantled Mt. Manuel, admired skeletal outcroppings bulging from the Rubenesque Santa Lucias.
Winter had been wet, so backcoun-try river and stream beds would be refreshingly swollen. And the plum: Sykes Hot Springs, tucked deep in the Ventana Wilderness. All this to distract from our labor up and down the trail’s unrelentingly steep grades.
I knew we were in trouble the first mile when Sarah said, “So, this is what you do all day, just walk?” I quickly pointed to lingering wild iris, the carpet of redwood sorrel creeping under its namesake tree, a surprise pile of coral-tinged flicker feathers. How lucky we were to spot columbine, a fairy lantern in midsummer, I exclaimed as we traversed an open marble-stone slope. Sarah wiped sweat with a bandana and I could tell what loomed for her were intense dry heat, hot spots on her feet, sore shoulders, tight calves.
Seven miles out, at Barlow Flat, we pitched tents beside the Big Sur River near tanbark oaks, bays, maples, alders, sycamores. After several soaks in the river’s green-tinted swimming holes, Sarah was talking to Arnie and me again.
Next morning, we day-hiked 3 miles farther (one-way) to the legendary, if funky, hot springs. At the Big Sur River, you have to choose a boulder-hop or calf-deep wade to do the final half-mile to the hot springs. Dun-colored sandbags that look old enough to be, well, historic, section the 100°F springs into stone-lined basins. All the mystique of Sykes has to do with location—remote gushing waters in this temple, the Ventana Wilderness.
A young man sharing our tub said to Sarah, “How about a foot massage?” I saw shades of corporate disapproval cloud my cousin’s face as his wife floated her swollen feet, one at a time, into the hands of the stranger, taking her cure. Pine Ridge was, after all, her first—and last—backpack trip.
Getting there: Best AAA map: Monterey Bay Region. Pine Ridge trailhead is right off State Route 1, at Big Sur Station, a visitor center just south of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, 26 miles south of Carmel. Self-pay $4 per night for parking. Campfire permits (no charge) required—pick up day of trip at the visitor center, where you also can get a handy topo, check trail conditions, and find out about the several camps along Pine Ridge. Phone: (408) 667-2315.