Backpacking! (part 2): The backpacking part of the backpacking trip

When we were looking for places to go backpacking after "plan A" fell through, we picked up Backpacking California from REI, and it proved quite useful.  We've found that when you're unfamiliar with the area, having a book of planed hiking trips is invaluable.  (btw, We've found most of our shorter hikes from 101 Hikes in Northern California).  The trips are arranged by geographical area in these books, so we locate the area we want to visit, read the descriptions of the trips, and then select one!  Since we were staying in Pacific Grove and we wanted something close by, that put us in the Big Sur area.

Hike 15 from Backpacking California, "Black Cone Trail" in the Ventana Wilderness was selected as it met most of our criteria, and the the solitude level was "solitude".  We car camped at China Camp on Tuesday, which proved to be a good call since it rained must of that evening and night so we were able to keep some of our gear in the car so we didn't start the trip of with wet supplies. 

Wednesday morning after eating breakfast and packing our backpacks with all the supplies and food we'd need for the next few days, we headed out on the trail.  We took it pretty easy, and covered about 18 miles in 3 days (we didn't finish the entire "hike 15" which was 30 miles, but it was better that way).  Even though we didn't push ourselves super hard, I still thought it was pretty challenging!  There were certainly times when we looked at each other and wondered why we thought this was fun.  However, at the end of the trip we were super dirty, but we had a good time and will likely go backpacking again sometime in the future (next year?).

Although we had a positive first (for me) backpacking trip, we probably won't go back to Ventana Wilderness.  Overall, the trail is fairly bushy with very few trees, which is due in part to the many forest fires in this area over the last several decades.  It was neat to explore a new and different part of California, but next time, I think we'll try to head into the mountains.