Henry W. Coe State Park
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Trip Reports, Page Five
A Crappy Experience at the Time . . .
A Frog Lake Hike in the Rain

Matt Guertner: December 27, 2004

When I first discovered Henry Coe State Park, I was looking to photograph Glycyrrhiza lepidota.  That one trip to Coe turned into weekly backpack outings and has now evolved into a spring backpacking trip with friends.

I figured it would be a good idea to introduce one of my interested friends to Coe via the Forest and Springs Trail loop.  After all, this was the first loop I ever did and it's a fairly level and easy hike.

When the day arrived for the hike, weather.com said it was only supposed to rain 0.3 inches with winds up to 25 mph.  It was rainy on 101 but it looked as if a clear spot was opening up over Coe.  We celebrated some blue sky and eventually hit the mountain and started our ascent to headquarters.  About halfway up the mountain you could see some fog was starting to settle in to some of the valleys below.   "No biggy," I thought.  We arrive at headquarters to a foggy and nearly empty parking lot.  The only other car belonged to the volunteer at headquarters.  I thought it was peculiar that we were the only ones there.  I got my pack on and headed in to register.  I asked the volunteer if he was letting people go out, to which he replied "You're
welcome to go out, but I'm leaving soon."

This would be our first sign not to hike.  If the volunteer is leaving at noon, maybe it isn't the best day to hike...

We decided to go for it and hit Corral Trail.  The air was crisp and it was raining a little.  Somewhere along Corral Trail we decided to visit Frog Lake instead of our original loop.  Frog Lake would be our lunch
spot on our upcoming backpacking weekend.  When we hit the clearing right before the trail junction for Fish, Flat Frog and Forest Trails we received our second sign that today wasn't a good day for hiking. Right as my friend started to say "it would be funny if it started to...", it did.  Hail fell from the sky for about a minute and we huddled under the framed map at the trail junction.

We hopped on Flat Frog and started our adventure up to Frog Lake.  The rain had really started to pick up by now.  About 20 minutes onto the trail, I turned around to see how my friend was doing—he
was pretty wet.  Neither one of us expected the weather to be as bad as it was so needless to say we were pretty ill-prepared in our jeans and cotton sweaters and windbreakers.  We kept on trudging, though, and a few minutes later I checked on my buddy only to see that he was now soaked.  He was absorbing water like a sponge!  I asked him if we should turn around, to which he replied "no".  I must have asked him
about a hundred times if he was doing alright.  I felt pretty bad at this point for dragging him up to Coe in this weather.

About mid way through Flat Frog, I realized we had a dillema on our hands.  We either had to take the long hike in the rain back to headquarters on Flat Frog, or we could hike straight over the hill via Hobbs Road and cut down our hike.

I knew the toils of this little stretch of Hobbs Road.  We were recommended by a volunteer to hike up this section of Hobbs Road coming back from Frog Lake on this exact same hike back in August when it was about 100 degrees outside.  About a month later I watched my girlfriend slip, land on top of her Nalgene water bottle and roll about 5 feet downhill.  This road seemed to cause trouble, and it probably shouldn't be attempted on a first outing.

So I pitched my idea to my friend, telling him of the steepness and how tiring it could be.  We might even take just as long getting back because we're fighting the elevation gain.  He said he wanted to go for it.  I also realized that we were going to need to refuel somewhere because trying to eat in wind and rain would not be fun, let alone trying to find a dry spot to sit down.

That's when it hit me: the bathroom at Frog Lake.  I told him we can take cover in an outhouse for lunch and he agreed that would be best.  No other time in my life could I say that an outhouse sounded so good.  Once we arrived at Frog Lake, we looked around for a minute and ascended to the bathroom. Once inside, I tried to open my pack only to discover that my fingers were stiff from the cold.  I could barely grasp my pulls on my pack.  Once I finally got it open, the outhouse fell quiet as we ate our jerky and trail mix.  I realized "we're eating lunch 6 feet above human waste..."  This didn't bother us one bit because it was so warm and cozy inside that bathroom!  Once we started to slow down on our eating my friend nonchalantly muttered "I wish we had some emergency ponchos..."

My jaw dropped.

I had emergency ponchos!

In fact, I had just set up a little first aid/emergency kit in my pack a few days before.  I had exactly two emergency ponchos sitting in there waiting to be used.  I felt like a complete goon.  Here I am, dragging my friend on his first hike at Coe through wind and rain and even some hail.  He's soaking wet and probably not enjoying himself and the park like he should be.  He's probably thinking "This is where we're supposed to sleep in a few months?"  All the while I could have prevented it if I would have just remembered those ponchos!  I immediately ripped those things open and we started to realize just how funny this whole situation really was.  Here we are, soaking wet eating lunch in an outhouse, and now we realize we could have been dry the whole time.

We set out for Hobbs Road on a second wind and emergency ponchos on.  We zipped up the road in record time and only stopped about 5 times for breathers.  Hobbs Road was amazingly easy; well at least compared to it's summer time counterpart.

When we hit Monument Trail and started our descent to headquarters we were greeted with tons of fog and about 500 feet worth of visibility.  Something about almost being back to safety and that emergency poncho keeping me dry made me feel delirious.  I started screaming with glee.  The wind kicked up and we got a few minutes worth of 20 mph gusts.  It was an awesome feeling.

We got back in one piece and just sat in the car amazed at what we just encountered.  Getting caught in a quick hail storm, getting rained on and taking lashings from the wind leaving us no choice but to seek
refuge in an outhouse for lunch; only then to discover that I had ponchos the whole time.  It was a crappy experience at the time, but now that it's over, we laugh about how fun it was.  I hope Coe leaves me and my friends with memories like these for as long as we visit.


Text copyright © Matt Guertner.  Used with permission.  
Minor editing by Lee Dittmann.

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