More from China Camp

This is a X post from Songotheday, a killer website that is worth checking out. www.songotheday.com.

I left my house on Sunday afternoon to spin the single speed around China Camp with no particular goal other than to be outside for a few hours. Beautiful windy day. Over the course of a few hours I made my way to the top of the park and spent some time checking out the view. Tam perfectly clear in one direction, San Pablo bay and the Big Rock open space area in the other. No one around. I was feeling lazy but pretty stoked to be outside.

I decided to try and find this trail I had read about in the IJ a few months before. Apparently a commando trail builder got busted building it and it dropped from around where I was to the neighborhood I grew up in, pretty much on my way home. I was on the rigid single speed, the wrong bike for gnarly trail exploration but I figured I’d walk if I needed to, I was in no rush and I had nowhere to go.

I slowly crept down the fire road I thought the trail would start from looking for the stacked dead bush piles that are usually used to hide the entrance to poach trails. Eventually I found it, clearly a bike trail but clearly long out of use. I hiked down it a little bit and it looked somewhat ride-able so I went back to the trailhead, got my bike and slowly dropped in. The trail was ok at first but was descending quickly and starting to get steeper and steeper. I was listening to a mix on my ipod and right as the trail dropped from a sunny hillside into a Manzanita and Oak forest this Leonard Cohen song cued.

The trail kept descending, now barely visible and so steep my stomach was behind my seat so I could keep traction. Like butt bumping on the rear tire I was so far back on the bike and I was still sliding. The surrounding woods had become really dense and felt more and more isolated. It was late in the day and almost dark under the trees. A little Blair Witch like…..and I was starting to get a little creepy.

A few miles into the trail I came across this old tree fort that was broken down and littered with really old beer cans. It was probably really cool in 1970 but the proof of human presence (at some point) and the disarray of the old fort was unnerving. Leonard Cohen’s slowly drawn out voice over the low accordion was resonating in both ears and with late afternoon sun trickling through the dense trees and brush was very surreal and in a not so good way.

I must have gotten distracted and missed a turn somewhere. The “trail” I was on ended abruptly and I was in this super thick grove of Manzanita. I couldn’t figure out how to continue on but I could see a little bit of a house down below me a few hundred yards and there was a big gnarly sign that said No Trespassing, Beware of Dog. The music was disorienting me and I was starting to get that, “oh shit I’m lost” feeling. I turned off the Ipod, set my bike down and started to hike around to see if I could find a trail out. Worst case scenario I figured I could hike back up the way I came down, but even that trail wasn’t obvious any longer. I had pretty much been sliding down the hill, dodging trees for at least a half a mile. Everything looked the same.

I left the bike laying on the ground and starting pushing through the bushes following a deer trail that seemed to head in the correct direction. I was almost on my hands and knees in spots, being super careful not to get a branch in the eye or to touch any poison oak. I came into a little clearing in the brush and stood up. It was really super quiet, I couldn’t see my bike any longer. I was in the middle of nowhere. Then I heard this really gnarly noise. Like some mix of a growl and a scream. Like kind of human and kind of animal. It wasn’t that loud but it sounded like it was coming from the direction I had left my bike and pretty close. Dude….I started freaking out. The deer trail I had been following had dead ended. There was nowhere to go forward unless I just started full on hacking through bushes and even then I was moving away from the houses down below……and my bike was back there.

My heart was pounding and I was trying not to panic. I was crouched down, just kind of waiting and breathing and then “eeeeeeiiiiieeeeeeuuuuuuhhhhh” that freakin noise again, really high pitched and louder, definitely back in the direction of my bike. It’s hard to describe the noise, like a wounded animal maybe but waay more human. I was legitimately scared now but I kept telling myself that nothing could happen to me in Glenwood, that these were my hills. I started moving back towards my bike. Really slowly, trying to be super quiet. Eventually I got to where I could see the red frame in the distance and I hadn’t heard that noise again, it has been at least a few minutes. I started to calm down a little bit. Maybe I imagined it? I got to the bike and was ready to get the fuck out of there so I decided that I was going to just barrel through the bushes to the house I saw below and that I’d deal with whatever dog or pissed off person I had to when I got there.

Right as I picked up the bike I heard the noise again, way louder and it felt like right behind me. Definitely not human but not like any animal I’ve ever heard. I didn’t even turn around this time, I just bolted down hill through the bushes. Full on commando charge style, yanking the bike through the underbrush as I went. The bike kept snagging and it felt like it took forever but I was getting closer to the house. Like 5 minutes later I popped through, onto the top of a long driveway with no one around….and no dog. I jumped on my bike and took off…….When I got down to the street there were kids around and people washing cars and shit. It was really sunny and peaceful out. I sat down on the curb, heart racing and covered in grime and sweat…….man.