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Home/2006 photos/Austin Creek hiking

a HOT summer hike at Austin Creek park Years ago I had hiked at Austin Creek and really loved it. Meghan and I revisited the spot and it's still just as remote as always. We got a bit of a late start to the hike, so by the time we were parking the car and applying the sunblock it was already close to noon. And being early July it was hot. We realized as we were packing up a backpack that we only had one liter of water. That turned out to be a little painful. We hiked along the open hills before following the trail down into the trees and along the creeks. We stopped for some food and a swim in the creek and then continued along the valley before making our way back to the car. Along the way we realized that we needed more water so we made use of the '10 essentials' that I had brought along and purified some additional water - we ended up drinking an additional 2 or 3 liters and were still pretty dehydrated by the time we got back to the car. We also passed a hippy-dippy who was headed out for a few days of solo camping. He head an incredibly small pack and was basically just going to sleep under the stars and eat nuts and berries or something. He was asking us about water and how we were purifying it. His method was grapefruit seed extract because apparently that had cleared up a chest cold he had once.. It was hot and we were in need of more water for much of the hike, and it was a haul to get back to the car but it is such an awesome scenery to hike through I would totally do it again (just with a little more water!)