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Pair find message from Pleasanton in unlikely place

Monday, August 06, 2001

Marcia Powers never expected to get a message from home when she and her husband were hiking in the wilderness, but that's exactly what happened.

It came in the form of a shriveled pink balloon with the name of a salon from their home town of Pleasanton.

The Powerses were hiking the 2,658-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada when they found the pink message. They were on the most remote part of their long journey, a 200-mile stretch not accessible by road.

"We had been out of civilization for 11 days," Powers recalled of their summer 2000 trek. "We sat down in a place called Tully Hole. It was a rude shock because as you come upon Tully Hole, you drop down 1,200 feet, fight the mosquitoes, cross the creek and climb up the other side."

Tully Hole, high in the Sierra Nevada, came as a surprise to the couple. The map made no indication of a steep bowl they would have to hike into and out of that day.

When they reached the bottom, Powers said, "we sat down on a fallen log and said, 'Let's cook our dinner for energy to get out of this hole.'"

The Powers carried all their trash until they could properly dispose of it.

Whenever possible, they packed out trash found along the trail.

"Ken picked up this piece of trash," Powers recalled. "It was a really pretty pink."

When Marcia saw writing on the balloon, she stretched it out to read the print.

"We were sort of media deprived at this point," she said with a laugh.

The balloon had "Victoria's Salon" printed on it, along with the phone number. They knew by the area code and prefix that it was a Pleasanton number.

"We felt like that was a personal message of 'Hello Ken and Marcia from Pleasanton,'" she said.

The balloon couldn't have come at a better time on the couple's nearly five-month hike.

"This was the hardest period on the whole trail," Powers said. "We had been doing water crossings up to my chin in snow melt. We had been going straight up vertical snow and rock walls to get over the passes.

"There we were at our absolute skinniest and we had worked our absolute hardest, but we were in a beautiful location. It was really like a note of encouragement to us and 'hello' from home. We laughed about the odds. It really was kind of neat finding it."

The couple took the balloon with them until their next trash dump four days later at Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows.

The balloon "was such a vivid memory that we looked for (the salon) when we got home," Powers said.

The Powerses returned home and settled back into their routine, which includes frequent trips to downtown.

In another coincidence, the Powerses had just finished some java at Tully's Coffee when they spotted Victoria's Salon on Rose Avenue.

Powers decided to treat herself to a manicure at the salon. She relayed her fantastic story while getting her nails done.

"I thought it was amazing," manicurist Annette Ford said. "I couldn't believe it."

The pink balloons, Ford explained, were handed out last summer at a Friday night concert in the park sponsored by the salon. While owner Victoria Deguara never meant for any balloons to be released, she was astonished to hear an escaped balloon had drifted so far into the wilderness.

When Deguara heard the story, "I got chills. I thought, 'Oh my God, this is just incredible.'"

Ford and Deguara were impressed by the Powerses spunk and Marcia's desire to track down the source of the pink balloon.

"She's a super-neat lady," Deguara said. "She has a lot of energy. She was very excited to come into the salon and meet us."

Powers calls the pink balloon "trail magic. The trail provides lots of coincidences like that."

The couple experienced more trail magic when they were in the desert and Ken lost the coveted safety pin he needed to pin his rinsed-out socks to his backpack so they could air dry. Not only did Marcia inexplicably find a safety pin on the trail, but they were lucky enough to find a trickling stream to rinse their socks.

The pair, both in their 50s, may experience more trail magic in the summer of 2002 when they tackle the national scenic trail that stretches along the Continental Divide from Mexico to Canada.

"I enjoy walking," Powers said. "I really like being out there and looking around. The view changes every minute of the day. When you're there you say, 'I am so lucky to be able to do this.'"

For more info about the Powerses hike, visit their Web site at www.GottaWalk.com. A slide show of their hike is planned in October at Sunrise Mountain Sports in Pleasanton, with proceeds donated to the Livermore-Amador Symphony.

Got a good column idea? Send your ideas or questions to Zoe Francis