Today it was partly cloudy; sometimes we even had clouds covering the direct sunlight for an hour or so. It’s the most clouds I’ve seen in weeks. Big, vanilla scoops of ice cream in the sky.
Today we hiked the Hat Creek Rim. It was hot, even when we had clouds. And it was dry. It was about 7 miles to Lost Creek, which was then .3 miles off trail down a steep slope. From there, it was 23 miles to the next water source.
Rumor had it there was a water cache at Forest Service 22, about 9 miles past Lost Creek. It was true; we found plenty of water there but you can’t count on caches. Too risky. So, we filled up at Lost Creek with enough water to get us through the rest of the day. We drank some at the cache just celebrate a little.
Rim walking.
Fortunately, there was a breeze most of the way on the rim. That cooled things down occasionally.
When we got to the water source at the end of the day, we were on private property owned by PG and E. “No camping” signs were everywhere. We had to move past their property line before we could find a place to crash.
Sunset where we couldn’t camp.
We set up the tent, ate dinner and fell asleep. The evening was warm at first but cooled off as we slept.
After camping with ants, we spent the morning hiking to Lower Twin Lake. It would be our next water source and, to our pleasant surprise, it was beautiful.
We got water and then stripped off our gross, salty clothes and went swimming. The shallow part of the lake where we’d collected water was warm, but even at 3 feet deep, the water was chilly but so refreshing.
We lounged around for an hour. It was wonderful. The temperature was perfect for relaxing by a lake.
Perfect morning break.
When we got moving, the day really heated up. We passed a crew doing trail work and they were covered in dry, dusty dirt. I guess, so were we. The dirt has been so fine the last few days. It’s the consistency of powdered sugar. It goes right through my shoes and socks collecting on my toes.
By the end of the day, I was beat. The heat had shriveled me. We got to the turn off for the Subway Cave just before 7 p.m. The cave is really an old lava tube and the side trail to water goes right through it. It was cool and dark and it seemed all the hotter above ground once we reemerged.
We got water, hiked back to the trail and stopped at the first flat spot we could find.
Sunset thunderstorm.
Our dinner time entertainment was watching a thunderstorm roll over the ridge from the east and then curve north just before us. The sunset on the thunderstorm was beautiful, if a little scary. The lightning could have easily started a wildfire and whole the storm front was covering the area we would be hiking through the next day.
I woke up early to get started on the laundry. I wanted so very much to stay in bed. It was so soft and clean and comfortable. But if we wanted to get back on the trail (or have enough clothing to go get breakfast) somebody had to do the laundry.
I talked to Mom while the wash cycle whirred.
By 8:30 a.m., the clothes were clean and dry and I was very hungry. We got breakfast at the hotel and then got down to packing.
We checked out of the hotel around 10, but had to stop by the gear store for more stove fuel and the post office to mail home some extra stuff before we could head back to the trail. It was already 85 degrees at 10.
The loveliest trail angel, Piper’s Mom, as she is known, gave us a ride back to the trail. She warned us that lightning was predicted. Not thunderstorms that also bring rain. Just lightning.
It has been very dry and hot. Lightning could mean wildfires.
We got started in the heat and the heat followed us all day. There were a few clouds but nothing that made any shade for us.
The terrain for the afternoon was a bit up and down, but none of the water carries were lengthy.
We camped just after crossing King Creek. Not many mosquitoes joined us for dinner, but the ants climbed all over us and our stuff.
We finally got up with the first alarm at 6 a.m. We haven’t done that in weeks.
I ate my last pop tart as we started walking. We spent most of the morning quiet, in our own heads. It’s not always the most fun place to be but I can still get lost in the folds and memories and thoughts for the future. I’m glad to know that my own brain doesn’t bore me ALL the time. But I’m also very glad for the store of podcasts on my phone.
The weather is beautiful again. This isn’t a complaint. But it almost makes me nervous. It hasn’t rained on for two weeks. We must be in for something fierce. All this sun and blue has to balance itself out somehow and something tells me it will balance out by dripping on my head.
The morning was full of seemingly endless slight uphill. As far as I can tell, all of California is on a 5 percent tilt from Mexico to Oregon. The only time we head down is to water and those grades are anything but “slight.”
After one big uphill comes the descent toward Chester, the closest town to the halfway marker.
Richard at the halfway marker.
We stop to sign the register at the halfway point and look for the names of our friends. We only see a few we recognize and I wonder if we’ll ever see them again, or will they always be 15 miles ahead? We also we a huge group just a couple days ahead. Almost 20 people hiked past the halfway point two days ago. We’ve only seen six hikers since leaving Sierra City five days ago. And I’ve liked that feeling of having the whole Forest to myself. I don’t want to catch up to them. I’d rather they be names in a log book than noisemakers at campsites and water sources. The PCT is quiet and I realize that’s one of the things I love about it. It’s an introvert’s dream to walk for days without speaking a word to a stranger.
At the road crossing that takes us to Chester, we stick out our thumbs and get a ride from a logger headed toward home. He drops us off in town.
We get the last hotel room at the Best Western, drop our things and go get half gallons of ice cream to celebrate our halfway achievement.
In the shower I saw that my legs are cut up and bruised. It makes me think of something my friend Catrina once said. How she judges the success of her summers on the appearance of her legs. The more cuts from thorns and briers, the better. By Catrina’s scale, I’m having a great time.
My legs and feet after a normal day. The dirt out here is so fine it goes right through the stitching in my shoes. The gaiters work to keep my ankles clean(ish).
Today was the hottest day I can remember on the trail so far. It is certainly summer now. I can tell because my face is caked in salt at the end of the day and my clothes are pounds heavier from the sweat that’s soaked into them.
We started with a cool retreat from the morning mosquitoes down toward the North Fork of the Feather River. The trail was overgrown with poison oak again, but I was more distracted by the new pain in my right ankle. At the bottom it was slightly swollen but nothing terrible. The pain was a little scary though. With our new deadline, one injury could mean we won’t finish the trail this summer. Not a huge deal, in the scheme of things, but still a disappointment.
Richard pushed on my ankle in the few places most concerning for serious injury and it held up. I took some ibuprofen and we kept walking.
The trail took us right through Belden, California. We stopped at the first place that looked like it served food and sat down. The menu was full of things fried and battered. We ordered mozzarella sticks, a veggie burger with mushrooms and cheese, a grilled cheese, fries and a salad. The waitress brought us all that and WATERMELON. It was such a welcome surprise, I felt like hugging her.
After all that, we ordered ice cream.
Wildflowers on the way up the hot, long climb.
And then we headed up a 15-mile climb in the hottest part of the day. Fortunately, only the first five miles or so were open to the sky. Once we made it under tree cover, it was better but, overall, that one wasn’t thought through.
By 5 p.m., we were still climbing and I was getting annoyed. Poor Richard got to deal with me as I felt my energy draining and my emotions flairing like they’d caught fire from all that direct sunlight.
Once the terrain flattened and the heat stalled as the sun lost its purchase in the sky, I calmed down. The setting sun cut its way through the standing pines covered in so much moss their bark looked green. The whole forest glowed gold.
After waking up on the top of the ridge, we spent the morning going down, down, down to the middle fork of the Feather River.
We had to dodge poison oak the whole way. It really slowed me down because I had my bare legs brushing against everything. Richard wore his zip-offs zipped on, so he just barreled through.
The Feather River.
It’s still been blue skies and no clouds. Which also means: hot.
After the long downhill came an even longer uphill. I was quite convinced it would never end.
Richard forgot to stop us between 9 and 10 a.m. to apply sunscreen. We were discussing how and when to stop a patient from using ace-inhibitors for chronic high blood pressure — like when their face starts to swell as a side effect — and he got so absorbed in the subject that he just walked right through 10 a.m.
After ace-inhibitor talk, I turned on my iPhone and let the podcasts and audio books take my mind off the trail. The auditory escapes have been nice. Richard listens to his doctor podcasts and I to my news and culture. We resurface throughout the day and share what we’ve learned. It really seems to be helping both of us pound out the miles.
The water sources are still reasonable, but much less frequent. Richard has been very kind and done most of the extra walking involved in filling our water bladders. What’s the point in both of us getting extra tired? he says. I am not going to argue when presented with the opportunity to sit.
We ended the day positioned with a very long downhill between us and the ice cream for sale in Belden, California, which we would hike the next morning.
We’re hearing reports of wildfires near us. I would hate to see these trees burn.
So off we go on our new schedule. We got up and moving by 7:20 a.m. and kept moving until after 7 p.m. We took a short break around 1 p.m. to eat a bag of Cheetos.
And we covered more than 30 miles.
Overall, I feel okay after that. My feet were sore by 28 miles or so and I was tired like you are after a full day. But I stretched and gave my feet some love and attention. And I think I can do it again tomorrow.
Blue skies, warm temps.
I started listening to “The Help” on audible.com and that made the last 2+ hours of the day really nice.
The terrain today was up and down, but there was a stretch I the middle that felt like it was endless up over unconsolidated gravel trail. Not fun. But the weather was beautiful, if overly breezy at times; but, hey, I’ll take it.
All the water lately has been off the trail a ways. Tonight we’re dry camping (sleeping where there is no water source) for the first time in weeks. We got water about 9 miles ago and won’t have a new source until four miles into tomorrow. Looking ahead, most of our water source options are off the trail by a couple hundred feet to almost a mile for the next week or so. We knew this was coming, but it doesn’t make me miss the abundant water of the Sierras any less.
Mileage: 19.1, plus 1.5 road walk to the PCT from town
Day: 65
We slept in and had breakfast in town. I got eggs Benedict and a waffle donut (waffle, fried and covered in glaze).
The store where we sent our resupply packages was to open at 10 a.m., although the guide book said 9. It actually opened at 10:30 a.m.
We got our packages, organized ourselves, had a milkshake each and finally got on our way back to the trail after noon. We couldn’t catch a ride, so we walked the 1.5 miles. It wasn’t too steep, but it was warm.
New shoes, new socks, new gaiters. Hiking in style.
Once back at the trail, we started up. We gained a couple thousand feet over the next seven miles. Toward the top we saw so many day hikers. They all smelled like Bounce dryer sheets to me.
At 4 p.m., we decided to hike six more miles, then maybe another four if we made good time on the first six. We did make good time, so we headed to the camp spot north.
About 2 miles before the camp spot, we passed a rock-covered hole making smoke. Someone had made a fire ring, but didn’t remove the duff before they built a fire and now the ground was smoking.
This was a forest fire waiting to happen.
Richard sacrificed the rest of his drinking water to put it out. We stirred the fire and doused it until we felt satisfied that it was done smoking.
We got to our tentsite around 7:40, set up the tent, made dinner and fell asleep hard.
Climbing climbing climbing.
Happy Fourth! Aunt Rachel? Think of me when you watch “1776.” I wish I was watching it with you.
Mileage: 31.7, plus .5 road walk toward Sierra City; got a hitch for the rest
Day: 64
So, our end of trail plans are slowly coming together and we now have a date where our trail journey must end.
Richard’s job starts up on August 17 and he will need a couple of days’ prep for that, so we have picked August 13 as the last day we can be on trail.
That basically forms two scenarios for us, because we are getting off the trail at the end of July for a wedding and that will take at least four days.
Scenario 1: we hike until the wedding and make it a good bit of the way into Washington. After the wedding, we come back out to the trail and finish the remaining 300 or fewer miles. (We have determined that given the time we have in August, we’ll only reasonably be able to finish 300 miles, max.)
Scernario 2: we hike as far as we can until the wedding and get off the trail then. If we can’t manage to make it a couple hundred miles into Washington by the end of July, our 2015 trail journey will end wherever we are at the end of the month. We will come back in 2016 and finish up the remaining miles then.
It’s certainly not ideal to leave the trail unfinished, but I don’t want to rush things, hurt ourselves, hate our lives, etc. because we’ve committed to a hiking plan that takes all the fun out of it and leaves only pressure and stress. Plus, Washington is supposed to be beautiful. I want to really SEE it.
We have come up with a hiking plan for the next couple of weeks. At that point, we will have a better idea of how we’re doing and buy our plane tickets for the wedding; either round-trip or one-way.
Enjoying the woods while we can.
No matter how things go, I will be happy with my trail experience. And the opportunity Richard has lined up in August is absolutely worth leaving the trail until the next season if necessary. (More on that later).
The mosquitoes were alive and well when we got up. I put my rain pants on in the morning, something I hadn’t ever done before, just to protect my legs until we started hiking.
The weather was beautiful again. I can certainly get used to all sun. The trail kept us up around 7,500 feet most of the day. The wildflowers were out in abundance taking advantage of the bright sun on the bald ridges.
The day seemed to pass quickly. We spent the morning chatting about after school programs, a new drug that’s way too expensive in the U.S., and how Sinead O’Connor won’t be performing “Nothing compares to you,” again.
We lunched by a creek and finished off a bag of Doritos. The afternoon hiking was fine. By the end I was losing steam, but that’s what usually happens to me after 30 miles. Go figure.
Me and some wildflowers. The wildflowers have been fantastic!
We got to the road to Sierra City at 7:30 p.m. We tried hitching for a few minutes but nothing worked, so we just started walking. Not too far down the road, a lovely lady named Marie picked us up in her SUV with her son, Christopher, in a car seat in t he back. She drove us to the Methodist church, where hikers can camp on the lawn for free. It’s right in the center of this tiny town, and right by he public bathrooms, so it works really well.
We made dinner, explored the breakfast menus of the local restaurants and crashed. A few other hikers also stayed at the church yard, but we were all quiet with fatigue.
We stayed in bed until the last minute before the continental breakfast ended, then hurried down for coffee and bagels.
The next hour was spent trying to put our trail lives back together. After checking out, we sat in the hotel lobby for a couple of hours making sure all our real life details were caught up. Emails, texts, phone calls, etc.
Next, we mailed our bulky, heavy bear canisters home and went to a late lunch. We called a cab and finally got back on the trail just after 4 p.m.
The day was hot and although we only hiked a few miles, I was sweaty and dirty in no time.
Do I have cell service? Nope.
We found a place to camp near water around 7 p.m.
