Tag: backpacking

Day 52: Powerlines to Screwdriver Creek

The trail magic started early today with several water jugs and a cooler full of sodas left just before the first road crossing. I then caught up to a fellow hiker who had decided to skip ahead to Washington before the weather turned, and when her parents picked her up at the next road the back of their SUV was filled with beer, snacks, and Gatorade. I strolled past a small hydroelectric dam and beautiful reservoir where people were fishing, watching the morning light dance across the rippling water.

Soon after I ran into Lightning and another hiker who unfortunately had gotten heat exhaustion from the previous day’s trek across Hat Creek Rim. Luckily a guest ranch was nearby, and after offering him some water and making sure he was good to make it to the ranch I continued on my way to Burney Falls State Park. I caught up to Vick (Snooze) and Ronan on the way in, and together we raided the camp store for microwave Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sandwiches and canned margaritas to enjoy in the shade of some nearby picnic tables. It was here in the Lime-a-Rita induced euphoria where I was finally given a trail name: Lunch Hermit, or Lermit for short (based on one random occasion when I had lunch by myself at a scenic spot a hundred feet away from the path – trail names are like that).

Happily filled with food and drink we walked the short way down to the base of the falls, where a thundering cascade of water crashed into a large rocky pool. I rested my feet in the icy water while Vick and Ronan proceeded to jump off a boulder into the misty lagoon, yelling their shock and joy to the sky and the surprised tourists nearby.

Day 50: Domingo Lake to Hat Creek

In the morning I entered Lassen National Park, a place I had camped many times with my family during my childhood and thus had a special place in my memory. Unfortunately PCT hikers are not allowed to camp in the park without a bear canister (I had left mine at my parents’ house in Tahoe), so I had walk the 19 miles to the northern boundary in one day. Near the entrance I took the short side trail to Terminal Geyser, an impressive steam vent only accessible by footpath. The multicolored sulfur Boiling Springs Lake rounded out my tour of Lassen’s geothermal features.

It was a hot August day, and by the time I stopped at Lower Twin Lake for lunch I was ready to jump straight in. The cold water felt incredibly refreshing, the more so because of the large burn zone I next had to trek through to reach my planned campsite. The peak heat of the afternoon was only slightly diminished by the fact that the burned trees allowed for a decent view of snow-covered Lassen Peak rising in the background. When I arrived at Hat Creek my mouth was dry with thirst and I was very tempted to start chugging water straight from the creek. I thought better of it and impatiently used my filter, then lay down in the cool air next to the rushing stream and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the water.

Day 49: Chester to Domingo Lake

I did laundry in the morning, sitting on a curb outside the town laundromat wearing only my rain pants and jacket as everything else was thrown into the machine. After a leisurely breakfast at the local cafe and supply run to Dollar General (which would become a mainstay resupply stop as I moved through Northern California) I walked to the edge of town and hitched a ride back to the trail. At the trailhead I found Ronan sitting at the base of a tree, eating a Subway sandwich and surrounded by a swarm of yellow jackets trying to get at his deli meat. We chatted for a bit and I moved on, walking toward the growing prominence of Lassen Peak in the distance.

I set up camp just south of the park on a rocky bluff overlooking Domingo Lake, with a view of the Terminal Geyser spewing steam amidst the trees ahead. Since the ground was far too hard to nail stakes in, I collected some large rocks to set at the corners of my tent. As I was cooking a dinner of instant ramen noodles Ronan appeared and joined me at camp. He was from just outside Belfast, and when I told him I had visited Northern Ireland a few years earlier he took out a ukulele he had been carrying along the trail and began to play. Soft notes rang out over the lake, and Ronan sang a rendition of “Wish I was Back Home in Derry” under the bright light of a full moon. The song and setting moved me, and I went to sleep feeling a small longing for my own home welling up in my chest.

Day 48: Little Cub Spring to Chester

While on the PCT I got into the routine of staying a night in a motel about once every 10 days, so after checking the map I called ahead and booked a room at the Antlers Motel in Chester, a small town just south of Lassen National Park. I met up with Compass in the morning and we hiked toward the highway, talking about his experiences working for the Bureau of Land Management near Walker Pass where I had started my hike. We soon came across the marker designating the midway point of the PCT, exactly halfway between Mexico and Canada. Since I hadn’t started at the border it wasn’t very meaningful to me, but for Compass it meant he would now have less trail ahead than he had already hiked. I imagine knowing that fact would help a lot in the mental endeavor to complete the trail.

Chester lay too far down the highway to walk, so Compass and I set our bags down and stuck our thumbs out to try to catch a ride. Thus far on my journey I had only had to hitchhike once and was lucky enough to find a ride without even trying, but this time was more frustrating. Trucks, semis, family minivans, and sedans all zoomed by without a second look at the dirty and scraggly-looking hikers on the side of the road. We attempted calling some trail angels who had stapled their number to a log at the trailhead but they were unavailable. Hot, sweaty, and increasingly demoralized, we took turns at the road until eventually a suburban pulled up on the opposite side to drop some hikers off at the north trailhead. We quickly waved them down and gratefully hopped in, the driver depositing us outside Chester’s grocery store. I got a massive deli sandwich and soda, gulping it down with gusto in the air-conditioned coolness of the little eating area. I had learned a valuable lesson about hitching this day: patience is key.

Day 47: Chips Creek to Little Cub Spring

The 5,000 foot climb out of the Feather River valley was even longer than the trek in, but passed by a creek whose surface danced with reflected sunlight and through beautiful high meadows covered in purple wildflowers. At the top I was rewarded with a strong flowing spring of cold water (aptly named Cold Springs) spilling out of a pipe and into a large trough. There I met another hiker named Harrison (trail name: Compass), and we filled our bottles to the brim while watching a herd of cows wander around on the other side of a nearby wooden fence.

As the trail approached a large dirt parking lot at Humboldt Summit, views of the volcanic Lassen Peak appearing amidst the clouds in the distance, shots of gunfire began to ring out ahead. Surprised by the sudden noise, I sat down on some rocks and waited for a few minutes, snacking on a granola bar and hoping that whoever was firing would stop soon and move on. The gunshots continued though, and not wanting my hike to tragically end by getting hit with a stray bullet I took a look at the map and decided to take a shortcut overland through the bushes to avoid the Summit and link back up with the trail at Robbers Spring. It was tough going over uneven ground through thick stands of fir trees, but eventually I made my way back to the trail where I found Compass. He told me that a group of men had indeed been doing target practice straight across the PCT, simply unaware that a popular trail runs through there. I camped on an open plateau above the next spring, with yellow jackets buzzing around into the evening.

Day 46: Big Creek Road to Belden

As I refilled my water in the morning at a trickling spring two fellow thru-hikers, Sonic and Ronan (trail name: Skeleton Child), passed by and mentioned they were hurrying down the trail to Belden to attend a funk music festival taking place there. I didn’t know much about funk but I did know that I would love to eat some hot food at the festival food trucks, so I hurried along after them into Bucks Lake Wilderness.

The trail offered nice views of the lakes to the east, and while I walked I encountered a group of mule deer foraging on the shrubs along the path. The descent into Belden itself was a long, relentless slog through overgrown thickets of manzanita bushes followed by an unending series of steep switchbacks leading 4,000 feet down the mountainside to the river valley below.

I crossed some railroad tracks and immediately felt like I was in the twilight zone. Hundreds of tie-dye clad festival-goers strolled this way and that between groups of colorful tents, many dancing and singing their way along the road. It was the most people I had seen in quite awhile, and I dazedly walked into the main part of the resort where even more people filtered in and out of the music venues. A man came running up to me and asked if I was a PCT hiker, and when I said yes he took me straight to the bar and bought me a beer. His name was Josh and he comes to the festival every year, often taking passing hikers “under his wing”. I can only assume that meant getting them drunk, as his girlfriend soon joined us and offered us “slap shots”. I wasn’t sure what that meant but went along for the ride, and quickly had a shot of whiskey in front of me. With a band belting out funky tunes on the stage next to the bar, we took the shots and Josh’s girlfriend immediately proceeded to slap both of us in the face. Some of Josh’s friends then showed up and invited me to continue the party at their camp. Getting very hungry I thanked them and moved on, somewhat bewildered at the past hour’s events.

Slightly buzzed from the drinks, I wandered over to the food trucks where I found Sonic and Ronan eating with a few other hikers. I devoured an entire pepperoni pizza and giant burrito followed up with ice cream, then went to the resort store to pick up some high-priced trail food. Sonic and Ronan invited me to camp with them and enjoy the festival, but knowing that I wouldn’t get any sleep and feeling very out of place I decided to hike out and camp a little ways up the trail at a quiet, peaceful spot above a creek.

Day 45: Bald Mountain Junction to Big Creek Road

My tick paranoia continued into the next day, and when I came across a couple of hikers in the morning I asked them to check my back for any sign of the pests. Luckily they found nothing and I made my way down a steep valley to the Feather River, where some boaters had beached their rafts for a lunch break. The river was flowing strong and I stopped for a minute on the large iron bridge to watch the water spill over the rocks below, its low roar rumbling in my ears.

On the other side of the river I made the long, gradual climb up to a rocky point overlooking the pine-studded hills to the east. I took out a Snickers bar and sat down to enjoy the expansive view but was soon accosted by a swarm of yellow jackets attracted to the sweat soaking my clothes and backpack straps. Waving them away I walked on, briefly pausing to browse through a plastic container of books someone had left out for thru-hikers. On my way to camp I passed through a beautiful meadow of white and yellow flowers, the bright afternoon light shifting into the gold of evening.

Day 44: Deer Lake to Bald Mountain Junction

Stuffed into a side pouch in my backpack was a small set of wireless earbuds. I hadn’t felt the need to use them much for most of my PCT journey thus far, as I either had been hiking with a friend or was surrounded by the awe-inspiring mountain peaks and alpine scenery of the High Sierra. In Northern California, however, my surroundings sometimes became monotonous with the trail leading through unending pine and fir forests interspersed here and there by a small meadow or open ridge. I started spending an hour or two each day listening to audiobooks, starting with the short book “Why Buddhism is True” by Robert Wright. The title is somewhat misleading, as the author mainly focuses on looking at the practice of mindfulness meditation through the lens of evolutionary psychology.

At camp, I put some of what I learned about the evolution of human emotion into practice as I discovered what appeared to be a tick (but was in reality probably some species of small beetle) crawling up the sleeve of my shirt. I have long had an irrational fear of ticks, at one point even indulging in self-medication to ward off any chance of an imagined case of lyme disease. Naturally I freaked out and brushed the bug off as fast as I could, then frantically searched the rest of my clothes before running into my tent to hide in case there were more of the tiny creatures.

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep while in this state of panic, I took some deep breaths and tried to take a step back to examine my fear from a place of calm. Eventually I decided there was nothing I could do after searching my clothes and body for ticks, and resolved to not worry about it until the following day. It worked well enough that I was able to lay my exhausted body down and drift off, images of the eight-legged monsters flashing only occasionally through my dreams.

Day 43: Sierra City to Deer Lake

Having rolled off my sleeping pad into the dirt of the open lot where I had slept among a group of fellow thru-hikers, I woke up early and decided to get going before the heat of the August day set in. I took a very cold shower in the public bathroom and followed up with a hot breakfast at the Red Moose, a B&B in town. After grabbing a few food items at the small store (the shelves were mostly empty except for pop-tarts) I walked back up the road and began the hot, steep climb out of the valley. The mountainside was mostly exposed manzanita bushes with little tree cover, and I was glad when I came across a tiny trickle of water to refill my bottles.

My friend Jason had recommend taking the short detour to the fire lookout on top of Sierra Buttes, so I took his advice and headed up the wide fire road to the summit 5000 feet above Sierra City. It was a brutal climb, the late morning sun beating down as I slowly made my way up a road so steep I’m not sure how vehicles could drive it. Eventually I reached the peak, where a series of metal stairways (also steep) scaled the rock to the lookout itself. The panorama spilled over lakes and rolling mountains into the cloudy distance. The wind was strong and I ate lunch in the shelter of the rocks, chatting with some travelers who had made the ascent from a much saner starting point.

By the time I made my way down from the Buttes I was very much feeling the combined effects of the sun, the climb, and the previous night’s beer and taco party. Needing a pick-me-up, I detoured from the trail again to visit the Packer Lake Lodge, where a chicken pot pie and ice-cold Sprite helped rejuvenate my spirits. I camped on a bluff above Deer Lake, watching the red rays of the setting sun fade over the craggy Buttes.

Day 42: Mount Lacey to Sierra City

The path to Sierra City wound down along a tree-studded hillside to a large bridge over the North Yuba River. After enjoying the view of some small waterfalls, I climbed up to the highway where I discovered my first piece of trail magic: a small cooler filled with chips, beer, and Gatorade (trail magic is a term for the generous gifts, often food, drinks or a fortuitous ride into town, given to thru-hikers by people along the trail, themselves known as trail angels). As I quenched my thirst in the afternoon heat, pondering whether I had enough food left to skip Sierra City and continue on toward the next town, an older couple walked by on their way to see the falls. It happened to be a Tuesday, and they told me the local bar in town had a $2 taco special going.

My mind decided and my stomach rumbling, I quickly walked the 1 1/2 miles along the road into town. Sierra “City” consists of a few main buildings set along the highway, including a small store, post office, library, a couple of hotels, and of course my destination: the Buckhorn Bar and Mountain Creek Restaurant. I had just sat down in a wooden chair on the porch out front when Snooze appeared, and together we went inside to order food and drinks. We soon discovered the backyard patio where Ashes’ hiking group sat at a table listening to a local band belt out country ballads. Joining them, we took full advantage of the taco bar and beer selection, eventually closing the place down around 8pm. The town provided a large dirt area for hikers to camp, so I rolled out my sleeping pad and slept cowboy-style under the open sky.