Tag: bridge

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 5: Kennedy Meadows to Monache Meadow

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Leaving Kennedy Meadows (after a hot coffee and hearty egg sandwich, of course), I followed the trail north along the Kern River and through a large burn zone. I stopped in the shade at the crest of a hill to have lunch with a hiker from LA named John, who was out for a week-long trek and would be leaving the trail after only seven days via Kearsarge Pass and Onion Valley.

We hiked together for the rest of the day through an expansive subalpine meadow scattered with pink and yellow wildflowers, and eventually reached a popular campsite on the bank of the south fork of the Kern. A bridge crossed the river nearby, and when I walked over to filter water for dinner seemingly hundreds of swallows were flitting around from underneath. A glance under the bridge revealed this large colony of mud-built swallow nests as the birds continued to dart to and fro, catching insects (keeping the mosquito levels at the camp pleasantly low). I sat down below the bridge to watch the swallows as evening rolled in, and the serenity of that moment continues to be one of my fondest memories of the entire trek.