Eating, Resupply, more eating.   The mobile phone service here sucks.   Found a spot to make a couple of calls but that was it.   We will be leaving here at 6:15 tomorrow to get on the trail.  

Another hellish climb awaits us out of town.  4k ascent.   Weather in the area will be in the mid 90’s most of the week, so if we can get up to 6k before that hits, it should be ok.    Figure it will be high 70’s at that altitude.

Had Dinner with Old School last night.   He is an interesting character.   Last few years he has been driving an RV from Argentina up to the US.   Now he wants to sell it and get a sailboat.   He’s getting off the trail for a few days to see his Mom and was having a hard time spending the $100 on a hotel stay to wait for Amtrak tomorrow morning.   Soho is trying to figure out how he’ll afford a 60 foot sailboat if he can’t bring himself to drop Benjamin on a room.    Maybe he will put some floaties on his RV….

Next leg will end at the suckie location of Etna.    I heard the mobile service sucks even worse there.    Maybe we can find an overnighter at hotel on the interwebs.    Otherwise, it will be Seiad Valley.   I’ll update soon as I can.  

Big debate going on as to the mileage goals.   I figure we will try to take down a couple 25-30’s after we finish the climb tomorrow.   Should pop back out in a week or so.

Great sleep next to the river.  I popped up, packed and left around 6am.   There is a 3k climb and I wanted to get that over in the morning.   Soho passed me on the way up.   He loves those hills.  

There was not much to see.   Just trees, trees, and more trees.   Soho made the observation the other day that one side of these mountains is soft trail and the other side is rocky.   I’m starting to notice that.   I wander if that is because one side has been exposed longer, while the rocky side is granite that has been recently exposed by the plates pushing the mountain up.   Have to ask a geologist hiker next time I see one. 

I had the music turned up, but felt like I was dragging today.    Just didn’t have much energy for the long downhill after the climb.    Probably need a town day to recoup.   

Crossed the Sacramento River and walked up to the I-5 onramp. 

It was hot.   No super hot.   92 on my Thermometer.    Soho showed up shortly after I got there and we laid under the semi shade and tried to thumb a ride.    Took almost 30 minutes, but finally a pickup stopped by.   They had already got Old School and offered to get us into town as well, if we would hop in the bed and stay low so the cops wouldn’t see us.   

We made it to town and checked into the Dunsmuir Inn and Suites.   It is a decent place.   Showered all the Deet and sunscreen off me.   Feeling pretty good now.    Probably going to zero tomorrow.   We both need it I think.  

This morning I got up and that Doe is still roaming around the camp site.   Soho is all pissed off because another mouse chewed through his tent last night.   He chewed on his trail mix bag, took a couple shits in his tent, then left.   Disappointed, apparently.   

That makes the second mouse attack on Soho.   A few days ago he woke up with a mouse running around inside on his bug netting.   By the time he got his headlamp on the thing ran out the hole it made.   Soho borrowed some more magical unicorn duct tap to patch his tent up.   It is starting to look pretty ghetto. 

This doe is annoying me off, so I hit her with a rock.   She barely even moved.   Soho thinks we can hunt the deer around here with a baseball bat.   

There are not too many pictures for today.   It was a a nasty climb up to a tree enclosed peak.   At the top, instead of a beautiful vista, I treated to a hiker named Shaggy eating a granola bar.

At least there is water everywhere.   

Soho is dragging ass today.  His feet and ankles are hurting him.   I’m actually feeling pretty good.   Once again my feet have healed up overnight.   I am still amazed at how bad I feel before bed and how much better I feel by mid morning the next day.   The first 30 minutes every morning is a struggle to get all the bits working, but after the stretching a little walking I’m usually back to 100%.

Made it to Squaw Valley creek after a long decent.   It is flowing big.   No campsites here, so I had to head up to the trail head about .1 mile off trail.   Shaggy found a spot above the bridge on some rocks.   Just enough room for a sleeping pad.   Hope he doesn’t roll off in the night.

  Soho and I are cozy on this one.   Only spot we could find next to the river, which is roaring.   Gonna sleep good tonight 🙂

21 miles today.  I’ve been talking to some other hikers and they have found that they can do a couple big mile days then need a smaller day to recover.    Probably going to need to follow the philosophy. 

Made some coffee this morning for Soho and me.   Decided to ram down some dehydrated eggs for breakfast (good choice!)   While we were packing up, this doe kept nosing around our camp.   She is not timid.   Came within 10 feet and wouldn’t scare.    I walked over to a fallen tree and took a piss and she follows me and starts licking it up.   Apparently they are jonzing for salt.   

Another big day.   Going to bust out 27 again.   Got 4k up and 5k down on this one.  

Good news is that there is plenty of shade.   Bad news is there are not too many vistas.   In one clearing I did get a good look at Shasta.   Now that is an impressive dormant Volcano.   It is 14k feet high and I think most of the surrounding hills are less than 6k   Check out the clouds bunched up around the top.     

Mostly I either get shade and no views, or logged areas that look like a wasteland.

There is a dude ahead of us named Trent who is riding northbound on a horse.   Well horses.  One of them is a pack horse and the other he rides.   I think he switches between them.   He told us at Burney that he does 3 to 5 days, then meets his Mom with the horse trailer to resupply and give them a rest.   It is good to see a few trying to horse it on the trail.   He is probably a day in front of us.  

What isn’t so good is that their is fresh horse shit all over the trail that I have to dodge.    The biggest bummer is when there’s a particularly steep / tricky bit of trail.   I’m out of breath, legs burning, at the top and there is a big pile waiting for me to step in.   Apparently horses like to relax the anus after every big climb.    Trent is leading two of them, so double the fun.  

Not much happened most of the day.   Just tunes and walking.   Stopped at this view for a bit and ate a snack in the afternoon.   While I was sitting here Soho shows up.    We are chatting away when we hear a pine cone fall near us.   Then another.   After a while another one falls.   I get up and look around and can’t figure out where they are coming from.   I figured a squirrel was doing his thing.   Well, after another falls closer to us, I put on my pack and make some joke about the Squirrel Prince of the forest trying to drop one on us, when Jackalope steps around the corner.  

Apparently he was 15 feet up the trail resting when we stopped.   He just sat there throwing stuff at us.    It was funny.   We spent some time catching up.   He is trying to make Dunsmuir by Sunday morning and we are aiming for the afternoon.    

While catching up, Land Mammal shows up.   I haven’t seen him since Walker Pass at 650 or so.   He is trying to catch up with Rise and Shine, Snakebit, Cake, and the others.   He says they are only a couple days ahead.    Apparently Shine’s parents visited them a few weeks back and left her dog who is now hiking with them.    They are slowly building up pace again, but right now keeping it to 15 or so.    Apparently the dog got into a skunk last week, so by the time they got into town everybody smelled the same.   I think that is over the top even for hiker trash.  

I left the guys early and hit the trail.   I’m usually running slow on the hills and wanted to get this over with.  

Made camp at 8 with a couple of other hikers.   There is a doe hanging around this place too.    Skeeter’s are all over the place, so I zipped up and cooked in the tent.   Ate and crashed.   This was a long day, but did make the 27 miles.   

The ball of my left foot is killing me.   Got some kind of bruise there.   These extra miles are going to hurt.  

While at Old Station, I had a brief exchange with Steph and her crew from Portland.   They are aiming to link up with us on August 19th in Oregon and hike into the Jefferson wilderness to catch the eclipse.   Here is a bit of the exchange: 

Thanks for the pep talk, RIch.    I’ve been thinking about what it means to do a 20 mile/day average and it means going a lot faster than we have been.   Even with 20+ / day on the trail, the town day to rest/recover brings the average down to 15 to 18.    So we need to turn in better performance to make it in time.  

Today will be one of the tests.    26 miles is the goal.  

Stopped briefly at Burney Falls to snap a picture, then kept hauling. 

It was mostly green tunnel stuff on this hike.  Thankfully, we are well past the lava rock misery.   Forgot to mention that yesterday we saw Paul roll into the Ranch.   He was last seen at JJ’s double fisting beers.    Turns out that he was hauling ass on Hat Creek Rim, tripped, and face-planted on the basalt.   He had a 1 inch wide scrape from his forehead, over his nose, to his chin.   He basically looked like someone drove a car over his face.   Wish I got a picture of it.  

Anyway, the trail is soft and wide.    Lots of shade, but nothing much to look at besides trees.   The trail was over grown in a lot of places, so much so, that I couldn’t even see my feet.   That made for some interesting stumbles.    On a positive note, my feet actually fit in my shoes now.    There is actually some padding now between my foot and the rocks and as an added bonus I actually have some tread.   I should have changed these out 200 miles ago.  

This was an interesting lake below Burney falls.   They are dumping water pretty fast out of here.

Ran into a gal named “Flame”.   She and I crossed paths in the desert before Kennedy Meadows.   She flipped up North and is now south bounding.   Her Dad joined her for a week of hiking.   They are doing about 15 a day.   We visited for a while and swapped some stories.   

Made camp at about 7:30 that evening at Clark Spring.    Tent up, ate dinner, and collapsed.   This was almost a 27 mile day.