A Song of Ice and Fire - PCT Section P Part 2 (Porcupine Lake to Etna Summit)

Pacific Crest Trail - Section P Part 2: Porcupine Lake to Etna Summit

Porcupine Lake, CA, Etna Summit, CA
Note: Stats below are totals for Section P
Distance: (One Way)  98.5 mi.
Total Elevation Gain: 17,594 ft.
Total Elevation Loss: 13,770 ft
Highest Elevation: 7,300 ft.
Dogs: Allowed, but logistically difficult
Difficulty: Moderate

Chris grabbed the headlamp and shined it on his backpack. Sitting on top, bold as brass, was the most enormous black rat. The rat looked at Chris with his headlamp, with an expression that seemed to say "What?! Come at me bro!"

Chris here. Allison's school work load has been quite high, so we decided I would author the rest of this post.

Back to the rat. Now you might think that the sudden explosion of light from the LEDs would be enough to frighten most wild animals. Well it wasn't. After a combination of smacking the side of the tent, the light and us shoeing it away verbally, the rat finally dismounted my backpack and disappeared into the night. The relief we felt was quite fleeting. Quick sidebar, Allison and I have the REI half dome 2 standard length tent and while it has served us well, it has always been a bit too short for yours truly. This means that at some point during the night most nights either my head or my feet end up touching the wall of the tent. Within seconds the rat traversed to the other side of the tent and I shit you not, ran straight into my head. This kind of behavior from an animal in the wild is the last thing I would have expected. At this point I was pretty sure we were both going to be eaten alive. We also decided that if this rat was brazen enough to headbutt me through the tent, it was probably not going to leave our stuff alone until it was fully satisfied that there was nothing left to eat or destroy. After coming to this conclusion I decided that we should move our packs into the tent. We ended up laying across the back of the tent and ended up attempting to sleep with our feet on top of them. Even after all of this, the rat kept moving around outside. Finally Allison's half asleep brain decided the only thing that was going to make it go away was to hiss at it like a cat. Surprisingly, this worked like a charm and the rat finally left for the rest of the night.

Doing something like the PCT is very trying, both physically and mentally. Most people, even those who aren't hikers have some understanding of this. More than a few people voiced concerns about how Allison and I would hold up, relationship wise, to the daily stressors of the trail. As most of you know, she and I have done plenty of outdoor adventuring in the past and were not really worried about relationship problems. This assumption proved true for 99+ percent of the hike. The morning after the rat incident was one of the exceptions. Our notes for this particular morning simply refer to it as fight morning. Looking back on it I'm pretty sure the fight mostly had to do with the fact that most normal human beings require a certain amount of sleep in order to get along well with other human beings and when both concerned parties don't get adequate sleep disagreements are almost inevitable. Allison, if you are reading this I just want to let you know that I'm not trying to have a fight about the fight! For most of my adult life I have, traditionally, been a morning person. I am also usually interested in breaking camp quickly and getting my hiking day started, especially when there is a certain mileage goal as was the case most days on the PCT. This was the case on fight morning except because of my lack of sleep I was also in a bad mood. This caused me to get frustrated when Allison wasn't getting ready fast enough because she wasn't feeling well. The discourse that followed lead us to both be in a bad mood as we left camp. As we got further down the trail, the argument evolved from being about breaking camp to being about how I was so interested in getting miles under our belt that it was like we were on a forced march. In our sleep deprived minds, I didn't care about taking any side trips off the trail to relax, see the sights or explore, and Allison didn't care about getting mileage in even though we had a limited amount of time in which to finish the hike. Of course, neither of these things were true, but as with many arguments, there wasn't much logic involved.

The argument was finally diffused when we ran into another hiker, “Yurt Man.” We ended up having a rather long, for us, conversation with him. During the course of the conversation we found out that he used to live blocks away from one of our old apartments in Seattle. We both actually remembered our respective residences. We also found out that he was one of the trail stewards for Washington.

Up until this point we had run into very few hikers going either direction. Thus, it is worth mentioning that, including Yurt Man, we ran into four other hikers in the span of about 20 minutes. One of the other gentlemen actually startled us. He was taking a break off the trail in the shade of a tree. We must have gotten within 10 feet of him before we noticed and tried to save face. He was a quite old, heavyset man who told us that he was not only planning to do the PCT, but also the CDT, and a trail neither of us had heard of, the Pacific Northwest Trail, which runs from Olympic national park to Glacier national park. Doing any one of these trails, much less all three back to back, is ambitious even for someone in peak physical condition. I think we both immediately had thoughts like, “man, is he going to make it without dying?” Shortly after this encounter we reached the highest point we would hike through in Northern California. It sat at approximately 7500'. This was also where we ran into our first snow of the trip. Allison and I decided to take a break before the first snow field to see if we had cellphone reception. While we were trying to figure this out, the older gentlemen passed us and started to traverse the snow fields. It was immediately evident that he was having a lot of trouble. It seemed that every few feet he would lose his balance and almost fall. It was painful and nerve-racking to watch. We were both thinking that at any moment, we might have to go into rescue mode. Luckily he made it across the first 200' long snow field successfully, but the journey took him approximately 20 minutes. When we finally got completely ahead of him a few minutes later we had a conversation about how we hoped he'd make it safely threw the trail going forward. We asked several Northbound hikers who passed us later in the trail about him, but no one had any information. We hope he is alright!

As the day wore on we passed Deadfall lakes and the Parks Creek trailhead.  We decided that this would be a great place to camp with friends or family sometime when we weren't through hiking.  Due to the the close proximity to several roads of we saw quite a few more hikers than usual on this day, including several couples who passed us while we were trying to eat cold rehydrated dehydrated mixed vegetables. Allison had been having some pretty big issues with her appetite throughout the beginning of the hike. We had been discussing what might be the culprit for a while at this point. We had almost certainly narrowed it down to the dehydrated vegetable mixture that we had spent so much time making. Initially we had planned to add some of this mixture to everyone of our dinners. On this day we decided that we would try to re-hydrate the vegetable mixture and eat it on its own to determine if Allison would have a better appetite for just the dinner on its own sans veges. It was immediately clear that cold re-hydrated veggies were terrible. We choked down as much as we could and then decided we would start trying to use them only in meals where they were less obtrusive like the beefy noodle bowl. Shortly after this, Allison's appetite got better much to our combined relief.

At 12.5 miles we were both done for the day and decided to stop when we reached this really cool rock prominence called Cement Bluff.  After eating a dinner while trying to keep ants out of or meal, we hit the sack.  In the morning I woke up to the sound of a huge animal that was obviously running in our general direction.  Oh god, it must be a bear.  Since we slept without the rain fly that night, I immediately popped my head up to see the upper part of a jogger bolt past us about 50 ft. from camp.  How one skinny jogger could make that much noise, I'll never know, but then again it could just have been my mind making me think every little sound a bear.  Later in the trip we actually would have a bear encounter in our camp.

After the bear/jogger, we walked out to the edge of the bluff to eat our breakfast with a huge 360 degree view.  After that we started making tracks for the morning.  While we were packing up, Allison had noticed that our liquid soap had leaked all over the hip strap support (near your butt) on the back of her bag.  Without a large amount of water at our disposal we just had to pack up and find the first water source where we could finally try to get rid of some of the soap.  Let me stop here for a quick trail etiquette lesson.  Even if your soap is biodegradable you should never wash anything with soap directly in any water source, as even biodegradable soap can get people and animals down stream sick. Anyway, a few miles later we got to the water source.  By this time the soap had irritated Allison's sweaty back and gotten all over her shirt and shorts.  Time for one of many couples bonding moments that you might only experience if you do through hiking and even then only when your soap gets rubbed into your back for a few hours.  Allison stripped off her pants and shirt in the middle of the trail, you lose all modesty a few days in, threw on her sweater (maybe not all modesty) and started washing her clothes and herself, but couldn't quite reach without getting her sweater all wet. I proceeded to do my manly duty which involved retrieving multiple 32 oz buckets from the stream, bringing them to Allison who was a safe distance away, and trying to wash the soap off her butt.

That evening we camped at edge of the meadow which had a dry spring.  This wasn't a problem because we had planned accordingly and carried extra water from a source several miles before camp.   At this camp we finished the first book of the trail..  The next morning Allison realized that we might be short on food because had been going a bit slower than planned.  No matter how well you plan, food shortages are a fact of life on the trail.  We learned pretty quickly that the faster you go, the less food you have to carry.  The food shortage ended up not being a big problem.  I think we skipped one meal and rationed out the rest of the food and snacks so we weren't miserable for the rest of the section.

As we started our uphill approach to highway 3 it started to get really hot.  This heat would change to thunderstorms and hail in a matter of hours, but more on that later.  As we continued to ascend, we ran into a notable phenomenon that neither of us had seen before, tons of frogs along the trail at 7200'.  The only thing I can guess is that we just walked through at the perfect time and during the fall-spring months it is probably much too cold at that elevation for them to survive.  During the beginning of summer most of the snow has melted so there is both fresh water and milder temperatures.  

After the frogs, we landed one of my favorite yet scariest campsites of the whole trip.  It was a semi exposed ridge with only a few trees and a great view of Shasta.  After setting up camp we found a spot out of the wind to cook and then ate dinner looking at the view in the top image of this post.  It was a pretty cool place to be.  As we sat eating our improvised "Taco Bell in a Bag" meal and enjoying the view with few clouds and blue skies, we had absolutely no idea what weather was in store for us in a few hours.

The beginning of our night was relaxing.  Then as night fell it began to rain.  Then the rain turned into a full on thunderstorm.  We were on the top of an exposed ridge and the thunder and lightning was getting closer and closer.  I was sure any second we were going to get fried like a mountain frog.  Allison and I held onto each other and counted the intervals between lightning and thunder to determine the distance of the storm.  According to one of our measurements, there was one lightning strike within a mile of our location.  Just when we thought it couldn't get any more interesting, it started to hail.  It was small at first but soon got larger.  Luckily it had been so windy up on the ridge when we were setting up camp that we decided to use eight `2"x`8" pieces of wood to stake down the tent and it held fast.  When we awoke in the morning much of the hail was still there.  We even found a few patches down the trail at 10 a.m. that were still the size of small marbles.

It got really cold that afternoon and started raining.  There were also tons of fallen trees over the trail which we had to navigate.  Multitudes of downed trees ended up being one of the banes of our existence in multiple sections of the hike.  The toll this exercise takes on your speed and morale is enormous.  As the day got increasingly nastier, we decided to call it a day and bushcamp for a short 11 mile day.

The next morning the weather seemed to be clearing, but there was still lots of fog.  The days hike contained lots of uphill through forests that had been completely obliterated by fire several years ago. These types of areas really look like another planet and remind you how powerful nature is.  Later in the day we ran into three north bound hikers, Magic Man, Bigfoot and Tin Tin.  They were coming from the Mexican border and thus already in good shape.  At the time they passed us they were doing 20-25 miles a day.  They wouldn't have been notable except that we were destined to run into all three of them in separate places later in our journey.

We were supposed to do 15 miles but only ended up doing 13.  We were wiped out and both my knee and foot were yelling at me to stop.  We found a nice flat campsite close to a stream and setup camp.  Earlier in the trip we had been having some trouble with our rain fly leaking.  Our solution was to put our emergency blanket between the tent and the rain fly.  While this sort of worked for rain, it was also really loud.  So, between being kept up a lot of the night and my knee and foot being injured, we decided to take a zero day.  Allison read almost all day as it was too cold to do anything outside of the tent.

In the morning it was partly cloudy but trying to clear up. For the last few weeks I had been having problems being to cold at night and this morning I finally gave in and determined I needed a warmer sleeping bag.   I can't say enough about REI's service.  This is why we almost exclusively buy our big ticket items from them.  Allison called REI from the top of the hill. The REI lady was really nice considering their system was crashing and shipped us a warmer sleeping bag to our next stop, fully refunded my used/stinky bag, honors our 20% percent discount and a gave Allison free shipping on a fathers day gift.  It costs you a little more to shop at REI, but they really treat you like their #1 customer everytime.  Later in the day we crossed over the road that leads to the town of Etna.  From here you can hitch a ride to resupply, but we decided we were going to be ok despite the food shortage.  The summit of the actual mountain is very pretty.  So pretty, in fact that we didn't notice that there was a 12.5 mile dry stretch, luckily we made it through just fine.

Aggressive Rat-bros and Baby Spiders - PCT Section P Part 1 (Castle Crags to Porcupine Lake)

Pacific Crest Trail Section P Part 1: Castle Crags to Porcupine Lake - May 26th - 28th 2015

Castle Crags/Castella, CA to Porcupine Lake, CA
Note: Stats below are totals for Section P
Distance: (One Way)  98.5 mi.
Total Elevation Gain: 17,594 ft.
Total Elevation Loss: 13,770 ft
Highest Elevation: 7,300 ft.
Dogs: Allowed, but logistically difficult
Difficulty: Moderate

When we got to Castle Crags State Park that afternoon it was probably 4 o'clock and we still had town chores to do. We decided that by the time we went and got our supply box from Ammirati's, got snacks and dealt with paying for the campsite it was going to be too late for a shower or laundry. We hobbled around the park getting our chores done. Gloria's package had arrived and our food for the next section weighed a ton, we were going to go 11 days without resupplying. It was our longest section and we were probably carrying 13-14lbs of food a piece. Our decision to go straight to bed was solidified when we returned from those chores, we were exhausted and there was absolutely no sign of the rain and thunder letting up.

That night, as we were pigging out on junk food naked in our tent (we are so classy), we listened to the storm moving closer and closer to us. By about 8pm the thunder was right on top of us, there was maybe a 2-3 second delay between lighting and thunder and the booms echoed around the valley and seemed to last forever. Our rainfly was leaking again and we resolved to try the emergency blanket next time. Around this time we heard a voice asking "Can I camp next to you guys?" we replied of course and told the stranger to just shove our stuff in the bear box over so he could put his gear in. He tried to start a conversation, but we weren't feeling very social so we told him we'd talk in the morning and went to sleep.

That night I had nightmares about Chris abandoning me on the trail, telling me he wanted nothing to do with somebody as selfish as me (definitely no issues there!).

I woke to the sound of a siren, not an ambulance or a fire truck, but a deep wailing siren. The kind that signal for kids in the 50's to dive under their desks so they could survive a Russian nuclear attack. It sounded like Silent Hill and made both Chris and I shudder. It couldn't have been a drill it was so late, we still are not sure what it was.

That morning the weather had cleared. Chris got up early to go to the bathroom, between the thunder, siren and nightmares I was wanting a little comfort so I zipped our bags together and waited for Chris to come back and snuggle with me. I waited. And waited. AND WAITED. No Chris. I'll admit, I was not in the best frame of mind and may or may not have decided that he was either dead on the toilet or cheating on me with the 50-60 year old woman in the campsite next to us (I HAVE NO ISSUES, STOP JUDGING ME). Finally I decided I was being a little crazy just sitting there, so I got up. Chris was standing nearby chatting with the older woman.... and another guy (whew, dodged a bullet on that one). I pretended to socialize with them in order to lure Chris back to the tent. Chris had told the woman about my work and that I was a graduate student, so I answered a few questions and then I said I wanted to go back to bed while I stared at Chris, willing him to come with me.

After snuggling we got up and chatted a bit more with our fellow campers. They both seemed very nice, and we especially hit it off with the guy, whose name was Travis. He had hiked from Ashland to Canada the previous summer and was on his way south to do the other 2/3rds. We chatted with him a bit about the trail, I asked him if he had seen any rattlesnakes, he said no and that he was 99% certain we wouldn't either. The only people he had ever heard of who had run into rattlesnakes had been sticking their arms, legs or faces somewhere they shouldn't have been. Apparently Travis had never heard of hiker jinxes, more on that later.

CASTLE CRAGS

The woman (whose name I will not mention) on the other hand seemed to mutate from the reasonable, kind lady into some kind of obsessive freak. Stones and glass houses sinking ships and that, but still... She started off reasonable enough. She asked us if we had seen the movie Wild, there was sort of a weird intensity in her eyes, and we told her that we had and hadn't particularly liked it. I think she must have assumed that we were kindred spirits at this point, because she then proceeded to rant for the next 20 minutes or so about how much Wild sucked, how it made everybody assume she was damaged goods, how Cheryl Strayed had no redeeming qualities, and SHE MURDERED THAT POOR HORSE!! It was weird. I tried to have a conversation about it: I didn't read the book, she seemed really unprepared, that's too bad, everybody has some redeeming quality (even Hitler could paint a mean tree), and I actually thought her killing the horse was one of the few moments where I really felt for her. She just sort of ignored me and kept going though. Finally Chris and I excused ourselves by saying we wanted to get rolling, we had chores etc. Chris and I normally don't engage in shit talking, but as we walked towards showers and doing sink laundry we couldn't help ourselves.

We cleaned up and spent about 45 minutes washing out our muddy clothes in the sink, using an incredible amount of Dr. Bronners soap. We went back up to the campsite to hang dry everything now that the sun had come out. Travis teased us about the amount of clothing we had (he wasn't wrong, I ended up mailing two pairs of shorts and a t-shirt back at the Washington border). We also discovered, after calling our family, that the SPOT didn't seem to be working. We weren't sure why, but couldn't help wondering if there was an emergency, would it save us? We decided that it was probably that we weren't allowing enough time between pressing the check in button and turning it off.

Our clothes took about a year to dry, during this time Chris probably ate 10 lbs of Jolly Ranchers that he had found, abandoned by some other hiker, in the bear box. We said goodbye to Travis who was going into town. We packed up too and started up out of the park on the fire road.

OUR PACKS WERE REALLY GODDAMNED HEAVY.

I'M AN ALIEN!

We had decided we were going to take a short day, there are two fairly large ascents coming out of the campground (one up to the trail and one 7 miles later) and we wanted to break them up. There were also no listed campsites after the one we were planning on stopping at, and we couldn't get much in the way of information on camping from Travis who had been trying to escape the rain and hadn't really noticed.

Our campsite was by a small stream and was very pretty. We had checked the forecast and they were predicting rain, so we put the emergency blanket between the rainfly and the top of the tent. As luck would have it, it didn't rain that night, but the emergency blanket definitely warmed up the tent. We filed that information away should we end up in snow, we did get snowed on one time, but had discovered that the emergency blanket trick made a lot of noise if there was any wind at all. We had dinner (of which I still ate very little), I read out loud to Chris and set an alarm for the next morning so that we could get the ascent taken care of before the mid-day heat. We were very happy that we did, that next day was a doozy.

ALLISON AT A VERY COLD CREEK

For anybody hiking through this area, there are PLENTY of campsites between Castle Crags and the uphill and some of them are very nice. Chris was having a hard time that morning, but I felt great as we headed the five miles toward the uphill. And oh the uphill  It was brutal, we hit it around 10:30 in the morning and didn't finish it till about 2:30-3:00 that afternoon. We listened to N'Sync as we climbed and it was glorious, about half way through Chris started feeling better. By the time we finished my muscles were so tired, that when I stood up from peeing I nearly fell over.

CASTLE CRAGS

Chris was done by the time we stopped at the top for "lunch" he asked if we could shave two miles off our day and I agreed. The last 2-3 miles of our day were brutal and by the time we got to our campsite I was very glad we weren't going further. We set up camp in a depression surrounded by manzanita scrub, We were on the side of a ridge and the view of Castle Crags and the expansive sky were beautiful. The ground seemed soft, although by about 11 that night I decided that was not the case.

MT. SHASTA

ALLISON PASSES OUT
LOOKING AT THE MAPS

That night I finally had an appetite. Meal of choice was our version of Taco Bell. Now, there are some things you eat on the trail that taste amazing because you are so damn hungry, later if you ate them you would be less impressed. This is one of those meals. It's still better than Taco Bell, but that's not a high bar. But oh god, that night I DEVOURED it.   

That morning we started the climb up to the top of the ridge. There were incredible views of Castle Crags and Mt. Shasta. There were also rattlesnakes. I nearly stepped on a juvenile, said "whoa that's a big snake" bent down to get a closer look and Chris realized it was a rattlesnake and we took off. A couple hours later we ran across another, this one started rattling when we were about 6 feet away, we threw small rocks and sticks at it till it moved far enough off the trail that we could get around it.

We walked through a patch of trees and suddenly we were on the top of a ridge. It finally felt like we were really on the PCT we had imagined. Incredible expansive views, lakes that looked like small puddles hundreds of feet below us, eagles soaring. It was perfect.

PORCUPINE LAKE

It was also a very long day, I was wearing shorts and discovered the wonders of petroleum jelly (on my legs, perverts) for chafe. We both were running short on water by the time we got to Porcupine Lake, our destination for the night. We threw down our stuff and went down to the lakeside to pump water. All of a sudden we heard shouting. There was something about being alone in the woods that made Chris and I loathe running into other people. These were baby Bros one of them was using a life straw and they had been climbing around the lake. They quieted down once they saw us and were really excited to talk to us about the PCT and seemed like nice enough boys, though a bit obnoxious.

While we were chatting with them we discovered that the lake was completely covered in tiny baby spiders. Which made me a little nauseous, but I coped, I held it together as long as I could and then sprinted back up to the campsite where it was a little better. There were chipmunks investigating our gear when I got back. We set up the tent, made dinner and went to bed.

That night Chris woke me up.

Chris (whispering loudly): Baby, baaaby! are you awake? Baby? Baby!
Me: mrphflw

Chris: I think the chipmunks are back and they are messing with our stuff!
Me: Chipmunks aren't nocturnal. Go to sleep.

5 minutes later.

Chris: Baby! It's happening again.
Me: What do you want me to do about it? Get my headlamp and look?

Chris grabbed the headlamp and shined it on his backpack. Sitting on top, bold as brass, was the most enormous black rat. The rat looked at Chris with his headlamp, with an expression that seemed to say "What?! Come at me bro!"

This post was getting too long so we decided to split it into two.  Does the bold and insatiable rat eat Chris alive?  Find out next time in the sequel post: Pacific Crest Trail - Section P Part 2: Porcupine Lake to Etna Summit.

The Wettening - PCT Section O (Burney Falls to Castella)

Pacific Crest Trail Section O - May 18th - 25th. 2015

Burney Falls St. Park. to Castle Crags/Castella, CA

Distance: (One Way)  82.2 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 17,969 ft.

Total Elevation Loss: 18,764 ft

Highest Elevation: 5,050 ft.

Dogs: Allowed, but logistically difficult 

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate

As we ran away from the creepy guy asking us about badgers we felt amazing. We'd made it the first three days without injury, without even feeling terribly sore. We'd taken a nice break and were definitely prepared for the remaining 5 or so miles till we got to camp. The days were long, so even though it was early evening there seemed to be plenty of light left. We crossed a beautiful dam, and did a fair amount of easy-moderate uphill. My stomach was not happy about going uphill almost immediately after our break and I was pretty nauseous for the next hour. Despite this we still did it and morale wasn't terrible even with it being the first real uphill (later we would define uphill differently) of the trip.

Lake Britton near Burney Falls

We hiked in the dusk, trying not to step on multiple small brown and black snakes that were sluggish with the onset of evening. I damn near stepped on one, and it freaked out and I leaped clear of it. I honestly am not sure what kind of snakes they were. I'm just glad it was cool enough that they mostly weren't interested in us. 

Shortly after this we ran into another person for the first time. He was a mountain biker. Now, mountain bikes (or any other kind of wheeled device) are not allowed on the PCT. In fact it was a point of pride in the Yogi guide book that whenever she ran into a mountain biker she planted her feet firmly in the middle of the trail and refused to budge, forcing the biker to dismount and move for her. Chris and I aren't quite so rigid, but we understand why they really aren't allowed. They tend to erode the trail, and coming around blind corners (often with little room for others to pass) is dangerous, particularly if one of you is hurtling around the corner on a bike. This man however was the picture of politeness, he practically flew off his bike, apologizing profusely about how he hadn't expected anybody to be out it was so early in the season, he'd just been trying to get some alone time while visiting family, and so on. He was really nice, and we chose not to lecture him, since he obviously knew he technically shouldn't be out there. Honestly we were just impressed that he was able to bike in this area, since it seemed to us to be pretty perilous for mountain biking. 

Dam at Lake Britton

We kept along, but we started to get really tired. By this time the light was starting to fade fast. We were close to camp, but as I've mentioned, time is funny. The first 3.5 miles after Burney Falls had flown by, but the last 1.5 miles seemed to take forever. We crossed a bridge with a series of waterfalls, which is apparently one of the best places to swim on the trail, but it was too dark and we were too tired to really want to swim. After the bridge there's a short uphill and we made our final push into the trees where there was supposed to be a place to camp. As we made it to the treeline it started to drizzle. Under the trees it was no longer dusk, but night. We looked around for a place to set up camp, if there were established campsites we didn't see them, but pine needles are warm and we settled on a nice flat space is a shallow draw. By this time it was genuinely raining.

We were not really feeling up to cooking in the rain and the dark, so we hung our bear bag and got in the tent. Our sleep clothes were still damp from washing, but we put them on anyway and hung out outside of our sleeping bags while they finished drying. It had been a long day, but we'd gone 48 miles in 3 days, which was better than expected, so we went to sleep happy.

Our happiness faded as soon as we woke up though... Our blisters had taken vengeance on us and were pretty bad. But worst of all, in our flight from the creepy dude at the park Chris had not really paid much attention to what he was packing and had left his only pair of long pants and his only long shirt lying on a rock drying. He was really bummed when he figured it out as we packed up camp that morning. We decided the best course of action would be to call the park as soon as we got signal. He walked up to the top of a nearby hill to see if we could manage it before we started hiking for the day, but no luck. So we struck camp and headed on hoping we'd find a place with signal.

After a little while we got to an open space and Chris could see a cell tower in the distance. Sure enough we had signal. Chris called the park and got the sweetest park docent ever. Her name was Gloria. If you are ever at Burney Falls and meet a woman named Gloria, hug her (non-creepily, please), tell her how wonderful she is. This is how Chris' conversation with Gloria went:

Shastina

Chris: Hi, um, I'm a PCT hiker and I was drying some clothes at the picnic shelter yesterday and I'm pretty sure I left them there.

Gloria (with a slight southern accent): Oh darlin' that's too bad! Let me go check if they're still there.

[pause] They're still here, but they're soaking wet from the rain last night. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go ahead and throw them in the dryer here at the park and then I'll send them to you!

Chris: Oh that would be great, let me give you my credit card number so I can pay for the shipping.

Gloria: Oh no hon, it'll be my treat.

When we got to Castella/Castle Crags Chris' clothes were there, along with some granola bars, and OHMYGOD those clothes smelled so good. For days I would just smell them, and it was not weird, not weird at all.

After speaking with Gloria, and making a quick call to my Mom we started again. About an hour later my foot started hurting really bad. Chris' ankle was also hurting him. Both of us are stubborn and independent though, so neither of us mentioned it. A couple of hours later it turned out they both hurt a lot. I gasped that I needed a break, and promptly started crying, convinced that I was injured and I was ruining the trip. As far as we can figure I had strained a muscle in the arch of my foot, it continued to hurt for the next few days, but the first day was the worst. I took some medication, waited 20 minutes and we started again, but within an hour I had to stop for the day since my foot was so bad I could barely walk and every few minutes streaks of intense pain would flare through my foot.

Early view of Shasta

We camped in a nice little grove off the trail that had a fire pit. We were both completely drenched since the on and off showers during the day and the rain from the night before had soaked all the foliage, which was overgrown and had, in turn, soaked us. So we tried to dry off, but eventually gave up and made dinner. Chris had decided to eat dinner on his sleeping pad, and Murphy's law being as powerful as it is, he spilled food all over it. We cleaned it off at one end of camp, and then Chris hung the bear bag in the opposite direction on the other side of camp. Miraculously we were not consumed by bears.

Chris had his first (but not his last) cold night. It was bare ground and Chris had decided on a 30-degree bag, since he typically runs hot. This was a mistake. Whether it was his metabolism gone haywire from all the exercise or if his body had just decided to stop producing heat Chris was very cold.

The next morning we both felt better, except I had inexplicably developed a rash, which looked like poison oak, in my armpits and inner thighs, despite the fact that I had been wearing long sleeves and pants. I decided my body was revolting against our forced march, but I was not about to let it dictate my future! No matter how broken it got!

So despite our aches, pains, blisters and rashes we started hiking. We had now been soaking wet for three consecutive days, and our clothes which we had washed were still damp and in no hope of drying out. It continued to rain periodically through the day. We kept seeing animal poop, I was convinced it was bear poop and Chris was sure it was horse poop. I was correct. 

We also crossed a section of trail on a steep embankment, that was narrow and eroded. It was probably one of the more treacherous parts of the trail, particularly so given the rain, but we made it across. We rounded a corner and came face to face with a guy who was just starting out as well, and planning on heading south to Kennedy Meadows. We chatted for a moment, it turned out he had seen a number of black bear over the previous couple days (hence my being correct). We parted, at this point there was a lot of bear poop around, so we started to listen to music, partly because it helped take my mind off my hurt foot, and partly because it announced our presence to the bears.

Then the thunder started. Far away at first, but definitely moving closer. We still had a few miles to cover so we tried to speed up a bit, but it was definitely catching up to us. We came to a wide open field just as the storm caught up to us in earnest. We almost sprinted across it, both chanting a litany of pleasedon'tstrikeusdeadpleasedon'tstrikeusdead. We got across safely, but by now I was grinding my teeth just to deal with the pain in my foot. 

We were about half a mile from camp when the storm kicked us in the teeth. It started sleeting, there was small hail and in between, the rain poured down in big, fat, furious drops. We missed the turn off for our campsite (which was on a spur trail) and had to backtrack. Eventually we made it to camp, and tried to keep everything as dry as possible while we set up. I was freezing and Chris ended up cooking and hanging the bear bag himself. He could barely light the stove for dinner, which we ate huddled under a tree.

Chris

As we settled in for the night we noticed something, disconcerting to say the least... The rainfly was leaking. The rain wasn't pouring in on us, but there were half a dozen spots where there was a periodic, but steady, drip. Fuck. We were concerned about what would happen if our sleeping bags got wet, so we decided to put our emergency blanket over us, thinking that the water would run off it and not get on our bags. This was a terrible idea.

Allison

If we had really stopped to think about it, we would have realized that there was bound to be condensation on the inside of the blanket. But we didn't. Luckily I got up to pee before falling asleep and noticed that instead of keeping us dry, the tops of our sleeping bags were completely wet. However, it had not soaked through and the insides of our bags both stayed dry all night. We ditched the emergency blanket and finally got some sleep. We decided that next time it would have to go between the tent and the rain fly, and there was definitely a "next time".

The next morning we spent trying to dry out our gear, but we eventually gave up. I was a big grumpy pants that morning between being damp and my foot hurting right off the bat. But we got started, and after a couple of hours the sun started to peek out. We ran into our second hiker "Mushroom Man" who was really nice, and actually knew about Gualala, CA. Not long after that the sun came out in earnest. We immediately stopped and spread out all our things to dry. We got our first real views of Shasta over the next few hours.

California Kendall Katwalk

Statistically this had been our hardest day so far, and we absolutely killed it! With hurt feet! ...which was probably stupid. Behind us we could see a mountain in the distance that we had been equal with! This became one of our favorite ways of measuring accomplishments. We eventually started taking pictures of the mountains ahead of us, while we stood on a mountain, and then photographed that mountain from the one we had originally photographed. We are huge geeks.

We got to what we call the California Kendall Catwalk, and it was glorious.

Afterward, we had to cross some fallen high voltage power lines, which made us nervous. For the next half hour we wondered if we were in Jurassic Park. We were not. Also, if you don't understand that reference, go watch Jurassic Park like 20 times. We got to this awesome campsite at Deer Creek. Between the campsite and the views earlier in the day we both felt totally happy and rejuvenated (being dry also probably contributed). 

The next morning Chris' foot was hurting really bad and mine was weirdly better. I wondered if I was transferring my ailments to Chris, and then decided that would have been a great plot for Are You Afraid of the Dark? We decided to take our first zero day here, we spent all day in our sleeping bags and I read out loud to Chris the WHOLE time. 

The next day we just cruised downhill and the miles went by quickly. We got to Ash Camp, after passing a really creepy old truck in the middle of the woods, and were very, very thankful we hadn't planned to stay there as it was FULL of people. We planned to stay at Fitzhugh gulch creek, but when we got there we both felt really good and there were mosquitoes so we decided we could go further.

Further ended up meaning one of our bigger uphill climbs in California.

We could hear bears (though possibly a mountain lion) huffing in the distance... then closer. When we were got to our campsite we could hear two of them, one on either side of us. The campsite itself, was pretty crappy (it is in an abandoned road bed) and there were TONS of mosquitoes, so we just dove into the tent and skipped dinner. Chris was awake almost the whole night, worrying about being attacked by mountain lions, I slept like a baby. This became a theme for the rest of the hike.

The next morning we got started and almost immediately ran into 3 unattended teenagers, who didn't know what direction north was. They were separated from their adults, we found out later that this was because it took them three hours to strike camp and their (grand)parents finally got completely fed up and left. This is excellent parenting (not sarcastic). When we met the adults, they were super nice and gave us a good tip about a swimming hole a few miles away. I decided that if this was an episode of Supernatural, they would be pagan gods about to eat those kids.

We had lunch at the swimming hole at Squaw Valley Creek, but the water was very cold and the best I could do was just dunk myself. The uphill began immediately after and it was a serious struggle for me. It took about a week before I decided that I can't eat before uphill.

Our campsite was at the top of the hill. We set up camp, it looked like a nice place. IT IS NOT A NICE PLACE. 

Welcome to Plague Camp. 

Allison @ Squaw Valley Creek

Literally within minutes of us setting up the tent we noticed that the whole place, including all of our gear, was swarming with ants. I don't mean like a couple dozen. I mean hundreds. We figured we must have put our stuff on an ant hill, so we moved everything to a campsite on the other side of the trail. It didn't help. The ants just seemed to get more enraged. Everything was covered with ants, and they decided we were their sworn enemy. They were climbing all over us and biting us. 

Then the mosquitoes arrived.

We ate dinner pacing back and forth. I was so sick with exhaustion and barely being able to eat (I had not managed to eat more than a half of my share of our dinner since the beginning of the hike). The next morning there were still tons of ants on our gear, and some mosquitoes. We spent about 20 minutes killing them and/or brushing them off. We didn't even try to eat breakfast, we just ran.

Castle Crags

We ended up making breakfast (peanut butter wraps) sitting on a forest road a few miles away. My mom had bought us this "honey" powder (lies) and while it was okay, we thought it might be good if we mixed it with water to get a more honey-like consistency. This was a huge mistake. It turned into this horrible, gelatinous sweet, but tasteless, honey-ish pudding. My stomach had been on the fritz for days now, and it was having NOTHING to do with this atrocity. 

We packed up and started the descent to Castle Crags. It started to rain, and at first just seemed like a summer shower. Warm, brief and refreshing. I was happy, it felt so nice and the area we were walking through looked so much like home (Sea Ranch) I just felt great. The rain stopped for a bit.

At this point we also made the serious error of not taking the frontage road into Castella, but continuing on the trail into Castle Crags State Park. DO NOT DO THIS. The frontage road may be ugly, but it is flat. The trail is not, you basically have to climb up a bunch of hills and then descend again, on a fire road, just to get back down to the campground and Ammirati's (re-supply location). About 10 minutes after we realized our mistake, and about 5 minutes after we realized it didn't make sense to go back, the rain returned with a vengeance. It was accompanied by its muscle: Thunder. Big thunder. RIGHT ON FUCKING TOP OF US. 

There were also some serious mileage problems with Yogi's books. Her town maps are pretty much a joke, and while it may seem like the frontage road and the trail are equidistant they are not. We ended up doing a 17 mile day on a day that we had planned on being short.

I was done. I was exhausted, my foot was hurt, I hadn't eaten breakfast or dinner the night before, all of my clothes were completely soaked through and I was starting to get cold. This was bad. I basically had a trail meltdown, it was completely selfish. I realized moments afterward that Chris was probably having as hard a time as I was, and I had added to that by being a mess. I apologized, sucked it up and we eventually hobbled into camp. I could barely walk for the rest of the day, but at least we had arrived.

The Hunger Begins - PCT Section N (Old Station to Burney Falls State Park)

About to start!

Pacific Crest Trail Section N - May 16th - 18th. 2015

Old Station to Burney Falls St. Park.
Distance: (One Way)  43 mi.
Total Elevation Gain: 2170.5 ft.
Total Elevation Loss: 3573 ft
Highest Elevation: 5,100 ft.
Dogs: Allowed, but logistically difficult because of water
Difficulty: Easy

It is a strange thing to look back on my notes for this trip. Those 80 days of walking seem to be in some sort of temporal flux in my mind. There were hours (minutes even) that seemed like whole days and days and weeks that seemed to fly by. There's this odd sense of wonder looking back that we did what we did.

The days leading up to our departure were hectic to say the least. We got engaged on my birthday, which was a week before we left, had a birthday party, I was co-leading a group for domestic violence victims, was taking one of the hardest classes I have ever taken, had finals and was required to grade about 80 very long essay exams from the class I was TAing.... in two days. I had basically given up with the majority of the preparation and had left it to Chris' capable (but increasingly stressed out) hands. By some miracle we managed to get everything done though and we left for my Mom's house in California minutes after I submitted final grades.

Mt. Lassen

I'd like to say we had some rest between leaving Reno and starting on the trail, but that would not be accurate. Instead we ran a ton of errands around Santa Rosa. I needed a second sports bra, we needed cash for the resupply boxes, how had we forgotten camp-towels?! We got pedicures, which might be theoretically relaxing but to me is about the most uncomfortable, anxiety producing type of relaxation ever. Finally we threw a going away pot luck party and invited a bunch of family and family friends. The next morning we left for Redding where we were going to spend the night before leaving the following morning, we stopped off to get milkshakes at Fenton's and then arrived at what was possible the worst Motel 6 ever. It was right near the freeway, no surprises there, but the beds were so uncomfortable and there was so much light and noise I don't think any of us slept well. 

We woke up the next morning at 5:30, got all our stuff together and jumped in the car. It was so quiet. Chris and I were both too nervous to talk (probably Mom too). The only noise was me fidgeting in my seat and occasionally some weird choked noise that would sneak out of my mouth.

Me and Mommy

We passed through the town of Old Station and got to approximately where the trail ought to have been.  We ended up using the Half Mile App (which I'll write a review of later) just to find the trail since where it crosses Hwy 44 is not well marked. We had to stand around for a while because I wanted to use the Spot to check in and have the GPS coordinates for our starting location. This was actually pretty torturous. We were both so nervous and so excited to get on the trail that standing around for 20 minutes was pretty much the worst. Finally we shouldered our packs and walked with Mom to the trail access point, we took some photos and then Mom started to cry.

"It's just like kindergarten all over again!!!" she wailed.

Poor mom. The drive back must have been miserable. We hugged her goodbye and took off down the trail yelling over our shoulder that she shouldn't worry, we'd be fine and other, true, but generally useless words of comfort.

We kissed and said "We're really doing it!"

We didn't speak again for over an hour. Not because we had nothing to say, just because everything was sinking in. It was finally starting to be real (I think it didn't become totally real till we were in Oregon where nobody could easily come get us).

We had started at the Hat Creek Rim, which is beautiful, but the next 32 miles are completely dry so we were carrying about 7L of water each (that's about 15.4 lbs if you don't know the conversion). So it was not the easiest starting point, but it made the most sense for our timeline. The day was lovely, warm with a nice breeze and enough cloud cover so that we mostly didn't feel like we were baking. There were beautiful views of Lassen and what we called The Great Valley (there were many tree stars here). 

It was so early in the season that there was just nobody around. We didn't see a single person until we got to Burney Falls three days later. The only sign of people was a lone trail of bootprints that we followed for several days. I affectionately named him "Boots" and was convinced that he was a man of immense wisdom. The trail was so unused that the animals were still using it as a game trail. While we stopped for a short break a bobcat came waltzing down the trail. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he finally noticed us and dashed off into the brush.

The miles were just falling away under our feet. After about 11 miles we stopped for a longer lunch break. We ate and then just lay on the grass watching the clouds for about 45 minutes. 

The afternoon sun started to get pretty hot around 3. The first day was one of two times that we got sunburned (thanks to everybody who gave us sunscreen!). I started to get tired around mile 16, there had been a campsite in a meadow near this huge antenna, but we (read: Chris) had decided we should press on. The terrain was very, very rocky for the next two miles, and I became convinced that Chris had planned on using this trip to kill me. Finally, we found a flat area with a minimum of rock. We set up camp and made some dinner.

I should say here that for the next couple of weeks the volume of dinner and breakfast was so immense that we could barely finish it.

The next day we felt a little stiff, but were surprised at how good we felt after doing over 18 miles! A few blisters but nothing serious.There was similar terrain, except we started to drop down into a valley. We ran into a very nifty water cache called the Twigloo, there wasn't a bunch of water but it was a nice place to sit in the shade for a minute (day 2 was significantly hotter).

We descended further into the valley. I was just tramping along and then all of a sudden Chris told me to look up (he didn't sound worried so I wasn't alarmed).

Surprise! We're a big herd of cows! 

The cows were probably 20 feet from me, and I hadn't even noticed. Chris started to laugh at me. "You must be the only person who could get snuck up on by 40 cows! What are we going to do if there's a bear?! Maybe I ought to walk in front..."

The day continued. It was a very nice day. There was still no water but we were doing fine, so we weren't too worried about it. Then it happened. The first of many trail poops. 

I don't want to spend too much time talking about poop, though I'm sure I inevitably will since it made up about 10% of our conversation throughout the trip. Trail poop is like soft-serve chunky peanut butter and there is a ridiculous amount of it. It is fucking monstrous. There is no way that the volume of eaten food is represented. It's somehow like somebody snuck a whole other meal into your colon, that you were never responsible for. 

Later in the afternoon we started to get views of Baum Lake below us and started to head downhill toward it. As we got closer we kept hearing this funny "whoooosh-ratatatatat" noise. It turned out it was this broken pipe that was geysering up into the air. Shortly after we crossed Hat creek just above Baum Lake and got our first water. As we were pulling our water filter and reservoirs out it started to rain. There were also a TON of mosquitoes.

We passed the Crystal Lake Fish Hatchery and proceeded around Baum Lake. The rain got harder. We finally made camp and tried to stay as dry as possible while making dinner. The next morning was the same, we were a bit stiff but still really happy about how not sore our muscles were. All our gear was working well except our toes, toes are stupid. Stupid and covered in blisters (this didn't change for about two weeks, mostly due to the fact that our feet never got to dry until about 7-8 days later).

Chris at Wild Bird Cache

We had about 10-11 miles to go before Burney Falls, and about half way there we found the Wild Bird Cache. It was like paradise. There's was huge picnic table with sun-umbrellas, zero-g camp chairs, a cooler full of water, soda and candy, a HUGE cabinet of food (including nutter butter cookies YUUUUM) and a solar shower. We felt silly since it had only been two days, but we decided that extra variety in our food was a good thing, even if it was the beginning of the trip. Chef Boyardee is somehow amazing.

We joked that we could just live at Wild Bird Cache. We could just hand our GPS tracker on to some thru-hiker and ask them to check in every couple of days and just stay comfy and very well fed all summer long. Sure, we'd have to stage a few raccoon ransacks of the food supplies, but that was do-able. In the end though, we decided we weren't interested in eating canned food all summer, even if it did mean all the nutter butter cookies I could eat.

The next half of the trail was pretty similar, except for a part that got pretty funky because of hillbilly Jeep crop circles. All the criss-crossing tracks made finding the trail after being on a road a bit tricky, but after about 5 minutes of looking we found it. Just a few miles later and we were crossing the highway into McArthur Burney Falls State Park. We walked from the headwaters down to the Falls itself, which were gorgeous. Then we set about taking care of our re-supply chores (laundry, food and showers). 

There wasn't a washer and dryer available for use so we washed our clothes in a laundry tub. We took turns washing clothes and showering, since somebody had to stay with our packs and charging electronics, which were at a picnic shelter. After I got back and Chris left to take his turn I hung up my clothes on benches and parts of the picnic shelter. This older couple kept on giving me dirty looks but I didn't think much of it. Finally one of the park docents came outside and the older couple trotted over to her and loudly whispered to her that there were "homeless people doing their laundry in the park!"

Burney Falls

The docent was very nice and explained to them that we were through hikers and that the park is a way point. The couple then proceeded to ask her all sorts of questions about the trail, why anybody would do that, etc. all within 10 feet of me, but pretending like I was invisible.

Our clothes were taking a while to dry (it was a humid day and Chris and I hadn't really figured out the necessity of wringing things out a lot yet). A very nice park ranger asked us if we were okay and let us know what to do if we ended up needing to spend the night. 

By this time it was about 4pm, a strange man who had driven around the picnic shelter twice got out of his car, walked up to us and started asking us about what kinds of animals we'd seen. There was nothing he did that was inappropriate, but he skeeved both of us out, so we hurriedly grabbed our clothes and started back down the trail. 

All in all it was an excellent start to our trip. We'd covered 44 miles in a little more than 2 1/2 days, and there was plenty of day light left... or so it seemed.