Mile 1417 to 1499.

I don’t plan to do this regularly, but the lead up to Mt. Shasta involved a lot of hiking so I didn’t have the energy to write a journal entry each night. Thus I decided to combine three days into one post.

We left our campsite near Burney Falls a little later than usual and started out on the trail after the sun had already risen. It quickly became apparent that we weren’t the only ones on the trail. There were fresh bear tracks. In fact, they were the freshest tracks, since they were covering all the hikers’ prints that had went through the evening before. When I rounded a bend, I came upon a pile of fresh beer poop. It looks like someone has a little trouble digesting berries.

When I came to a bridge, I went under to get some water and found a southbounder just packing up his camp. He asked me about the highways around Hatcreek Rim and if it was easy to get a hitch. I was a little confused about why he was asking. He said it was supposed to be over 100 degrees when he was supposed to walk it, and he thought he would skip it. “I live in California so I could always come back and do it in December, ” he laughed.

I find it pretty interesting how people deal differently with challenges and problems out here. Bedazzled and I went through Hatcreek Rim under similar conditions and we decided to break up the waterless stretch into two days. Tackling the first half, which had a flowing water source about halfway through, in the afternoon, and sleep at a water cache that may or may not have water. Then we finished the latter half in the cool of the morning. Another option would be to night hike the whole section. Skipping is also an option, but it seems like the most complicated and costly in time and money if you do actually come back.

For me, the trail has been about overcoming obstacles and challenges using my mental and physical abilities. To simply skip something without trying seems like a disservice to oneself. After leaving the southbounder behind, I wondered how much the trail served as a microcosm for how we deal with obstacles and challenges in our lives outside the trail.

The heat has been pretty oppressive these last few days and we have started taking little siestas, just like in the desert. On the worst day, we did 19 miles before lunch and then took a four hour lunch break and nap. It was glorious.

After one of our siestas, we were going down a side trail to get water and saw a tent setup. A middle-aged women stuck her head out and asked if we were on the PCT. “No, its back up that way,” we said. Her phone battery had died and her solar panel charger wasn’t working so she was effectively in the dark as far as phone navigation goes. “This is how I used to backpack in the old days,” she said. We told her where the upcoming water sources were. Luckily there was one about every four miles until Burney Guest Ranch, which was about 30 miles away.

Bedazzled has proved herself to be quite the plant identifier. She’ll stop on the side of trail and point out blueberries, raspberries, thyme, mint, and even elderberries. Her father used to use the latter to make an herbal remedy when she was sick as a child.

One day while walking on the trail on the side of a slope, we happened upon a young buck feasting on some bushes. He must have been using the trail too since the slope was steeply slanted above and below the trail. He gave us a look and kept eating. We got closer and he reluctantly moved five feet further down. We got closer again. You could see his chest rising and lowering quickly and his snout was wet. He kept looking above the trail for a spot to leap upwards, but it was simply too steep. We were at a stand off so to speak, but we needed to keep moving so I advanced slowly with my camera to my eye. Suddenly, the buck made a dash towards me and my heart caught in my throat and I almost fell over backwards trying to get out of the way. Luckily, he put on the brakes and ran the other way finally finding a spot to leap off the trail.