Mile 1391 to 1417.

There are certain things that stand out on the trail as milestones. Mt. San Jacinto, Mt. Whitney and Forester Pass are just some of the points that you set as goals to keep you moving forward each day. When you reach one, excitement wells up in your chest and you feel a sense of accomplishment. For me, Burney Falls was one of those destinations.

Before we talk about Burney Falls, however, we need to talk about Hatcreek Rim. We walked half of Hatcreek Rim the previous day and suffered in the heat, under full sun exposure, with smoke making our mouths parched and blocking all the potential views of Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta. We woke up today with the second half of the rim to walk. Luckily, the water cache midway through wasn’t empty, and we were each able to take a liter each to make sure we had enough.

As we started on the trail, we walked through what I call ranch country. It was full of dry yellow grass and gnarled, stunted trees. We actually did see a few cattle staring at us as we walked by. As the sun was coming up, we passed a cow pond, which is a source of water characterized by the wealth of cow patties surrounding it. While it didn’t make for a good water source for hikers, it did make for some nice reflections of the morning sky.

The rest of the rim wasn’t too bad in the cool temperatures of the morning and we made good time over flat and downward trending terrain. One annoyance was the little lava rocks that littered the trail. If you took your eyes off the trail to look around, you were guaranteed to step on one and twist your ankle.

A couple miles and podcasts later, we made it to the first water. We dunked our heads in and freshened up.

A few miles on, we made it to Burney Guest Ranch. It’s a curious place where you can get a cabin or a tent site in the middle of pretty much no where. The giant cross at the end of the unpaved driveway let’s you know that it has a particular religious bent and the playing cards with 52 inspirational Bible Quotes on the porch definitely reinforced this. But the owner was nice and gave both Bedazzled and me a cup of strawberry ice cream when we arrived. We charged our electronics, used the wifi, and bought a few items in the store.

Most hikers, perhaps the smarter ones, were content to stay in the air conditioned common room, but we were hoping to get to Burney Falls so we set out around 3:00 pm. I guess we hadn’t learned our lessen from the previous day because here we were walking during the hottest part of the day. Luckily, there was water every few miles.

We took quite a few breaks, but even the shade was hot and we kept sweating. I must have drunken 7 liters of water by the time we reached Burney Falls.

The first thing we did was buy ice cream and giant sodas in the General Store. Then we took our goodies and walked the .4 miles down a cliff side trail to the base of the falls. Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves because it certainly did not disappoint. Having first seen the cascading waters of the falls in other hikers’ photos and videos a year before, the falls still impressed me with their scale.

Bedazzled and I quickly stripped down to our “swimming suits” and jumped into the 42 degree water, which was a great refresher after two unbearably hot days.

We hung out at the falls for about an hour before we climbed back up the trail and found a stealth camping spot about a mile up the PCT.

It was a wonderful end to a long day.