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Not only have I passed the half way point (somewhere in Northern CA near Butte Mountain) but I am now in Oregon! This month has been quite different, the challenges less obvious and the rewards less "viewful" as the guidebook would say. There have been no big towns since Tahoe, and my last refreshing meal and shower was at the Claire Tappan lodge where I spent the 4th of July with my friend Hawkweye Parker. He fed Aaron and I large quantities of beans and ice cream, as well as indulging our music cravings with an outstanding CD collection. From there I hit several small northern California hamlets, usually consisting of an RV park, a store/P.O./cafe combo with a population of 300 or less and no fresh fruit to speak of.
The trail in between has been variable. I spent one day outside Belden with Aaron bushwacking up a 3,000 foot hillside covered in shale, manzanita and mountain laurel because the trail was so badly washed out. We found out later that everyone else took the recommended detour route... The Marble Mountains and Russian Wilderness were amazing and my favorite sections so far: the trail was often cut into steep highly metamorphosed schist cliffs with views across green rocky valleys to Mt. Shasta and beyond. There were bear everywhere and beautiful little glacial lakes with water fall outlets surrounded by penstemon, indian paint brush and something that looks like sky pilot. The worst sections were the Hat Creek Rim (where I hiked a 36 mile, waterless day across a dusty basalt and pricker laden trail) and the infamous section "O" from Peavine Creek to Grizzly Mountain (where the trail doesn't exist.)
Wildlife abounds, I saw several coyote one evening as I ran down the old PCT into Old Station (I was lost) and then came on bear tracks covering my own tracks going up the hill that I had made only 15 minutes earlier. I've seen about 6 bears, the young ones don't show much fear, and I've had to detour around them several times.
This month has also been pretty hot (101 degrees in the shade at Belden Town in early July), and though I've only been rained on once it was a big enough storm to ignite 46 fires in Northern California -the air was pretty smokey for a few days.
I left Lara, Jason and Aaron in Old Station and have been hiking with three other hikers that I met in Sierra City. Jamie and Beth Skillen from Boston and Bryan from Idaho. There are several other new hikers that caught up to me in the last few weeks so now there are about ten of us breaking trail (figuratively for now!) and I hear there are over 100 hikers behind us. Sadly, Jamie and Beth are leaving to work in Yosemite for a few weeks and Bryan is planning to hike many long days through Oregon. So I will say goodbye to them tomorrow.
With the terrain getting easier (no snow and elevations below 8,000) my average day goes something like this:
500: wake up, go back to sleep for 20 minutes
520: wake up again, stuff sleeping bag (incentive to get moving to keep warm.)
545: gulp down cold cereal, pack pack, contemplate aching feet.
600: Start hiking
800: Snack while hiking, try to get in as many miles as possible before 1000 (which is when I finally realize what I'm doing.)
1000: Grace period over. Stop, drink as much water as possible, eat as much mundane dry snack food as possible. Stretch hips and calves.
1030: Hiking again, try to ignore stomach and feet protesting.
1300: Stop for lunch. Cook luke warm soup, force feed on any high calorie items that Mom or sister sent to previous town. Dry out sleeping bag. Estimate mileage for day. Look at maps, recalculate mileage, look at maps... repeat.
1400: Start hiking again.
1800: Start looking for a good place to camp.
1900: Cook dinner, stretch, set up tent.
2000: Hopefully in sleeping bag, reading, writing and stretching
2100: Asleep.
With this schedule I've been hiking between 28-35 miles a day, with my longest day at 38 miles. I still feel great physically but the days get long in other ways. The hardest part is missing family, friends, and cat, and trying to get the same three lines of a song out of my head after 9 hours of repeating it.
Rest days are a must, and right now I am enjoying a day off near Ashland, eating all the orange and green fresh foods I can find, letting my foot funk heal (yes, I have athletes foot for the first time in my life) and catching up on email, phone calls and the hip-life. I'll head up to Crater Lake the 3rd of August, and hope to reunite with Lara, Jason and Aaron around there (they are a few days behind me right now.) My Cousin Clairissa and her husband Ray will visit me some weekend soon, my friend Marc Weber may join me out on the trail for a days this month and I'll visit my friend Culley Thomas near Snoqualmie Pass at the end of the month. A busy social schedule for a thru-hiker.
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