Month: August 2016

The sunrise struck my tent early, forcing me out of bed. I was still sleepy. After the terrible night in Castella, and all the town tasks I had to attend to in Mt. Shasta City, I was overtired.

We left camp early in the day, around 7:15, and it was already heating up. Our first task of the day was to get water at an off trail spring (Bradens Spring), which was good because I was out of water.

The spring itself was nice. A shady, cool wooded area with pools of water and a slight flow. I was surprised to see pitcher plants growing next to it — I thought they didn’t exist in North America.

Full of water, we returned to the trail (and the heat) and continued on. The trail takes a large westward detour in northern California just past Shasta, so we wouldn’t be getting any more good views of it after about today (a Lemurian plot, perhaps?)

The heat suddenly lessened as we crossed a ridge, and it became clear that today’s weather would not be a repeat of yesterday’s.

We had lunch at an off-trail waypoint called Porcupine Lake. The water was clear and cool, and there was plenty of shade and rocks to sit on.

We got back on the trail, and continued onward.

We neared a trailhead with a parking lot, and a familiar sign appeared: “Coppertone is Here”. After a root beer float and a chat, I was ready for a nap. But that would make 2 short days in a row, so we pushed on.

We set up in the last tentsite before a non-campable stretch. It was busy and there were bugs, but we got to sleep.

Mt Shasta City was nice. A bit like a cross between Carmel and Berkeley, with the addition of Lemurians, leylines, crystals, and the fans thereof. It’s the kind of town where they have good coffee, beer, and outdoor outfitters, but also shops advertising something called “The 13th Mayan Skull”.

I got a phone here, but not phone service, so I can install all my navigation apps, and use them in offline mode. This is the mode you’re normally in on the trail, so the lack of phone service is not as much of a problem as you might guess.

We also had lunch at the brewery in Dunsmuir, where I had a tuna melt that surprised me by being an excellent ahi steak sandwich with melted cheese, instead of the mush of canned tuna and mayonnaise that I expect when I order a tuna melt. They also served baby pickles that were sweet and crunchy, and I’ve been thinking about them since. The beer, on the other hand, was forgettable, except that they brought out the sampler cups in muffin pans.

When it came time to get back on the trail, we went under Highway 5, and immediately took a wrong turn up a dusty hill, so steep I had to crawl with my town-clean hands. After realizing there was no trail at the top and heading back down, we made our way up the PCT proper, and soon found ourselves at the 1500-mile marker.

Something about the 1500-mile marker made it seem more feasible to finish the whole thing. We were finishing big chunks of the total PCT mileage — we just needed to knock out a few more.

This part of the trail was unusual, however. First, it contained the only park sign I’ve seen so far that was only in kilometers.

It was also unusual in that it was very steep and exposed, and the temperature was the same as when we crossed the Mojave on the aqueduct walk. But there were no Sno-Cones in sight, this time. Not much water, either.

But, the climb very gradually exposed us to the Castle Crags.

Today was a long day. We ended up doing more than 30 miles.

There was a nice ridge walk in the middle, but I don’t remember exactly where. We saw another one of those large, gray, quiet, low-flying planes, but I didn’t get a picture. We saw several rabbits that loped away lazily. We saw a couple deer lying on the trail, that begrudgingly got up and walked away when we got near. All of these things happened, I just can’t remember where or in which order.

There was a long dry stretch, and it was a hot day. It felt a bit like the desert again, but with green plants and humidity this time.

Shasta kept peeking towards the trail, making sure it could keep an eye on us.

The target, and the thingthat drove me on, was Ash Camp Campground, which was drive-in and was developed enough to have an outhouse. This sounded like a place for trail magic –I’ve developed a sense for this kind of thing. If not, there would surely be families barbecuing down by the river on this hot summer night.

The descent to the campground was a bit rough –poison oak had made a return, and it was sometimes hard to wiggle past, especially at the end of a long day. When I finally neared the campground, I could smell the outhouse before I could see anything.

In the end, it turned out there were two trucks here, both for fishing. The locals probably keep away this time of year, probably because of the clouds of mosquitoes.

There were no trash cans, so litter was everywhere. I pitched my tent on some cigarette butts, reasoning that the filters probably give me extra padding. I ate a dinner of trail mix, and went to bed.