July 5th, 2022 by Jon
We woke up this morning to condensation all over our tent, and our sleeping bags were very damp. We began putting everything away, vowing to get it all out during the day to dry in the sun. Unfortunately, we got out of our tent and realized the sky was dark and cloudy, with a thick mist in the air. It explained why our stuff was so wet and also did not bode well for our plan to dry things out. But it would be the last night to camp on the trail, so we only had to deal with the dampness once, and we would keep an eye out for a chance to dry things.
We set out around 6:30 as usual and began a climb down the mountain. The clouds socked in almost all the views, but it felt kinda cool, both literally and figuratively, to walk down the trail in this weather. It’s just so different from what it usually is, and that’s kinda nice. We hiked down a rocky trail with bushes lining it. Trees were fairly sparse, coming in patches where we would walk through them, offering some protection from the steady breeze before braving the exposed rock again. We made our way down to the spring, just off a dirt road 2.5 miles down the trail, and took a small break there to plan with Singsong to meet at a stream in 4 miles. I wanted to cruise up the hill and have the morning to myself today.
The climb was fairly easy, the first of two larger ones to do today. The switchbacks were somewhat gentle, and I don’t mind if the trail takes a little longer if it’s not as steep. Over the last few days, the sections with rock and bushes have actually been more colorful than the forests, with all sorts of flowers and greenery growing so close to the trail. The forests have been remarkably grey, with large grey trucks and a lack of underbrush, giving what we see little color. You have to look up to see the green pine branches.
I made it to the top of the ridge and saw Biscuit on her phone. We had cell phone service here for the first time in days. I did some internet chores and checked on a few things before also starting to look up hotel rooms in Quincy. Lately, there have been reports of hotels being booked out because of all the forest workers in the area clearing debris from the Dixie Fire last year. Apparently, a nearby road also washed out, and the repair crew had been staying there, too. Thankfully, we called one of the local motels, and they had a double room available for Wednesday night for the 3 of us. We plan to hike a full day into town, enjoy the room, and then tackle chores in the morning and midday, maybe get an extra meal, and then head back out for a nearo (5-10 miles).
Feeling happy to have a room booked, now we just need to be able to hike about 51 miles in 2 days. We have done it before, but it’s still gonna be two pretty full 2 days. We went down the other side of the ridge and had amazing views of the valley below. We could see the ground and trees, just not the mountain tops or sky, due to the cloud cover. The weather was beginning to warm up and it mostly just felt humid still. After numerous switchbacks through more rock and forest, we came to the small stream where we took our first actual break. We had a snack bar before deciding to hike another 6-ish mile stretch to the top of the 2nd big climb of the day, where there was a dirt road. Sounded like a good enough early lunch spot.
The trail for the next section went through lots of forest, besides the small section that went through a canyon and paralleled a stream bed that just had a trickle of water running through it now. The mist seemed less oppressive at this point, but the cloud coverage still kept everything out of direct sunlight. We had been between two ridges, and we had a fairly lengthy climb back up a much steeper trail than we were used to. It seemed like there wasn’t the room to make switchbacks, and at many points the trail seemed to thin and disappear underneath the overhanging bushes. Many parts were so steep that the dirt had gotten very washed out, and it was like the ground was slipping out from underneath us as we did our best to go up the hill.
Eventually, we got to the top of the climb and took lunch at a small campsite right next to the dirt road. Someone had taken a few cut sections of a tree and made stools you could even sit on. Lunch this section has been Nutella-covered tortillas and lots of snacks like trail mix and dried fruit. After eating, we decided to push on for 7 miles before our next break, which would be at Alder Spring. We’ve noticed the water has been slowly getting less frequent and we definitely have to keep an eye on which sources have gone dry. We still manage to carry a liter at a time most of the time, but it just takes a little more strategizing now.
The trail to the spring took us through mostly flat terrain and even reached the top of a few ridges, offering stunning views of the surrounding hills. We walked across numerous dirt roads, old overgrown fire roads, and even two paved roads, all split up by patches of forest, before getting to the spring. Somewhere in the last hour before the spring, the weather started to change with many clouds rolling by overhead, but it wasn’t complete cloud coverage anymore, and there were plenty of sun breaks.
When we got to the spring, we followed a trail back away from the PCT, crossed a fire road, crossed a paved road, went down a hillside, and finally got to a clump of bushes where a spring bubbles out of the ground and down a small trough that someone kindly shoved into it to make it easier to collect. The water was clear, clean, and very cold. We hiked back up to the PCT, filtered it, then decided to go another 6-ish miles to a stream, where we would collect water, and then find a campsite somewhere along the trail in the mile afterward.
This section was tough to hike through. When we left the spring, the PCT hiked along a fire road that had clearly been bulldozed for a fire break. On one side was a green forest, on the other side was a completely devastated hillside with only the charred remains of trees standing as a reminder of what had happened. We hiked along that road for a while before getting up and over a ridge and entering another burned-out bowl that was high up in the mountains. We walked around the whole thing, walking under black, dead trees with orange pine branches.
We got out of the bowl and continued down along the face of the mountain in a gentle descent along its flank with big, long switchbacks. We twisted through more dead forest and noticed a few trees with charred trunks, but they still had many green branches. We came to the stream and gathered some water that barely flowed over algae-covered rock. We are thankful for our filters, as we put them to work and carried 3 liters each to camp and cook with. We hiked a bit more and noticed a flat spot off the trail. It was an old dirt road that looked very much out of use. We found a spot where trees weren’t very close to the road and camped at the road’s edge, just in case a very adventurous car decided to come up the road at night. Today was a big deal because it was our first marathon day! We hiked the length of a full marathon or more in one day. We’ve gotten close a few times, but had never quite managed it before.
We had dinner together and then discussed what flavor of ice cream we wanted in town when we get there. We have 24.1 to get us to town tomorrow, and we hope we can do it quickly so we have some time tomorrow evening instead of just eating and going to bed. There is a pretty big descent, then a 7-mile climb, so I don’t know how that will go.
Wow, the photos you took!