July 10th, 2022 by Jon
We wake up and the first thing I notice is that it isn’t cold. At all. Today and tomorrow are supposed to be some of the warmest on trail, with Monday now potentially hitting 100 in some of the towns lower in the mountains. Sheesh, that’s hot. We got up at our usual time, feeling a little more tired than usual after our late bedtime last night. We got ready fairly quickly, and after a quick breakfast, we hit the trail a little before 6:30. We would be going uphill for probably the next 5 hours or so, and it wasn’t some small climb; it would generally be steep the entire time.
The trail began by continuing the climb alongside the eastern wall of the canyon we were climbing up out of. We could hear rushing water down at the bottom almost the whole time. The first 3 miles or so were pretty exposed with only bushes along the trail. After that, the burnt-out tree trunks appeared on the hillside, and we moved through them. It was eerily silent, with no leaves to blow or branches to sway; everything was stuck rigid and lifeless. We crossed a number of streams that interrupted the gloom with explosions of life and green color. They were all fairly easy to cross, and after about two hours, we took our first break at one and collected our first water of the day. We sat and had our snack as well, and then had nothing to do but climb some more.
For the next 5 miles, we walked through burnt forest. There isn’t much to say besides what I’ve already said, and I’ll add that it’s also quite boring. There isn’t anything to look at here. Some blooming bushes bring hope that life will return, but it will be some time before it looks like a forest again. We thankfully did not have any run-ins with the crazy hawk that has been dive-bombing hikers in this section. Apparently, there is a nest nearby, and a very distressed parent is angry with all the people so close. She actually cut open the head of one hiker on the 4th of July. We kept our eyes and ears open but never saw or heard anything.
We kept walking for a while, then climbed a small hill and found ourselves in a quaint little meadow that miraculously survived the fire. We saw tens of thousands of wildflowers and it was a spectacular sight to see. Even better, due to the fact that everything had been so void of color for so long this morning. We walked in there for a mile and passed a sign saying we had entered the Cascade Mountains, which is pretty cool. We hiked up on the ridge that sheltered the meadow, and it was all burnt again. We climbed for a while, did one switchback, and then got to a dirt road about a half mile before the top. We had reached 1,300 miles hiked! We stopped and took a break there because Singsong was really dragging, and we figured we would go faster if she actually had the energy she needed, so early lunch it was!
We sat and ate for a while before talking with a family that drove by in their truck. We chatted for a while before they wished us well. Near the end of our meal, when we were getting ready to go, they came back down the road, drove up, and stopped again to offer us beer! So kind! We happily accepted their offer and stayed where we were, enjoying the cold drink. Once again, the kindness of strangers can turn a hard morning into a delightful afternoon.
After finishing our drinks, we packed up to finish the last half mile to the top of the ridge. We had some amazing views of My. Lassen off in the distance, and even saw the top of a snow-covered Mt. Shasta just barely peaking above the ridge line. We hiked down the other side through more burn, and this stuff was even worse than this morning. This morning, the angle of the canyon wall and the tree trunks had provided some shade, but there was nothing here to do that this time, and the sun was now straight overhead. It felt like a bit of a forced match, but we talked for some of it and made a lot of jokes about stuff we saw to pass the time.
After nearly 5 miles of walking through the burn, we came to a section that dipped downhill off to the left of the trail that wasn’t burnt. We crossed a road and then turned down a side trail to find Cold Spring, which was literally shooting water straight up out of the ground in a pipe. It was super cold, and after we filtered, I decided it was the best-tasting water since the Sierra. We sat in a bit of shade under a huge tree and drank a ton of water. We didn’t want to leave our little green oasis, but we had further to go, so eventually we left, albeit sadly.
We hiked over a small hill and then along a ridge for a while, and walked through wholly burned forest besides yet another meadow that had escaped unscathed. I was listening to an audiobook to pass the time, it felt like the miles came very slowly all day today for both Singsong and I. We passed a sign saying we were at the highest point in Butte County, which was pretty cool, and then the ridge had great views to the north. The coming hills were a mix of green, black, and red like an abstract painting of fire scar and healthy forest. We descended along a gentle ridge to a saddle, where we reached the trail junction we were looking for. There was a spring down below the trail, and we wanted to stop there for the night and camp. We said hello to a few hikers we met back at Donner Ski Ranch who were hanging out at the junction before leaving them to head down to the water.
We found it down a pretty steep little side trail and set up our tent in a nice camp spot on soft dirt. We ate dinner and stretched quite a bit; both of us felt a lot more sore than usual from all the uphill today. Tomorrow we will get up early to avoid some of the heat and try to get somewhere close-ish to the southern boundary of Lassen National Park.
