July 25th, 2022 by Jon
When we woke up in the morning, the sky was pink, and the sun hadn’t quite risen over the mountains yet. We packed pretty quickly, and right as we sat down to eat breakfast, the sun came over the ridge, and everything was bathed in pink. We enjoyed the show of lights while we ate and then hit the trail by about 6:30. The trail wound its way up the ledge we were on, climbing higher and higher. Soon, we got around the mountain and onto the other side of the ridge we had been climbing all morning and yesterday evening.
As we got on the other side, we saw evidence of burn scars interspersed with green, healthy forest. The trail itself ran along a ledge on the other side, and we crossed a view junction for the Boulder Lakes, which lay down below us in a valley and looked extremely beautiful. It would be a fun place to come back and camp one day. We continued on a mostly flat ledge, going over a few downed trees along the trail. Eventually, we entered a heavily burned section that was longer than the ones we had gone through previously. It was probably a mile long. In the middle of it, there was a nice little creek that ran down a gully, and we stopped there for our first break. Biscuit was slightly ahead of Missile and I, Singsong was slightly behind. They had given us space because Missile and I talked about our holiday foods all morning, and while we enjoyed it, they didn’t.
After grabbing water, we had a long descent down into a canyon that lasted about 3 miles. Nearly all of it, besides a few small miraculously green sections, was burned. When we got to the bottom of the canyon, the color green seemed to explode from the ground along the South Fork Scott River. It was gushing really well, and we would have filled up there, but there was a steep climb with water about halfway up, so we decided to push for that so we didn’t need to take as much with us for at least part of the climb. We stopped after another 3/4 of a mile up the hillside among a completely burnt-out forest. We filled at the stream we found and rested in the shade because we were getting super hot. I think it hit the mid-90s today in the mountains.
After topping up our water, we began the rest of the climb out of the canyon. A mile or so was burnt, but then we came to a paved forest road, and the other side of it was totally burn-free! Hooray! We crossed the road and continued the climb up another mile and a half before finally coming to a campsite, very slowly, to the top. We took a lunch break there in the shade of a large pine tree and ended up sitting there for slightly more than an hour. We were shooting for one of two sites, one that we would put us at 22 for the day, the other at 25. Both would get us within 10 miles of the road into Etna. We decided to push out when it was still somewhat hot because we wanted to leave the option open for the 25-mile day.
Walking at 1 pm when it’s really hot is very difficult. The heat saps all the energy out of your muscles and addles your brain. It’s kind of nuts how much it affects me. We walked for a few miles through pretty lush forests, going up and over 3 small ridges before climbing back down between them. We started the climb up the 4th one and reached a shaded dirt road about 90 minutes after leaving our lunch spot. We all decided to chill there for a while to try to cool down. While we were there, we hung out with Siren and O2, who both carry instruments! A ukulele and a lightweight guitar, respectively. They played a few songs and made for a very relaxing time there. We ended up staying until 4:00 or so, and in looking at the elevation of the miles we had left, we knew the 25-mile day was probably out of the question unless we felt really good when we got to the 22-mile spot.
When we did finally leave, we had a climb up through a lush hillside that had free-range cows down below grazing on the side of the hill! When we got to the top, we climbed up and over the top of the ridge, and the other side was once again the most beautiful part of the day. There was stark white rock, and the trail was cut into it. We walked along it, looking into a new valley with 1000’s of feet of a drop off if you fell. Thankfully, the trail was quite wide, and we weren’t worried about that at all. It made for amazing views as we walked along the ledge, slowly making our way down to a creek that ran at the bottom. We had quite a few blowdowns that required some careful maneuvering to get over.
When we got to the bottom, we took a break before starting an extremely steep climb up the other side of the valley. It. Was. Hard. We were sweating a ton, and every step felt like you were carrying weights taped to your shoes. We took a break, not quite halfway up, to fill a bit more water and cool off because at this point, I was hitting a wall with the heat. I was just exhausted. Not full-on heat exhaustion, mind you, just ever so slightly on my way there. I took a break in the shade, drank almost a liter of water, and poured a bunch of water on my head and hat before pushing the last bit of the climb. It actually went a little better once I had the break and the water dumped on me.
We followed the trail for another third of a mile before coming to a small creek near a flat spot, and made camp there. We have 8.9 miles to the road tomorrow morning and hope to have an early lunch in Etna. This has been the hardest day of a wonderful section, and so we feel very ready to get into town after a nearo and relax.
