July 28th, 2022 by Jon
When we got up this morning, we were greeted by the sounds of buzzing insects. The creek we got water from was behind our tent site in the field somewhere, and I guess the bugs were ready to eat everything they could find. We talked about eating in our tent, but ended up just packing up like normal and eating fast. We were hopeful it was mostly just flies rather than mosquitoes, and that turned out to be the case. We sat and ate breakfast while Biscuit took off at 6:15. She wants to mail some stuff in Seiad Valley, and she might push to get closer to town than the 24-ish miles we have tentatively planned for today, so she can make it in time. The missile left at 6:30, and then we left 5 minutes later.
The first 5 miles had many downed trees and went through a burn area. It made for some tricky hiking, but we had great views of the valley below, and everything was bathed in a golden light as the sun began its journey across the sky. We hiked along a ridge for a while before coming down along a rocky stairway built into the side of the mountain, and passed a few lakes that had been formed in a few bowls right against the mountain. We stopped at a creek a mile later to fill up our water and take our first break for the day. It was 8:30, and it already felt warm enough in the sunlight that we were sweating pretty hard. These days, the weather always seems like the hardest thing to deal with. We hear it’s supposed to get better in 2-3 days, but until then, we’re kinda just stuck with it.
We continued after our break and hiked along a pretty ridge, climbing up its spine, and had great views of valleys on either side before getting up and over a saddle to look down into a new valley with a large lake below. We hiked along the side of the mountain, then switchbacked a bunch of times to get to the top. By now, the burn was gone and replaced with fairly lush green forest, but it wasn’t super thick, so we were left fairly exposed to the sun. We hiked along a new ridge that was higher than the one before for about 3 miles, passing 4 or 5 different junctions for side trails leading down to lakes in their basins below the ridge.
We took another break in a nice shady spot to just cool down before pushing another 4 miles on a steep descent into a lush canyon. When we got to the bottom, we found a perfect little stream and a great shade spot under some huge pine trees. They were on the edge of a meadow there, and an old, derelict ranger cabin sat nearby, all boarded up, and looked like it hadn’t been used in a while. We also saw Missile there and got to eat together, which was nice. We sat and ate for a while before pushing on to try to get some more hiking in, then taking a siesta.
Feeling full, we hiked out of the canyon and had a steep climb up. The trail here was covered in bushes and small trees, but nothing to give much shade. Thankfully, there was a bit of a breeze, and it didn’t feel quite as bad as it could have been. We hiked along a ledge, rounding the inside of a bowl, and took another break against a fallen log in the shade of large pine trees. Singsong and I ended up sitting there for an hour and 15 minutes to wait out some of the heat before we pushed on again. We climbed over a small ridge and down into a lake basin where people were already sitting with their tents set up near its shore. We pushed on, though, as we wanted to get set up for an easier day’s hike into town tomorrow.
We hiked up out of the lake basin and stopped at a stream to filter more water than would get us all the way to camp a few miles later. We hiked on top of a flat open meadow on top of the ridge, and I stopped at a nice sitting rock to see if Singsong felt like eating dinner now or just pushing the 2 miles to camp and eating there since it was already 6:00. While waiting the 5 minutes for her to arrive I listened to the thunder I could hear in the background. I guess this is the dry lightning we had heard about while in town. Hopefully, there aren’t any new fires as a result.
We decided to just push the last few miles and get to camp, and we were rewarded with our second golden hour of the day as we climbed to the top of the ridge and did our first mile of the 20-mile descent towards town. We got to the campsite, and Missile was waiting. We found a spot up in the trees to set up our tent. We grabbed water from the spring nearby and ate dinner while yelling at the local deer population that got super close to us before getting scared off by yelling. They really like licking and eating anything salty, so they go for trekking like handles and hip belts on backpacks. It’s definitely a nuisance. The three of us hadn’t seen Biscuit all day, so we assumed she had started the climb down and gotten a bit further than we did. We made plans to see her in Seiad Valley tomorrow, though, so we aren’t worried.
Tomorrow we hope to get up a bit early and head to town. Last we checked, the high tomorrow in town was 111, so we hope we can get in and find a place to escape the heat. Should be fun.
