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Next stop for packages is still Ashland. 7/30 (Friday) is looking like a pipe dream, so 8/2 (Monday) is when I'll pick up there:
Hold for PCT hiker ETA 8/2
Matt Wismer
c/o General Delivery
Ashland, OR 97520
I did take that zero day in Burney. The rest was greatly appreciated. I got another Happy Meal for lunch, and this one came with a toy! Space Jam Yosemite Sam will now be hiking the rest of the way with me. I also got dinner with Jon, who caught up during the zero day.
My first day out of Burney started a bit late, with me on trail after breakfast just before 10 am. I hiked a few miles and then hung out at Burney Falls for about 2 hours. The falls were nice and cool, and just awesome to look at. I ran into Beekeeper there, and we ended up hanging out a bunch over the next few days.
The coolest part of Burney Falls is that the water doesn't just come down over the top. It also seeps through the rock and comes out in seemingly random other places partway down the falls. So it's not one waterfall - there are dozens. It's well worth the drive if you find yourself in the area, or want to plan a trip. There was also a small general store with soft serve ice cream.
That night I did a dry camp, which hasn't happened to me in a while. A 3L water carry - the horror! (If I start needing to do 4L and 5L carries again I'm gonna actually be mad.) The views of Mt. Shasta from my campsite were awesome, and I was optimistic there would be more and better views as I got closer. Silly me. (The pictures from here all have Smiles' tent in them, because I was too lazy to stand up.)
Then Thursday morning I stayed up between 5000' and 6000', before descending a bit at the end of the day. The ridge was mostly wooded, so the views didn't line up with the magic I got as I woke up. That night I camped with Beekeeper, Balloons, and Matador at a pretty unremarkable spot.
On Friday the descent continued. McCloud River had a perfectly timed pit toilet, but I couldn't convince myself to go swimming in the murky water at 9 am. Instead I took lunch by small stream, and then washed off my legs (one at a time - the photo of being halfway done gives a good sense of how much dirt we're talking about) once I got to Squaw Valley Creek, which had some swimming holes, but none near where I got water.
Friday was very smoky. Presumably from the Dixie Fire to the south, but also maybe from any of the other fires raging through NorCal and Oregon right now. There were some really good places for views of Shasta, but at that point visibility was under a mile, not nearly enough to see it. The afternoon sun looked a really cool red (that didn't turn out right in the photos), and you could look directly at it after about 4 pm, which was odd. I didn't even have to do the partial-eclipse-squint, I just looked normally.
On Friday night I pushed a little further than usual (34.4 - tie for longest day) to get into position to take an early morning (7:09) bus into Shasta. I wasn't able to set an alarm, because my phone was just about dead after talking with my brothers the previous afternoon. I didn't sleep particularly well, since I kept waking up and checking the time on my Kindle, until I eventually got up at 5:15, getting to the bus stop around 6:45.
But, uh, the bus runs M-F. While confirming that my phone ran out of battery. So I was looking for a ride near a rarely-used onramp, and met Swiss Miss and Hobo, a Swiss couple. (Swiss Miss also does drink hot chocolate every night, since I know you were wondering.) I got first-hand experience with how distinct Swiss German is from High German. (They occasionally talked to each other in German, and I could barely pick out individual sounds, let alone understand what they were saying. I did understand when Hobo say "80 kilometers", by that was about it.) We eventually got a ride into town from someone who just dropped off a hiker (since why else would you use the Soda Creek Rd exit of I-5), and we ate breakfast together before I went to do my resupply.
I am officially in the bubble now. There are crazy numbers of hikers on trail right now. There was a trail log that I hit early this morning. I was the first hiker to sign it today, at 6:15, but about 35 hikers signed in on each of the past two days. While moving you still feel like you're alone, but during hiking hours (an hour after sunrise to an hour before sunset), you'll see people if you sit down for more than 15 minutes. It's weird meeting so many new people all of the time.
- Happy Meal, 1051
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