Day 85, 31.8 miles

I didn’t get the best sleep last night, but when my alarm went off at 5am, I forced myself to get up. I knew it was going to get real hot real fast, and I HAVE to start taking advantage of the cool morning hours. Daddy left a few minutes before me, and Stallion was still at camp when I left. I had to take a few minutes at the viewpoint to check out Shasta in the morning light.

That’s as good as focus I could get, haha

I decided last night that I’m going to buy a nice point and shoot camera as soon as I can, instead of making due with this junk phone on my camera. Apple won’t be able to help until I can go into a store in person, and drop it off and then hang around for a few days and MAYBE get it fixed. I don’t have time for that on trail, but I also want to be able to take nice pictures! I mean, I’m only doing this trail once ya know? 

I’ll have to see what that means for the blog, but hopefully I can get a fancy little camera whose photos I can access from my phone so that I can still blog every night! We’ll see!

Anyways, today was just a lot of ridge hugging. Luckily, most of it was in thick forest so I had a lot of shade! Small rivers and streams were ample and abundant, which meant carrying less water between sources, and I found myself FLYING through the morning! The only downside were the gnats. I think I had 5 or 6 of them fly into my nostrils in total, and sometimes if I happened to be breathing in, they were pretty hard to get back out! 

HUGE tree cut!

I was going so fast down the slightly downhill grade, I did 20+ miles by 12:30pm!! That might be a new record! By this time it was really hot out, even with the shade provided by the trees. I was very pleased to discover that the trail led out of the small side valleys and across the main valley, where there was a great little river and bridge!

Ahhh!!

It was 12:40pm, perfect time to jump in! You can’t tell from the picture, but this water was COLD!! I’m talking, alpine-glacier-lake-cold! This water was hands down colder than Burney Falls water! But of course that didn’t stop me from jumping in! 

Water snake as I was about to get in. Still did!!

Brrrr what a chilly river! I couldn’t stay submerged for very long, but it felt SO good.. I lazily hung out in the sun and then the shade for two whole hours! I rinsed my shirt and socks in the river, and my dreads dried in record time! When I went to go set my socks on a rock to dry, I of course saw another water snake! Haha. That’s three snakes I’ve seen today! 

Just before I was getting ready to pack up and go, Daddy came down the path and to the river. It turns out he had gone off trail to a water source and I had passed him early in the day. He and the other hikers there thought I was crazy for heading out, as the sun had gotten QUITE hot! The hottest so far on trail! 

When I got to the next water source about 3 miles away, I walked by a tent and someone said “Two-Pack?” To my surprise is was Mike and Elaine! The Dogleggers from Washington! I had met them around my 4th or 5th day on trail, and had briefly seen them again at Cajon Pass and Tehachapi. I thought I would never catch up since I took the 5 days in Yosemite, but today I finally did! It was great to catch up with them and exchange some trail stories! 

As I was hiking out of there I met a hiker named Cal. I don’t know how he got all the information, but he said that today broke the previous record for July 18th in this specific area. (It was 104° today and the previous record was 98°). There’s a heat warning going on for the next few days, and it’s supposed to be 105° when I arrive in Castella tomorrow! Yeesh!!

Taking the footbridge over the river.

The rest of my day was a giant climb with a teeny downgrade at the end. It was so extremely hot out that I took my time and just went slow. I have three blisters now from Hat Creek, yesterday, and today combined. Daddy passed me up the hill as well as two other hikers, Anvil and Boo. I don’t get how they have this energy!! Haha

I finally staggered into the next campsite and water source and found Cal, Misfit from Maui, and her boyfriend who had flown over from Hawaii to do a section with her! I have done almost 32 miles and I’m wasaaaay more tired than my 33+ into Old Station! Hopefully tonight I can get some better sleep and have a big early day tomorrow and get into Castella before it hits 105°!! Who knows, if it’s too hot down there at 2,000', I may just hitch up the highway to Mt. Shasta where it’s over 3,500'.

Thanks for reading!!