I was the first out of camp, leaving again before 6am. I normal like to go to the bathroom first thing in the morning but today didn’t feel like it. Boy, what a big mistake. The trail turned into a narrow, ridge-hugging, switchbacking, steep turning trail! By the time I felt like I had to go, I had nowhere to go for MILES! Did I mention there was poison oak ALL over the place!? I indeed had to go with emergency-urgency. Luckily, I finally found a spot and hoped for no poison oak or bears as I climbed up the super steep mountain side and tucked down near a large tree.
On another note, today I was thinking: Wouldn’t it be cool if there was one huge master mosquito that I could hunt and kill, and when it died, all the rest of the mosquitos in the world suddenly diasappeared? Just poof into dust! That would be sweet, but it’s not the case... so once more I climbed through the morning in a thick forest swatting at 10’s of mosquitos and 100’s of gnats!
Luckily I soon broke free above the thickest forests, and man were the sights beautiful! For a while my view was the sun trying to peak over the majestic Castle Crags, it was so cool!
So neat! The trail got bushy, instead of thick-foresty, but there were still some nice big trees all day for intermittent shade! Today I leapfrogged all day with Stallion, Chuck Wagon, and Magic! We climbed. A LOT. That’s really about it! Hahaha. Oh, early in the morning there was a super low-flying helicopter which was pretty crazy! Other than that, we climbed!!
This was today. We CLIMBED! I went up almost 7,000ft and still did over 27 miles!! :)
Stallion
Pretty exposed, cool, and breezy! :)
Chuck Wagon
Shasta hiding in fire haze
Magic
Towards the end of our day, all the others wanted to go down to a lake just off trail to swim and camp. I had read about an exposed campsite just a little further up on a ridge with a view of Toad Lake below and Shasta. I decided to go for that over sleeping near another mosquito-lake! I think I made the right choice!
My view from camp!
I got some news. I’m pretty sure I have Athlete’s foot. That’s where my self-diagnosis stands, but all I have to base that off of is another hikers feet I saw awhile back. It looks like the same thing. I’m really not looking forward to it spreading if that’s what it is, and it can be severely painful to walk on. I’m planning on getting some anti-fungal cream as soon as I can!
:( Doesn’t hurt yet, but who knows when!
Well, just to change the subject at not leave you guys with a gross foot picture, here’s the sunset outside of my tent looking away from Shasta. Hopefully the sunrise will bring some alpenglow to the mountain in the morning!
It’s been a long day and it’s past my bedtime!
Thanks for reading!
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