Monday, August 2, 2010 Miles Today: 27.2 Total: 1,478.5

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

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Today turned out to be a “miracle day” for us, a miracle of God’s guidance, for which we are mega-grateful!  Everything was pretty normal when we got up at 5:15, determined to get to Moosehead Springs for water (our supply was really low!).   The two Israeli girls, Shani and Noga, had the same idea!  We had no trouble finding the place this time–in 2005, the only indication of where the springs/creek was located was a little sign scratched on a rock that was sitting on the ground.  We would have missed it, only Bill was not feeling well at the time, and he sat down right near the sign! 

All early morning long, the PCT was a bit of a slog– the trail was mostly uphill, plus it seriously needed blowdowns cleared and bushes pruned back. We climbed over all sorts of  tree-fallen-across-the-trail obstacles, shoved and bullied our way through bushes, and even had to go around a large snowpatch! Compensation– awesome views of the deep green, forested Northern California mountains!

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But around 9:00am, without knowing it, we walked off the PCT and on to an abandoned road. It looked like nice PCT trail, with plenty of  footprints, wildflowers and beautiful views. We hiked merrily along till the trail went back into the forest, and there was a strange, unmarked junction with an obviously well-used trail.  “What could this be?” we wondered.  We couldn’t find anything on our map.  After some puzzling, we gave up and kept on hiking till 9:30, when we stopped for our usual Snickers break.  After that, our nice trail started to be very overgrown, and we were pushing through bushes again.  Not a problem–we’d been doing plenty of that already this morning!

A ways further down, we were met by an indignant dog, who ruffused at us and growled.  Right behind the dog was  a keen-eyed, tanned older guy.  He sized us up.  “Are you PCT hikers?” he asked.  “Yup!” we grinned.    “Well, you’re not on the PCT.”  We were shocked.  It turned out that the guy was out planning for his deer  hunting trip in October, and had come up this abandoned road to reconnoiter a bit.

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 He set us straight as to where to find the PCT (“Up there on that ridge”) and we hurried to turn around and get back on track. Thank you, Lord, for that hunter guy! If we hadn’t met him, we would have wandered who knows how far off our trail!   Eventually we found the PCT again and determined to be a LOT more careful about following it!   A ways along, we met a bunch of hikers we’ve been leapfrogging with.  “Where have you been?”  they all demanded.  “Well, um, actually, we were lost.  Sigh.”  “Bummer,” said the gang.

A short time later, we all reached the “go around/or over Grizzly Peak” part of the trail.  Some of the guys opted for “go over”, up to the fire lookout; we opted for “go around.”  We’d had enough of going offtrail to last us for the rest of the day!  The PCT is an amazing piece of construction here.  There are places where the trail literally crosses the face of a cliff.  The trail engineering is amazing!  I enjoyed lily-watching, too.  I’ve noticed that in the sunshiny stretches, where the trail goes through chaparral, there are white lilies blooming, whereas when you go down into a canyon and are walking by a creek, you see orange lilies.  This is definitely a “lily section” of the PCT!

 At the top of the climb around Grizzly Peak,  we stopped for some hot cooked lunch, then headed down for water at Deer Creek.  The rest of the gang had passed us when we stopped for lunch, but we caught up with them again at the creek.  Everybody was washing socks and as much as they could of themselves, too.  It was a warm afternoon, and we were all sweaty.

From Deer Creek on, for a good while, the trail was VERY nice!  It had recently been groomed by an AmeriCorps team.  Thanks, guys!

Finally at 6 pm, we reached the McCloud River.  We’d thought of maybe camping there, but it was still a bit early, and there were a lot of car campers, so we crossed the bridge over the roaring, bluegreen McCloud, and followed the PCT uphill into the woods and canyons.  Even though it was evening, it was still 90 degrees in the shade,  and mosquitoes zoomed in every time we paused for a moment.

We finally stopped to camp at the road down to Ah Ni Ta.  We were busy setting up our net tent, when 3 dayhiker ladies came along and stopped to talk.  They recognized that we were thruhikers, and regretted that they had nothing to share with us, foodwise! “We ate it all,” they said.  “Wish we had some leftovers.”   They drove away, and we batted aside the clouds of small mosquitoes so we could dive into the net tent for the night!

Walk with Aragorn to Isengard: Enter Fangorn in search of the Hobbits

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