Mon. August 15     Miles today: 23.8     Total so far: 1,634.2        Sierras Section G

It was one cold, sodden morning that greeted the early dawn light!  Bill and I waited till the rain stopped at 5:30 am before getting up and dressed in cold, wet clothes and shoes.  Not fun!  The sky was still dark gray and threatening, so all we could do was pack up and head out, hoping to dry things later.  The ground was muddy and sloppy from all the rain, and we had to hike more than two miles before we could find a wide, flat, reasonably dry rock where we could sit down and eat some breakfast.  All the trees were dripping, and all the plants looked “mushed” by the heavy rain. 

A couple more miles brought us to Chimney Creek Campground, where we’d planned to get water.  But a sign at the entrance warned that the water had “higher than acceptable levels of uranium”.  We didn’t care–we only needed a few liters.  But oh no–all the campground faucets wee turned off!  We were discussing this in dismay, not liking the prospect of having to filter a lot of creek water, when a man camped nearby called out a friendly greeting.  He offered us bottled water, AND oh-by-the-way, he’d just made coffee–would we like some?  And “how ’bout that light show last night!!??”  So thanks to real trail angel Joe from Fremont, CA, we enjoyed fresh hot coffee and got water enough for many more miles.  Not only our stomachs were warmed, but our hearts also!

Now it ws a long, long uphill in front of us, beginning with the climb to Fox Mill Spring, where we got the rest of the water we needed.  Then it was several more hours of climbing as the PCT regained the crest.  But damage from last night’s violent storm was everywhere along the way.  The more of it we saw, the more grateful we were to the Lord for watching over us, even though we did get wet!  Overhead, we got lots of “audio entertainment’ from fighter jets above the clouds.  We couldn’t see them, but we sure could hear them!  (I think they were out of China Lake Naval Air base). 

We began to get some awesomer and awesomer mountain views, and at lunch, instead of a 45-60 minute break, we took two whole hours to spread our wet gear out to dry along the trail.  It wasn’t very sunny, so our sleeping bags were still very damp even after two hours.  But we didn’t want to wait any longer, so we just draped them over ourselves and wore them like shawls for several more hours of hiking, till they were nice and dry again.  Finally we were able to go DOWNhill toward the Domelands Wilderness, but many miles (12.8, to be exact) of PCT now went through a bad fire area from July of 2000.  The weedy plants that have regrown since the fire overhang the trail and sometimes made it hard to get through. 

Looking north, we were excited to see what really looked like Sierras in the distance, but looking around us, we were saddened by the now-barren, burned, rocky hillsides, which were once home to thriving pinyon pines.  The pines will probably never regrow, and the hillsides will probably stay barren forever, like the once-forested mountains in Nevada, where the pines were cut down for Comstock mines, and have never regrown.  Finally we reached the valley where the Kern River flows, and hiked till 7:30 pm before stopping to make a VERY firmly secured campsite in case we got a repeat of last night.  Lightning and thunder off in the distance gave us all the encouragement we needed as we TIED rather than staked down the tarp!

Then, as I was writing some notes by the light of my headlamp, a scorpion came strolling on to our groundcloth only a foot from my hand!  He was a cute little guy, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a scorpion “in the wild”, so I had a good look at him (Bill did, too) before shooing him away.  Once I turned out the headlamp and lay down, I was relieved to notice that the thunder and lightning were moving AWAY.  Bill and I were both totally tired out, and slept well!