Sat. Sept. 17        Miles today: 22.9          Total so far: 2,233.3 miles    No. CA Section N

It was not too cold last night, and the rain stopped, too, so this morning was only partly cloudy.  We got up at 5:45, but it was awfuly dark–we may need to switch to 6:00!  Wow–back at the beginning of our hike we were getting up sometimes at 4:30! 

We continued the big climb up out of Belden.  Bill had to go very slowly–he still feels weak and tired, and still doesn’t feel like eating.  But he did manage a few mouthfuls of granola and some Emer-gen-C for breakfast.  We did not have mochas today–we don’t have enough fuel. 

One nice thing was that we got OUT of the fire zone!  The forest was beautiful–very green, with shining leaves.  But the TRAIL was hard.  First, it was mostly up, sometimes steeply, which was very hard on poor sick Bill.  Second, several places were totally washed out, so that we had to scramble down into a rough gully, then scrabble up out of it.  Third, there were many springs running down the trail, and many creeks to cross, a couple of them a bit of a challenge, with roaring crek and slippery rocks.  Bill normally just zips right across such things, but now he’s as teetery as I am.

At 10:00 am we stopped for a rest and a candy bar; or I should say, I ate a candy bar.  Bill could not face eating anything, not even a bite from my Snickers.  But shortly after that, our climbing PCT came to a lovely meadow with a wonderful little sign that siad, “Welcome to the Cascade Range.”  What an encouragement!  It really cheered us up big time!  On we went, and reached Poison Spring (actually, it has EXCELLENT water!) only to find several trucks and lots of people–hunters!  Turned out that today was opening day of DEER SEASON.  Oh boy.  From that point on it was hunters and more hunters.  We met a couple of local ranchers out hunting on horseback, and saw lots of guys who just drive their pickups along the logging roads, looking for a deer to shoot.  We met one hunter on foot, and he was quick to give his opinion on the subject.  “Road hunters!” he said in disgust.  “That’s NOT hunting.”  He wished us well on our PCT trek, and we wished him a big fat buck.  “Oh, it’s all right if I don’t get one,” he told us.  “What I’m doing now is just getting myself in shape for the REAL thing– ELK hunting.  Now THAT’S hunting!”

AT lunchtime, I cooked over a tiny twig fire, to save on fuel.  Bill was able to eat a little, plus he drank some lemonade.  He says he is slowly feeling better.  Not long after that, we reached the top of our climb–hurray!  Most of our afternoon walking was through forest, some of which was being selectively harvested, which we think is a great idea.  The trees have different colored bands and spots marked on them.  We reached Cold Spring and took on enough water to last 24 miles!  Hunters were driving by as we collected the water.  We haven’t been hearing gunshots much.  I guess the deer all went into hiding.

After Cold Spring, we were into “volcanic country”, with many lava formations.  Eagle Rock was a large one, but all along the trail there were interesting smaller ones with rock plants growing on them.  At Humboldt Summit, there was a large hunter camp with big oldfashioned canvas tent, cookstove, and a lot of frustrated hunters who’d been out all day and not even SEEN a deer.  We talked to them a bit, and  one guy kept asking, “Where’d you park your car?”  No matter how much we tried to explain to him that our car was at home, and we’d walked up from Mexico, he just didn’t get it.

From there, the PCT comfortably cruised along the crest, and when the sun was almost down we stopped to camp in a “research area.”  We stopped there because it was obvious that researchers camped in that spot, so it was a KNOWN campsite where Bill and I were (hopefully) less likely to be mistaken for deer!  It was a cold, gray, overcast evening, so we put up the tarp.  I was very grateful that we didn’t have to stop early, and that Bill was able to hike all day, even though he did hike very slowly.