July 20. Day 80.

Lookout Rock to Indian Creek (mile 1285.4).

Miles hiked: 28.15.

Didn't sleep real well with the lumpy sloping spot I decided to set my bed up on last night. Woke up to a flat orange dome of red and orange all across the eastern sky, fading upward to pale blue then back to the dark purple of predawn. I also woke to a bit of a hiking hangover, tired, sore, and with a headache. I guess I pushed it a bit farther than I was ready for yesterday. I took advantage of the cell signal and ordered some new insoles to replace the current ones that now have about 900 miles on them and are starting to crack and not give enough support, then headed on down the trail.

Sugar pine cone.

Much of the day was in thick forest of big sugar pine and white fir with not much of a view and just a lot of walking. Sort of a "pine tunnel" day. But the trail did emerge out onto open ridges now and then, and there were occasional breaks in the trees when I could see off toward the east and north to more green hills and mountains. In the immediate foreground, I saw a few families of Nashville Warblers out running errands in some sparse low pine and scruby oak.

Silver Lake.

For a few miles the trail traced along the edge of a steep drop off down to granite basins with blue lakes; perhaps the last visible vestiges of the Sierra pluton as it tilts down below the southern foot of the Cascades and the "Klamath Knot" (a great book). 

The trail in this national forest (Plumas) is marked with plain diamonds of metal nailed to trees. For a few miles hikers have used these markers as a sort of acronym Mad Libs and written various things starting with PCT: Post Chipmunk Trauma, Pterodactyls Challenge Triceratops, etc. if I had a pen handy and felt like adding my hand to the defacing of these markers I probably would have written Pinkies Clump Together or something really clever like that. Eventually it devolved somewhat into just randomness, with things like "eyes on the trail" and "marry me!"

Somewhere in there I had to pull over and take a nap, and afterward I felt a bit better and more prepared for the -0 mile, 3,000+ foot descent down to Belden. The trail emperor rom the forest out into chinquapin, manzanita and more of this really cool shrub oak with oval leaves that I don't know. Big granite boulders and piles of big granite boulders stuck up from the scrub here and there and similar shaped thunder clouds built overhead. Down down down again; 3 hours of really descending, with the last 2 just on narrow switchbacks into some short pine and black oak forest.

Looking northeast from near the top of the Feather R. canyon.

Finally down to Belden along the North Fork of the Feather River and Hwy 70 and some train tracks, all crammed into a narrow canyon. The town was trying to recover from a weekend rave, which apparently happens pretty regularly through the summer and may be Belden's last hope for staying afloat. At least in the state it was when I walked through, it seems to be a town dedicated to these "music festivals". Big piles of trash and delirious people were scattered around, with some of the later sort of cleaning up some of the former. 

Trail heading down down down.

I called the local trail angels who are the resupply box receiver in this neck of the woods and also let hikers stay at their place. They were full for the night, but still agreed to drive my box the mile down the road. By the time I got the box and sorted trash and food and had a quick dip in the river and ate some dinner and talked to Libby and uploaded blog posts it was pretty close to dark. I definitely wasn't going to camp out in town amongst the leftovers of the rave (I'm glad someone is doing stuff like this, but also glad it doesn't have to be me), so I headed up the trail another mile and made camp damn near on the trail where it widens and crosses a bridge over a little creek hat should be loud enough to drown out whatever sounds come up from town and the highway.

What happens in Belden, stays in Belden. Unless you leave evidence of it hanging on the outhouse.

Birds:

Fox Sparrow 

Olive-sided Flycatcher 

Oregon Junco 

Western Wood-pewee 

Mountain Chickadee 

Brown Creeper 

Red-breast Nuthatch 

White-headed Woodpecker 

American Robin 

Steller's Jay 

Northern Flicker 

Band-tailed Pigeon 

Hermit Thrush 

Nashville Warbler 

Orange-crowned Warbler 

Green-tailed Towhee 

Hammond's Flycatcher 

Selasphorus hummer

Golden-crowned Kinglet 

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Western Kingbird