Miles hiked: 31.4.
What a huge difference getting good sleep makes! It was much cooler last night and I could even pull my sleeping bag up around my shoulders in the early morning. I think hanging out with the weekend backpackers also helped; their questions and comments reminded me again what a cool thing it is I'm doing, and how lucky I am to be doing it. Got packed up quickly and headed out with a rather spritely step, sipping my coffee and saying good morning to the deer in the trail and trying to figure out some hatch year warblers that I think were yellow-rumped.
The trail today did another long sinuous traverse along ridge lines, which again made for easy walking but also made it seem like I took forever to go just a little ways. This is the part of Northern California where's e trail turns back to the southwest to get into the Trinity Alps; so if you're following along latitudinaly you'll notice some backwards progress. The first half of the day was along the divide between the Sacramento and the Trinity Rivers. I've been walking around the rim of the Sacramento/San Joaquin watershed for something like 800 miles, with all the water I passed headed down to run the gauntlet of agricultural siphons through the Great Valley and maybe make it out through the Golden Gate with all the tourists walking across looking down at it getting swept out on the tide. But now Off to my left are new waters, those headed down through steep-sided hot canyons to meet the Klamath, that great river of northern California, and eventually flow out under that bridge with the bears at each end and over that cold windswept beach out into that cold windswept ocean with just maybe some salmon and sea lions and a couple fishermen in waders and grubby jackets to notice.
I brunched at a little trailside spring with California Pitcher Plants growing in clusters. These predatory plants look like abstract cobra heads reared up, and trap insects in their hollow pitchers. As I ate my granola I remembered back to when I learned this plant, on an afternoon not far from here spent with my mom as we tried to paint them in watercolor.
Lunch was spent at the little Masterson Meadow Lake, a soft-bottomed little glorified cow pond sitting in a bowl below Scott Mountain (what a name). I took sort of a dip in the water, which wasn't much more than a slow-motion belly flop, and it felt good at the time but later I was pretty itchy so maybe it was a bad idea.
After lunch I circled down around Scott Mountain toward the crossing of quiet little hwy 3 and the whole valley to the north was filled with smoke. Visibility was down to something like 5 miles and everywhere smelled like a campfire. Fortunately to the south things were a bit clearer, and that was the side of the ridge I would be on after crossing the road. The climb back up after descending the few hundred feet to hwy 3 went pretty smoothly. Big thunder clouds now shaded me from the sun, and the wild raspberry bushes are starting to get a little fruit. There were views back at the last 40 miles of ridges and to big Shasta off in the smoke. About 6 miles past hwy 3 I stopped to get water for dry camping, giving my feet a soak and hanging out with a frog who seemed to really like the trail crossing. For some reason I'm not real sure of, I wanted to do at least 30 miles today so I made it another 2 miles to camp on a rocky bench below Eagle Peak with views south over a deep canyon and across to the smoke-oranged moon rising above big cloud.
Birds:
Common Poorwill
Oregon Junco
Steller's Jay
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Northern Flicker
Mountain Chickadee
Cooper's Hawk
Cassin's Finch- fledglings
Clark's Nutcracker
Hairy Woodpecker
Empidonax
Black-headed Grosbeak
Nashville Warbler
Wilson's Warbler
Violet-green Swallow
Fox Sparrow
Olive-sided Flycatcher
Mallard - fledglings
Sooty Grouse
Golden-crowned Kinglet
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