Paynes Lake to Marble Valley (mile 1621.2).
Miles hiked: 29.7.
Still smokey this morning, but slightly less that yesterday and as I climbed up out of the forest around Paynes Lake back up onto the ridge I could see the very top of Shasta sticking up through the haze way off to the east. Rows of lower mountains and hills stacked in front of it, and the rising sun was just off its left shoulder. It looked even taller from this far away, rising up above even the smoke.
The trail followed a ridge 6 or so miles down to the crossing of Sawyers Bar Rd., which leads down to Etna, then climbed back up to the boundary of the Marble Mountain Wilderness. The ridge steepened and narrowed and the trail contoured around its western slope. We seem to be done with all the westing and southing and now it's more or less a straight northward shot to the Oregon border, now less than 100 miles away.
These mountains are so incredibly rugged: steep slopes dropping from sawtoothed ridges thousands of feet straight down to narrow canyons. I'm very thankful that the trail takes all these extra miles to stick with the ridge lines, because going down and back up all these canyons would be horrendous.
The ridge continued for another 10 miles then rose up into the big jagged mass that is the Marble Mountains. These peaks truly rival those in the Sierra, even with all the smoke blocking the long views. And in stead of spending most of the time down in valleys looking up at the peaks and just occasionally climbing up near their heights to cross passes, here we are right there with highest summits, crossing sawtoothed ridges and looking right across at more peaks. The Marble Mountains seem to be comprised of 2 big hunks of crumbling rock that's been chiseled into steep arêtes and cirques. First is a row of peaks with "Marble Mountains" scrawled across it on the map but otherwise no names. Then about five miles later along a ridge of smaller peaks are Marble Mountain and Black Marble Mountain. Steep valleys radiate off to either side of the main ridge and high summits, with lakes of various sizes and shapes in their floors.
I didn't see many people through the day and was left to my own thoughts. I was struggling some with motivation during the first half of the day. I was thinking about surfing for several miles, then during a short rest I watched a cloud swirling in the shape of a barrel and it was hard not to take it as a sign to be doing something else. But after siesta and lunch and coffee by a little pond I had a much better last 10 miles of the day. Then as I approached the camping area in Marble Valley, sitting there on the ground was The Jesus, who I hadn't seen since Idyllwild! We caught up a bit and I ended up hanging around a fire with a half dozen other hikers who seem to be traveling together and make a lot of good jokes about each other.
Near the camping area there are cool marble outcroppings which have been melted away by carbonic acid (forms naturally from rainfall) into all sorts of caves and twisted sculptures like modern art. At night after fluffing up my sleeping bag against the slight chill and working on my journal a Barn Owl or 2 do their screech call through the dark forest and a deer passes through.
Birds:
Mountain Quail
Oregon Junco
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Steller's Jay
House Wren
Northern Flicker
Empidonax - upward tail wag
Green-tailed Towhee
Fox Sparrow
Bushtit
American Robin
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Brown Creeper
Olive-sided Flycatcher
Mountain Chickadee
Townsend's Solitaire
Turkey Vulture
Red-tailed Hawk
Western Wood-pewee
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