Miles hiked: 30.6.
Didn't sleep real well, due to the ant crawling on my face and the deer crunch-crunching through the dry grass near my camp and also for reasons unknown. I laid in he early morning watching the little arc of a moon as it sat seemingly still behind he big gangly silhouette of a tall Doug fir. When the alarm went off and I got up and going I found my camp covered in a fine condensation, which was surprising since I was camped high on a ridge in a dry meadow and the air seemed really dry. I blotted my sleeping bag off with my bandana as best I could then packed everything away and got walking.
The trail climbed steadily but very gradually through the day. It first wrapped around and out through some open meadows with prickly star thistle taking over the trail and views back across the valley at Callahan's and Ashland. The first part of the day was through oak and fir savanna/forest, but as the trail climbed it got in to dense fir and pine forest with big trunks and a thick understory suggesting the amount of rain that falls here. Now and then through the afternoon the trail passed through openings in the forest with chinquapin weighted down with their soft-prickly seeds and bending over into the trail.
When I passed the outlet stream for Hyat Lake, I decided to make a quick stop to rinse some dirt out of a pair of socks. And this is when disaster struck. As I was kneading the trail out of the first sock, I unknowingly bumped the other into the fast stream. By the time I noticed it was missing it was long gone, but I ran down a few bends to check for eddies and strainers that might have caught it. But no luck. I was going to retire this pair from the hike anyway, so this wasn't a huge deal for the trip, but I still hate losing things. I strapped the remaining sock back on the outside of my pack and it spent the rest of the day and most of the night there quietly singing sad old country break-up songs. If you don't keep you wits about you out here in the wilderness, this is the sort of tragedy that can happen.
I got to the South Brown Mountain Shelter, which I think was built mainly for winter use, since it's right along a cross-country ski trail, but is also just fine in the summer. There were 5-6 other thru- and section hikers there, and things seemed a little crowded so I stuck with my plan to hike a few more miles after eating dinner and stocking up on water. This next 100 or so miles will be another dry stretch, with anywhere from 10 to 27 miles between reliable water sources.
After the shelter it was only 10 to the next water, and since I had dinner there I didn't have to carry to much. I hiked another 2 miles hen started looking for a place to camp. I didn't see any of the little impacted sites that are all along the trail, so I wandered off and found a little flat spot under some trees and moved a couple branches and started setting up. But pretty quickly I was stung by a bee, and then noticed a couple more go in and out of a hole in the ground just 2 feet from my bed. I got back up and put my pack on and bundled my unpacked stuff up in m arms and took off back down the trail, and happily no more came after me. I guess they could tell I'd learned my lesson. I found a little impacted site just a bit farther and set up and got things organized for tomorrow and was asleep pretty quickly.
Birds:
Northern Pygmy-owl?
Steller's Jay
Spotted Towhee
Quail- flushed but not seen well; probably Mountain
Oregon Junco
Northern Flicker
Brown Creeper
Common Raven
Hairy Woodpecker
Western Tanager
Black-throated Gray Warbler
Hermit Warbler
Pileated Woodpecker
Mountain Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Western Wood-pewee
American Robin
Red-breasted Sapsucker
Song Sparrow
Green-tailed Towhee
Olive-sided Flycatcher
House Wren
Pine Siskin
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Gray Jay
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