Miles hiked: 12.75.
Made the easy gradual 6 miles in to Old Station by 8 or so, down through pine forest along Hat Creek. The one thing of note from the morning is that it was cold again, 35 F by my cheep little thermometer, and I hiked the first couple miles in my down jacket and all the way to town in my long pants. Funny to think that I was planning to bounce both of those items ahead to Crater Lake just a couple days ago when it was too hot to get inside my sleeping bag at night and I would start hiking in shorts and rolled up sleeves.
I talked to Libby from the outskirts of town and got validation for my new pack plan, which is something I sometimes need. Then I headed to the small cluster of buildings along hwy 44/89 that is greater Old Station. There's a little Post Office and a General Store/deli/campground office, and a few out buildings, and the highway bridge over the creek, and I think that's pretty much it. The P.O. doesn't open until 11 so I tried to get started on ordering the new pack but the phone service was pretty slow so when a couple other hikers flagged down a hitch up the road a few miles to JJ's Cafe, I quickly hopped up and threw my pack in the back of the pick-up and even got shotgun. Total mooch.
At JJ's I was maybe a bit closer to the one cell tower in this half of the county and was able to get all the info I needed and called to order the pack. I felt a big sense of relief making the order, and celebrated inside the cafe with a big plate of French toast and a sausage patty and a bunch of bitter diner coffee.
I tried hitching back to the post office for a half hour but had no luck and gave up. There's really not much I'd rather not do than stand in the hot sun choking down exhaust and road dust and getting blasted by 60 mph shockwaves and not getting picked up. Call me spoiled with my whole life with bike or car-access to get places quickly, but life's too short for that shit. I went back to the cafe and sort of cornered some nice folks I was joking with inside and got myself a ride.
Back in downtown Old Station I got my food box and new insoles and sorted my stuff then sort of realized that it kind of made sense to stay most of the day here then hike out in the cool of the evening, since the new pack won't get to Burney Falls, only about 45 miles up the trail, for another 3 days.
'Bout time.
So I got a 12 pack of Coors to keep myself occupied and make friends with and settled in for the long haul. I loitered around the deli/general store for a few hours, hanging out with various waves of hikers as they came through, and managing to talk myself into a burger and milkshake. Then once afternoon rolled around and it got a bit hot I relocated under the highway bridge with my beer and read some Hemingway for a couple hours while some families caught trout on worms from the creek.
Around 5 I got back to walking and cruised the 4 miles to Subway Cave. Actually I probably didn't cruise, but rather just sort of bumbled along as a result of drinking beer all day long. Subway Cave is a big lava tube you can walk through, and it is also the last water and thus jumping off point for the Hat Creek Rim, a 29.4 mile waterless stretch of trail high up and exposed and hot and sunny along the edge of a creek-eroded lava flow. Skeeter Bait and Mananigans/Henanigans were there and we hung out polishing off the rest of my beer the. More and more hikers showed up and most were camping there and it got a little hard to leave but eventually at 8 I headed out and got 3-4 miles up onto the Hat Creek Rim to the viewpoint. Way off to the northwest Mt Shasta could finally be seen, a broad dark wedge piercing up through a band of clouds in front of the orange sunset. I made camp in the lee of a rock wall and found one more stray beer in my pack that fizzed something fierce when I opened it and sat on a concrete bench watching it get dark and hooting hello to the couple night hikers who passed.
Birds:
Common Poorwill
Common Raven
Hammond's Flycatcher
Western Wood-pewee
Brown Creeper
Steller's Jay
Northern Flicker
Oregon Junco
Osprey
Bushtit
Spotted Towhee
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