Miles hiked: 28.8.
It stayed hot all night, like around 80, and I didn't get a real great rest. I could hardly even get in my sleeping bag most the night, and woke up feeling pretty worn out. I didn't even heat water for coffee (don't want to put anything warm in my body), but somehow it still took 50 minutes to get walking. Just sorta of spent a lot of time sitting there scratching mosquito bites and looking for my stove lighter so I could pack it in the pot.
The trail climbed up and around the west side of Castle Crags, regaining the crest via a big countouring climb up and around the head of Castle Creek. The big gray granite walls and spires of the Crags loomed right overhead, moodily backlit in the smokey air. And despite being shaded by the Crags, it was still plenty warm and there were plenty of little flies trying to get in my eyes. And I felt so slow and tired; it seemed like my feet were much bigger than I was used to since they kept catching on small rocks and other little nothings in the trail. My legs were stuck at 60% stride speed, and it seemed to take forever to get up the hill.
And on top of that I was also feeling a particularly strong case of homesickness and first-day-out-of-town blues. I was feeling more doubt about why I'm spending so much time doing this one thing, and couldn't stop thinking about all the things I'm excited to do when I get back home. And I kept doing the math different ways to count the time left of the trip. I don't really like to be so un-present and with my mind somewhere else. But at the same time, on a trip this long, there are bound to be days when such thoughts dominate your mental activity.
Having regained the crest, the trail proceeded to stick to the ridge and take a circuitous route way to the west then north then back to the northeast for about 15 miles, ending up what looked like only about 5 miles north of Castle Crags, but with several perpendicular canyons between us. The views were spectacular, I imagine, behind the smoke. For the most part I could just see the hazy silhouette of rows and rows of steep looking mountains off to the west, and the big softened hulk of Shasta right there to the east.
I ran a bit short of water after deciding not to take the extra time to walk a third of a mile off trail to a spring, which I imagine probably seems silly but out here those extra, marginally-necessary miles seem to be larger than life. I finally got to Picayune Spring about 19 miles into the day and age some of my sweaty cheese with crackers then had a nap and woke feeling better about the trip. I've been sort of thinking about the remaining miles as the tail end of the trip, but such thinking just makes the end of the trip really really long. Rather, I think I need to consider the next 500 or so miles the end of the middle, then I get to the tail end of it when I get to around mile 2000. Strange, I know, to be thinking already of "the end" when there's still so much to go, but these are the thoughts one might get here in the long last miles of California.
He last 10 miles of the day went pretty smoothly. The trail had been rocky much of the day, which made for sore feet, but it was pretty flat as far as these things go and easy walking.
I got to Deadfall Lake around 8 and while looking for a spot to set up got talking to some weekend backpackers from Chico. One thing led to another and they ended up giving me a bag of homemade jerky and a beer, and I spent the evening hanging out in their camp for the evening. There are so many established trail magic caches along the trail, and while I appreciate the generosity of the people maintaining them, I just can't seem to get into them. But this sort of trail magic, just a serendipitous bit of kindness and generosity, when neither party knew it was going to happen, is just the sort of trail magic I was hoping to encounter on this trip. They even had a dog I could scratch. Thanks so much Chico crew!!!
Birds:
Northern Pygmy-Owl
Steller's Jay
Band-tailed Pigeon
Wrentit
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Mountain Quail
Olive-sided Flycatcher
Northern Flicker
Wilson's Warbler
Spotted Towhee
American Robin
Oregon Junco
Mountain Chickadee
Common Raven
Red-breasted Sapsucker- fledglings
Anna's Hummingbird
Common Poorwill
Cooper's Hawk
No comments:
Post a Comment