The Adventures of...: Days 86-87

Day 86, 12 miles, endpoint PCT mile 1205

This morning we hiked off the PCT, down a dirt road, through the Wild Plum campground, and along a residential road with log cabins until, three miles later, we were in the town of Sierra City. Sierra City actually was a city back in the 1800s when gold and quartz were mined in nearby hills. At that time, the town had 27 bars, two breweries, and one school. Now, there is an inn with a restaurant that is only sometimes open, a store where we did our shopping, and no school. Despite its lack of amenities, Sierra City had a cool, old West vibe that I really liked.

We arrived at 9am thinking the store would be open, only to find out it wouldn't be open until 10am. We waited on the large front porch for an hour when the store, and the accompanying laundromat, opened their doors. We did our food shopping and laundry, but decided to skip a shower this time around. I guess we are getting used to the dirtiness of hiking, because we decided $5.00 apiece was just too much to pay for a shower.

It was just our luck that we landed in Sierra City on an unusually hot day. It was 96 degrees in the shade on the front porch that afternoon, with reports that Sacramento, down in the valley few hours below us, was at 105 degrees. We knew we had a hot, exposed, 3,000+ foot climb immediately leaving town and that there would be no way we would make it in the heat. Instead, we killed time on the porch, ate some crazy good burgers from the store grill, went through about ten sodas, and relaxed with several other hikers while we waited for things to cool down.

We left at 4:45 when there was just the slightest feeling in the air that the heat was dissipating. 1.5 miles out of town we were back at the PCT trailhead where we reunited with a hiker from Napa Valley named Max. We first met Max quite literally 1,000 miles ago when we hiked down Mt. San Jacinto, 200 miles into our PCT journey. In Big Bear Lake we went to the Mexican restaurant with him on Cinco De Mayo. Since then we only had a brief sighting of him at VVR, but otherwise hadn't seen him anywhere on the trail.

We hiked with Max up, up, up, initially through thick trees, and then along rocky, open ridges with views of now tiny Sierra City, the canyon we came down yesterday, and trees everywhere. The uphill took us a little over three hours; at the top we found a spring for some water and then began looking for a campsite.

We are nestled in a viewless forest among the trees; Max is in his hammock (yes, a hammock!) nearby. We will be up early tomorrow to try to get a big day in.

Trail views

Population 225

Downtown

The rock was hot!

Porch chillin'

Shade and cold soda.

Mile 1200!

Trail views

Day 87, 27 miles, endpoint PCT mile 1232

Josh, Max and I were up early and hiking by 6am. We were cruising and had ten miles done before 10am. The hiking seems to be getting faster as we move out of the high mountains. We followed ridges with views of hills which were nice, but nothing compared to some of the epic things we had already seen.

Another change as we move north is that our water sources are becoming spaced out further. Gone are the days when we walked over water flowing across the trail every 20 feet. Now, we have to make sure we pay attention to when our next water sources are, many of which we have to go off-trail to find. Today we visited a couple of springs, those lovely pipes-in-the-ground things.

We covered 27 miles when we reached the small lake called Duck Soup Pond (really!). We filtered water from the grimy pond for dinner, then decided this was far enough.

Tomorrow we have an 18 mile downhill (yowza), so we plan on being up early and trying to knock out another big day.