We woke up this morning and went down to the picnic tables at the fire station for breakfast. As we were there some of the stations crew started rolling in. Turns out it is a day only staffed US forest service station. We met Alex and Rudy two the firefighters and they allowed us to use their toilet what a score!
We started off going back to the trail angel box and grabbed a few more snacks and hit the trail at 9 AM.
We expect to find a lot of water on trail today. It’s always nice to hear the soothing sound and visual beauty of the streams that come, seemingly from nowhere
Yesterday we finished the hike by coming down the hillside across the valley, and our campsite was the grassy area just off the left rear corner of the fire station building below
Today started off with another long uphill climb. We are headed to the grassy knoll at the top of the mountain..
The trail crossed the road slightly below that grassy knoll. At the top is an absolutely amazing view of a super bloom 2 valleys over it’s hard to see in the picture, but if you zoom in that orange is all very vivid to the naked eye.
Back down on the Sheltered side of the mountain again we have lots of green and lots of tree tunnel cover.
We are now on a more typical desert side of the mountains. Everything is dry and decomposed granite on the trails.
We arrived at the bottom of the valley where we planned to have lunch. There Trail Angels had a cache of water, which was a welcome site. I took a few minutes to repair a hole that head developed from the shoulder strap of my backpack in my shirt.
Coming off of lunch we had a steady all uphill 1.4 mile climb to this water source. Here we must take on eight additional pounds of water because camp is dry tonight.
As we climbed higher, you can see the orange fields of super blooms in the distance from about a 45° different angle from the earlier pictures
This portion of trail enters the burn, scar from the Camp Fire that shut the trail down a couple of years ago. Much of the land is barren with a lot of burn evidence.
Our camp was described a poorly maintain Boy Scout trail camp, poorly maintained is definitely correct. When we arrived at camp, we were on the Windward side of the hill. It was extremely windy. We search around a little bit and found a little bowl on the other side of the saddle that was actually fairly well protected and were able to pitch on soft sand. Hopefully the slope won’t be too much Tonight
Today’s miles 11.6 total trail miles 190.5. PCT mile mark 489.9 due to Flip of 299.5
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