Dave’s PCT & Other Adventures: Day 89 lots of elevation

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Day 89 lots of elevation

I woke up this morning in my lodging, had some breakfast, said goodbye to Popcorn; who is giving his ankle a few more days of rest, and headed out with a ride from a Trail angel named Noel. We picked up TC and Jelly and were dropped off at the top of the detour at Castle Crags state park. They have a small section of trail closed for tree clearing . We started hiking at 9 AM, but backtracked to pick up miles missing from the detour. It cool how God keeps bringing me together with TC and Jelly. They are good people!

We came to a beautiful little campsite perfect for a poff break (pack off). It has benches to sit on, and a stream to refill water.I finally saw my first rattlesnake! It’s a little guy but I managed to get a picture.

Right after the snake we came across this nice foot bridge passing over this beautiful stream coming down the rocks

This section of trail is in Castle Crags State Park, getting its name from the Crags in front of us shaped like castle spires.

We came to another great creek to fill up water from. It has a ton of these large leaf umbrella, plants growing along it.

Like so many other days our trail today is primarily up. We do continue to cross beautiful mountain streams.

As we continue up, we have a view of the opposite side of the Castle Crag mountains as we have traveled around them

Yet another Creek and I cannot disagree with the name more. It was a great spot to fill up my water yet again.

Continuing beautiful forest and Castle Crags views

We have switched back up the mountain side a couple more times and are at a higher location of the same Creek in a previous pictures. Notice how clear the water is.

The trail has excellent views. We crossed over this one large section of scree.

The Castle Crags that were looming high above us at the beginning of the trail are now at our level, and some peaks actually lower than us as we have climbed up 5135 feet in elevation today.

We encountered our first snow for this section. It is only the size of a football field, flat, and very consolidated, hardly worth mentioning. A short time later we reached our campsite. It was just big enough to squeeze our 2 tents into. A full dinner plus a little extra was definitely needed tonight after the calories burned on our climb today.