This morning was very peaceful leaving camp and walking over the bridge heading south on the trail. The moon had made a major appearance during the night and woke us both up. It was as if a single headlight was being held over our heads at 45 degrees and shining right into our eyes. You could have read a newspaper in our tent. I was awake for about 45 minutes but not disturbed by it at all. Lately my anxiety about being able to fall asleep after waking in the night has been low because my body is so tired that I am confident that if I can settle my body, my mind will follow.
We were walking through dense trees littering giant pine cones and several times we encountered deer on the trail that were only mildly amused that we were near them. We both love deer sightings and so we stick around as long as they do. It’s really fun to watch how excited Sherpa gets. That being said, we didn’t take a lot of additional breaks with the exception of Sherpa trying to figure out how to make her bag feel better. We had hoped that swapping her bag out would correct what seemed to be a bent frame causing it to drift to the left of her back. It turns out that this bag model appears to just not fit her well and so she is constantly dealing with discomfort. She is, as always, full of determination and finds a way through the struggles. All hikers experience a measure of pain daily on the trail so learning to manage it is par for the course. Though it doesn’t make any individual case any less stressful or difficult.
The first half of the day was pretty smooth but toward the latter half we began a climb that we would be on for nearly the remainder of the day. It was hot and humid and we were slogging our way for a sold two hours before we stopped at a cold stream called Butcherknife Creek for lunch. Halfway up the climb to our rest spot, we encountered some Nobos that said their was a sign for trail magic / beers and we should ask around in the parking lot. I really didn’t feel like stopping midway up a difficult climb to get beers because I knew it would make me feel even more sluggish. Sherpa on the other hand was disappointed because she was excited about the prospect, though when we arrived there was no one obviously handing out beers. So we hiked on to our lunch target. During lunch, we both were really able to dig into our food bags because we had slightly over-packed for this stretch heading into the Burney Mountain Guest Ranch.
The stream was wonderful and refreshing and we both really enjoyed lunch and washed ourselves in the stream. I even laid down flat in one of the deeper pools and the water left me breathless. It was so fresh and so cold we couldn’t get enough. We also saw smallish snake bathing on a rock that we politely asked to move after taking a poor picture.
After lunch we packed up and began tackling the last 6 miles of our slog. It was hot and sticky but we were grateful to be on the last leg of our journey for the day. When we approached the top we decided to keep our target destination which would put us at 26.5 for the day. Anything over a marathon feels good these days.
We just had over a 2 miles to camp and we descended into our first big views of the day and it was very pretty. I was thinking that I was grateful we weren’t walking this section in midday because of its exposure.
Soon we reached the junction to Gold Creek and I noticed that we had 4G! So exciting to have a little internet. I quickly checked Facebook and the gram and realized I had nothing to do but it was exciting to get a little worldly comfort. I switched it off and we walked the .2ish to the stream. We were both very tired so we made camp and got water at the very overgrown stream as quickly as we could. The bugs started picking up so after dinner we jumped into bed and soon, after some chatting, we were asleep like little hiker babies.
Incredible