The pee munching deer did make their appearance again last night. Bunny was worried about bear being in the area, but the deer calmed her nerves on that one. Earlier in the day, when we saw cows grazing below us, Bunny startled a calf above us. The calf scared it’s mother and nearly started a stampede. Bunny was convinced a Bear was coming after her and almost plowed me down until I convinced her the cows were more scared of her screaming than she was of a bear. At any rate, Bunny is seeing bears everywhere. At least it keeps her from focusing on all the fires.
The Trinity Alps continue to amaze us. These are some of the most beautiful mountains we have ever seen. It’s hard to imagine that we had never even heard of this range until last year. What views we had today were pretty magnificent. In a time of fewer forest fires, I’m sure we’d had even greater views. Unfortunately, a lot of the day we couldn’t even see the ridge opposite of us as we walked and I’m sure it was less than two miles away.
We did not see a single hiker today. Yesterday, we only saw one hiker and he was just out for the weekend. If there are any thru-hikers this far south, there is almost zero chance of them completing the trail this year. We saw many people on FB mention that they were going to have to flip north. We’re still a bit ahead of the sobo bubble, but we have no idea how many hikers even started sobo this year. Anyone that did start at the northern terminus around July 1 should still be a couple weeks north of us. We may not run into any more hikers this year.
What was out on the trail today? We saw lots of deer tracks and a few deer. There were a lot of birds flying around—many more than we have seen in a single day so far. We saw a peregrine falcon fly over and the other bird activity drastically cut down after that. Most annoyingly of all, we have been harassed by yellow jackets every time we stop moving. They aren’t in a stinging mood, but they buzz up and inspect everything we do. I was afraid one might fly in my mouth while we were eating lunch.
We did see 3 National Forest vehicles parked at a road crossing. We talked to one of the firefighters and she told us they were just on call. They were parked between 2 large fires. One over by Yreka and the other further west in the a Trinity Alps. There is a chance for an electrical storm today so I think they might be keeping an eye on the area. She did tell us we had clear sailing in front of us and that we should be safe all the way to Dunsmuir.
Our itinerary planner only had 13.5 miles for us today. We decided to stick with the plan, but we seriously considered shortening it by 1.7 miles so we wouldn’t have to carry water. We both prefer to camp relatively close to water now that mosquito season has passed. In the end, we decided to stick to the plans that the NASA mainframes verified.
Even with taking our time hiking and taking lots of breaks, we still made it into camp by 5. While we were putting up our tent, it rained on us for the third time today. This time, it rained so much, Bunny’s pack actually got wet. The two previous rains were so short that the ground didn’t even get wet. We were hoping for a nice light rain to settle some of the trail dust down.
Bunny did the homemaking while I made us supper. It’s actually been an ideal day for hiking…not too warm and overcast. We’re just not certain if the overcast was from smoke or clouds. As we were eating supper, the skies cleared up and the sun shined on us while we ate. We were serenaded by a mini-bear sitting on a rock above our campsite. I went over to try to calm him down thinking he might run away. He was having none of that. This was his rock and he wasn’t moving. At least not until Bunny dropped a frito.
EFG