PCT 2024: McKinney Fire pt 3

June 27-30; Mile 1715-1774

Day 17

I woke to incessant chittering in the tree above me. “What did you do to that squirrel, Stormy?” Handy called from his tent. The morning was chilly, and fog had seeped between the trees, blurring the sky and reminding me of home. Four miles lay between me and Callahan’s Lodge, the spot where Handy would begin the long hitch back to his car while I tried to find a ride into Ashland to resupply for the next 55 miles.

After a short side trail and walk along the shoulder of old highway 99, I reached the lodge. Six dollars got me access to a shower, laundry, and the continental breakfast. After filling up on bagels and yogurt, it was time to part ways. I found a nice couple who were headed into Ashland and let me ride in their car. They were in town all the way from Massachusetts for a memorial service and talked about driving south just over the border into California so that they could put a pin in the state on their map back home.

The Safeway in town held all my usual food haunts, and after repacking my food bag I headed to Ruby’s for lunch. Someone stopped me on the sidewalk to ask if I had come all the way from Mexico since I was in town about a week or two earlier than they started to see hikers. At Ruby’s I was joined by a local named Grant who often did trail magic up near Mt Ashland and had immediately spotted me as a hiker. We chatted about the trail, parts of Washington where he had lived, and then found that we were both originally from Illinois (he had grown up in Galena).

By noon the restaurant was pretty full, so I walked to the library to charge my electronics, fill my water bottles, and use the bathroom. I happened to sit next to someone rapturously watching her phone – and apparently some religious preacher video since she kept muttering about evil lesbians, bible verses, and how certain people won’t inherit the kingdom of heaven… Not the slice of Ashland I had expected to encounter. I stared blankly out the window while my phone charged, just counting down the minutes until I could head back to trail.

Around 2pm I called an Uber for the hell of it, because I didn’t want to deal with hitch hiking alone and because how often can you take a ride service to the PCT? Back at Callahan’s I continued walking on the shoulders of old highways for the next two miles before returning once more into blessed forest.

My feet were in a reasonable amount of pain. The blisters were a constant source of irritation, but I was mostly worried about the pain in my right foot. It had abated for the most part since the excruciating section a few days ago. But I had 55 miles to hike over the next 3ish days – 2 full days, and 2 short days – before reaching the highway near Fish Lake. And I had just covered 120 miles without a rest.

I put my head down and hiked up through the swaying grasses in the fading evening warmth. After about six miles I came to an epic camping spot with two tents! There were two women that were thruhiking, and after skipping some sections due to injury/work, they were getting back on trail. As I chatted with them – OneCall and Boomerang – a vulture swooped overhead. While I would have loved to camp with them, I was planning to go another 3-4 miles that night to stay on schedule (I only made it 2 more miles), and so I wished them well and hoped that I would see them again the next day.

Day 18

I lifted my groggy eyes from the pillow and watched the sunrise paint the top of Pilot Rock with a warm glow. The day alternated between dry grassland and shaded forest, passing several dirt forest roads. The grasslands were often dotted with flowers and afforded views west to the valley below. I stopped for breakfast at the place I had planned on camping the night before, spotting a pair of ears as they dipped below the tall grasses near the trees. With only a quick view, I wasn’t sure what I had seen, and my mind began to fill with thoughts of lions stalking their prey in the tall grass. Just then a deer picked its way unhurriedly toward the forest, flicking its ears.

After breakfast I passed a group of 21 day-hikers; still no sign of the women from the night before though. I had a somewhat long water carry that day – 13 miles from my breakfast spot until a dam outlet ahead. But the terrain was gentle, the temperature far from stifling, and I made good progress.

As I hiked through the grasses around Green Springs, I spotted another hiking group approaching – but something seemed off. It took a moment for my brain to register that one of the men near the front was shirtless. And then as we drew close to each other, I realized that all six people – apart from their boots and backpacks – were stark naked.

It wasn’t even the Solstice! I stepped off the trail to let them pass, keeping my gaze decidedly at eye-level, but the woman in front stopped to chat. She asked about my hike, commiserated about fire closures, and finally continued on, calling back “We are the Siskiyou Hiking Bares!” I glanced back one last time as the final pale butt disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, and then I was off.

A short break in the shade turned into an impromptu lunch stop as I tried to map out potential camp spots and water sources for the section ahead. My head felt fuzzy in the heat, and so I wrote all the mileage numbers and distances on my thigh in sharpie – and proceeded to do a double-take every time my shorts rode up to expose the writing. What’s that!? Oh, right.

I hauled myself down the trail after a gigantic lunch (1200 calories of delicious freeze-dried marinara pasta plus dessert), filled up at the dam outlet, and skipped Hyatt Lake campground in favor of a lonesome campspot beneath the trail with a view overlooking the lake. Music drifted through the hot evening air from a concert nearby, and I fell asleep wondering how my legs would hold up on the long day I had planned for tomorrow.

Day 19

I spent the morning walking through shaded forest past forest roads leading to the Hyatt Reservoir. Before long I passed the turn-off for Howard Prairie Lake and saw the campground through the trees. Just after passing the junction, the mosquitos mounted their attack, and I was forced to deploy my head net and bug net pants. Thankfully the trail was clear of downed trees and dense bushes, so I was able to wear them all day.

Water was a bit sparse in this section: the first stream I passed had an unhealthy, opaque color due to chemical runoff into the reservoir from which it drained. The only other option was an off-trail spring. I stopped for lunch at the junction to the spring, hauling my water back up to the trail, then quickly deciding that the clearing near the spring had way fewer bugs, and hauling it all back down the side trail again.

My Gatorade bottle had some black spots blooming along its bottom, so I drank electrolyte mix straight out of my cook pot. Lunch was another freeze-dried meal, but not nearly as good as yesterday’s marinara. I had to force down the last few bites and felt uncomfortably stuffed. Just then two men hiked down to get water from the spring, and they offered me some of their wine as they had a little picnic near the water. The idea of adding anything else to my stomach made me queasy, so I turned down the offer. As I packed up to keep hiking, I had to loosen my waist belt.

The next miles went quickly: soft dirt tread between stands of trees draped in old man’s beard. There was either a complete dearth of undergrowth, or the path was a narrow ribbon through a sea of berry bushes. In about a month the area would be bursting with huckleberries.

At about 16 miles my feet kicked up the level of their complaints, and I put on some music to distract myself from the pain of walking. I admired the heroic feats of trail maintenance throughout – steps cut into massive trees, piles of sawdust all along the path from the cutting of a hundred blowdowns. I reached the turn off for the South Brown Mountain Shelter, my last water before reaching the highway, and my newly-decided campspot for the night. There was a water pump, a picnic table, smoke to keep the mosquitos at bay, and people to talk to – all plans of going another quarter-mile vanished.

Joey and Hope were two young backpackers doing the state of Oregon and spending a second night in the shelter. A section hiker named Brian soon showed up in his expensive ultralight gear, scoffed at Joey’s cotton-mix flannel, and said, “You’re not thruhiking are you?”

“We’re doing Oregon,” Joey replied.

“And you’re wearing cotton??”

“It’s what I could afford.”

It was also Joey’s first backpacking trip, and while the inexperience was clear – the two of them had run out of food and were eating stuff people had left behind at the cabin – they were fun to talk with, and the three of us played Yahtzee after dinner. I was just glad for some company in the lonely woods.

As I got into my quilt and the shadows filled up the clearing, a loud crash echoed through the trees, and the ground shook for an instant. Somewhere a tree had fallen. More work for the trail maintenance crews.

Day 20

I snuck into the cabin the next morning to grab my socks while the other two hikers slept. The forest buzzed with the whine of mosquitos, and I began my day by donning my best bug net clothing. And then immediately ripped a massive hole in the right ankle of my pants while climbing over a downed tree. Much of the trail had been cleared in this section, but two dozen downed trees still littered the ground and snatched at my clothes.

I emerged from the trees to a field of jumbled lava rocks with a ribbon of crushed red rock winding its way through. The trail led in and out of these fields of lava rocks, and everywhere stubborn trees clung to the paltry soil between the boulders, fighting to grow.

At one point I came to a hiker lying prostrate on the trail, and I called out to see if they were awake. An older woman sat up and said I was the first person she had seen all day. Apparently that spot where she had chosen to lie down was a nice break from the mosquitos. We chatted a bit, and she admitted that she felt she had passed her “use by date” for the PCT. She had hiked the AT five years ago at the age of 66 without problem, but all the downed trees were getting to her in this stretch.

Not long after, I met another hiker – this time an actual thruhiker who had started from Campo! His trail name was Rabbit, and he had left the Mexican border on April 27th!! An insane pace of probably 30-40 miles per day. He admired my bug net pants and said I’d clearly hiked in Oregon before.

The trail continued past views of Mt McLoughlin shedding its cloud cover as the day warmed. By 11:30 I reached the end of my section at the Highway 140 crossing, and a day-hiker graciously took my photo posing with the anticlimactic endpoint.

270 miles, 19 days, and not a single day of rest (due to a few short days of 2, 7, and 8 miles). When my friend Dana picked me up from the road a little while later, I was ready to go home.