Days 100
Start: West Trough Creek
Finish: Dunsmuir, CA
Daily Mileage: 19.3
PCT Mile: 1502.3
There would be a 2,000 foot climb and no water until the very end of the day. With the hot weather I’m going conservative on water and keep ending up carrying too much, which isn’t a bad thing. My food bag is light anyways since I’m near town.
The climb was good with a nice aggressive grade at first. We were hitting it early enough that heat wasn’t an issue, though it was mostly shaded and not in direct sun for the climb. As good of conditions as we could get.
On top, the trail traversed and then did an extremely long switchback that didn’t actually drop the trail much. Honeybun had noticed that there were comments about a nice easy ridge walk to cut the switchback on trail and a forest road, so we decided to do that.
The route was pretty well trodden at first, then hooked up with a disused forest road that was an easy cruise. Better yet, the route gave us panoramic views of Mt. Shasta and Castle Crags ahead of us. It was really a great alternate. Best yet, we found a black raspberry bush fully laden on the way with some ripe berries. Berries are still few so far since it is early in the season, so it has just been a few thimbleberries and now these black raspberries for me. That should soon change with much more coming into season.
Hooking back up with the trail, it was an easy hike down the rest of the mountain, and we soon arrived at I-5. We had considered walking the railroad tracks into town since there were no roads besides the interstate, but decided to try hitching for a few minutes. There was very little traffic, so we called Doc to give us a ride into Dunsmuir, and we were soon deposited at a church that lets hikers stay in the basement for free.
We had the place to ourselves and had burgers for both lunch and dinner since those were the restaurants available nearby. Also did most of our resupply at a Dollar General.
We had planned to get into Mount Shasta tomorrow, but we hiked fast and got into town a day quicker than planned. We have a motel booked for tomorrow night, so we unintentionally got ourselves a zero day tomorrow. It works out though since it sounds like there will be a bunch of hikers in town and it will be the 4th of July with festivities in town, so no need to rush back to the trail.
