Days 104
Start: Scott Mountain
Finish: Music Creek
Daily Mileage: 29.3
PCT Mile: 1591.9
The night stayed hot enough for me to stick to my sleeping pad, wet with sweat despite being in only my underwear. Needless to say, I did not get enough sleep for the second night in a row.
On trail, Honeybun and I quickly entered the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area, which I had been looking forward to. I had heard it was beautiful and rugged.
As is the style lately, we climbed a ridge and followed it around for a couple hours. The Alps were quite varied in their appearance. We traversed on a red rock mountain with old lava features and bright green Meadows in bowls, but the next ridge over was almost white granite; so white it almost looked covered in snow.
Unfortunately, we only crossed a small corner of the wilderness area, and we were soon exiting with hardly a grasp of what the region was about. Definitely a place worth exploring further some day.
As has been the pattern of the last few days, it was heating up pretty well afternoon. Actually, it never got cool overnight, and was already hotter than I normally prefer even when we started hiking. In the afternoon, we passed through patches of burn area, which made the sun all the hotter. Not as bad as the past couple days though, but perhaps I’m just getting used to it.
In the afternoon we had some dry climbing to do which went better than expected, and we soon entered the Russian Wilderness Area. This is one I had never heard of before, but it blew me away moreso than the Trinity Alps. The mountains were bigger, the bowls deeper, and the rock more rugged. It was a fantastic place.
The mountains appeared half made up by gigantic granite boulders littering their sides which gave it an otherworldly look. I had to stop more frequently to take pictures, but they were of vast landscapes that never really come out.
We soon arrived where we had planned to camp for the night 25.5 miles in at a lake. It was still early though, and we decided to press on to set ourselves up better to get into town tomorrow. We were both tired and a little sore, and I think feeling the cumulative effects of the heat and lack of sleep. But we still wanted more.
The trail followed a great high ridge above the most amazing deep bowl with glowing green meadows. It must be astounding to be in the bottom looking up.
All good things must come to an end though, and obviously there had to be another climb at the end. We had been climbing a lot today which is probably another reason that we were getting worn out. A total of 6,000 feet, which is pretty healthy.
I set a pace and we made it up, and were happy to hit the top. At the top we saw the smoke from the Shelly Fire closer, and managed some cell signal for an update. The fire is getting significantly worse, and was spreading a lot with some higher winds today. We will probably have to change our plan to get around it, but we won’t have to finalize that until we get into town tomorrow.
Then it was just a short jog to our campsite, which after 29 hard miles we were glad to see even though it meant the end of the fantastic terrain of the day. A lot of hikers are skipping around this area because of the upcoming fire, but that would be a huge loss, and I’m glad we pushed through.
