Days 105
Start: Music Creek
Finish: Seiad Valley, CA
Daily Mileage: 18.9
PCT Mile: 1657.5
We awoke to the smell of smoke in the air. It wasn’t bad, but definitely there. The wind has been going around in circles, and I guess it brought some of the smoke towards us. It wasn’t too thick, and in any case there was nothing to do but start hiking.
Catching the ridge again, it became quickly apparent that the west side of the ridge was filled with smoke to the point you couldn’t even see through it, while the east was clear. Not a good sign from the growing fire. Thankfully, we were headed towards the east side.
My GPS app showed some forest roads that paralleled the paved road, and they looked used and cleared so we decided to give them a shot to avoid the pavement as long as we could. The forest roads worked perfectly and were mostly cleared, or at least clear enough to walk down. As always, it was fun to find the route and make it work out for us, and I really enjoyed it.
We met up with the road with 6.75 miles of pavement to town. The road was a bit eerie. We were on the east side of the ridge which was free of smoke, but the road was deserted other than forest service and firefighters driving up it towards the fire. All professionals. And then 1 UPS truck. Hardcore.
Only two vehicles passed us the whole way down, so it must have been deserted already on the other side of the pass.
We arrived on the edge of town and turned off airplane mode on our phones, and they started to light up with updates from the fire. The road we had just walked down was in a stage 2 evacuation (be ready to go), and all of the roads and trails we had planned to take to detour around the fire were now under evacuation orders from the Sheriff. Well, I wanted my continuous hike, but I was not going to hike into that. I looked for alternates, but there really wasn’t anything without walking days of highway. Not really interested in that either.
As we were pondering what to do, a bus pulled up to us and said she was going to Yreka and did we want a ride. We decided on the spot to abandon our continuous hike ambitions and take this olive branch that was given to us and get on the bus. We didn’t even get to the center of town where we were going to resupply, we were just straight away on our way to Yreka.
We did what research we could on the bus, and it increasingly looked like there had been no other options. Then the PCTA officially closed the entire stretch of trail from Etna Summit to Seiad Valley which was where we were headed. Everything kept lining up that we were doing the right thing.
We got to Yreka, and the bus driver dropped us at the edge of town where we could start a hitch to Seiad Valley. She dropped us right next to a Dollar General so we decided to resupply while we had the opportunity. Everything was happening so fast that we needed to do what we could to get our town chores out of the way.
Then we went to the road for a hitch. We were baking on the pavement, reflecting light and heat back up at us, but after about 15 minutes a jeep picked us up and agreed to take us to the road junction for the road into Seiad Valley.
They had their windows down and it felt like we were in a blast furnace from the heat. I had no idea how hot it was other than too hot. The jeep let us off and we set up for our second hitch. We were on the side of a paved road in front of a rock cliff with the sun just destroying our souls. But we had to stand there to try to get a hitch.
After about 15 minutes, a car pulled up and it was a trail angel shuttling some other hikers to Seiad Valley. She was full, but called her boyfriend to pick us up. He was 40 minutes away however, so we had to sit there baking on the pavement and absolutely dripping sweat. Drencher arrived with 3 other hikers and we managed to cram 5 hikers and packs into his Tesla Model 3. The first thing I noticed was the outside temperature readout on the car. It was 110F! No wonder we were dripping sweat. It was about the same when we walked into Etna. Way too hot.
It was a nice cool ride into Seiad Valley where we set up camp at an RV park where we could charge and buy some burgers. A bit run down, but it worked.
Today was the most dynamic day on trail yet. We started with one idea of how the day would go, and we ended up in a town 57 miles down the trail, baking in the sun. It looks like we made the right decision, but both Honeybun and I were disappointed to abandon our continuous hikes. There was nothing realistic we could do though.
Another night of sticking to my sleeping pad. I took a shower, but put on the same nasty clothes. Hopefully tomorrow is more sane.