@ 40.0300, -121.3266
The Perseid meteor shower last night was a disappointment. Despite fine conditions, I saw maybe a half dozen good meteors. I was hoping for so much more.
Got off by 6, hiking the 12 miles to Belden through the 4000 foot drop from the ridge down to the Feather River.
A text from Cathy confirmed that the trail was still closed north out of Belden due to fires, and the appearance of choppers toting buckets gave me little hope that the closure would be lifted. I would get down to Belden, maybe hang out for a while in hopes of further word, and then hitch to Chester to skip this section of trail.
The sky was clear with only a little smoke obscuring Mt Lassen, but I was disappointed to find the soil turn from the good granite sand and gravel of the ridge back to the powdery dust that cakes my feet and legs every day. Also began encountering poison oak, though none of it leaned out over the trail.
Found Belden in the midst of winding down a weekend funk music festival, with many bleary eyed campers, mostly white and middle aged, packing up their campsites along the river.
I went into the restaurant and ordered a chili and cheese omelet with a Tecate and found that the closure had just been lifted.
The Swiss contingent arrived,having been bolstered by the addition of a compatriot nearer my age than theirs. She was hoping to find a hiking partner but I had to decline as she was hiking only 15-18 miles a day.
The youngsters were facing up to the reality that they would not make Canada unless they skipped ahead. I advised them that the next couple hundred miles of trail would not be very different from the last hundred and suggested they skip up to Crater Lake. But they really wanted to walk over the CA-OR border and are opting for Etna instead.
This group had been hiking together since May, had shared a lot of suffering and joy and adventure and now they were breaking up. That was going to be hard, and it clearly was time for me to leave. I jumped into the river fully clothed once again and began heading up the trail.
The trail was hot like the inside of a car sitting out in the sun all day. Temps were in the 90s, the south wall of the canyon was all rocks and no shade and radiated heat from beside and below. And it was a 4000 foot climb.
Remarkably there are a series of cold gushing springs coursing down the desolate hillside. I stopped at every one , wetting myself down in a desperate attempt to avoid heatstroke. It worked well enough to get me up into the trees, where the heat became a little more manageable. I’ll live to hike another day. But man oh man, this was a very hard hike.
Belden prepares for the hard work of sobering up
Cheesy macaroni with tomato sauce, garden peppers and tomatoes