I took a full zero in Etna, hoping that maybe the fire would die down or at least there would be more information. But the information was that the few hikers who attempted hiking out were turned back by heavy smoke.
Etna is a very cool town, a good place to be stuck if you are a hiker. The city limit sign says population 750. Yet it sports two brewpubs, a couple of good coffee shops and bakeries. It lets hikers sleep in a park which is provided not only with restrooms and water, but a shower that is cleaned daily, free wifi, and outlets to recharge phones. An easy place to hang out, as attested to by nearly a hundred hikers milling about the town.
My plan (and that of many others) was to skip ahead to Seiad Valley to get away from fires and their smoke. It’s about 60 miles by trail but more than that by road and reputedly a very hard hitch.
A ride was arranged with SoleSaver, who was to ferry me and 6 other refugees northward.
All went well until the car overheated on the remote road connecting Ft Jones with Seiad Valley.
I hopped out and while everyone was milling around, saw some blackberry bushes lining the road and walked up toward them, thinking to score some fresh berries.
“What the FUCK do you think you are doing “
An angry man with no shirt but a beard down to his chest yelled up at me.
“Just curious as to what’s here” I replied. That was the wrong answer.
“Take your curious ass and get the fuck away from my property and keep going.”
One of the women tried engaging him with reason: we can’t go anywhere we are broken down, etc. Studio, a public defender in St. Louis and thus a man familiar with criminal psychology, wisely shut her down to de-escalate the situation before any weapons were involved. There was no phone service, no one was going to protect us if things got ugly.
I went back to the car, took a look under the hood and saw the lower radiator hose had popped off. Potentially all I had to do was reconnect it, fill it with water and we would be off.
An elderly gentleman was walking up his driveway toward us and I prepared to be cussed out again. Instead he was offering help. His name was Carl, he was 90 years old, a retired gold miner, and he volunteered to go back down to his well and get some water and haul it up.
I got under the car and tried reconnecting the hose but the hose clamp was stripped and would not tighten down. I asked Carl if he had any duct tape and he slowly walked down to his shed and returned with a roll.
Fortunately there was another hiker (Cocacola) with some mechanical aptitude and we took turns tearing off strips of tape and wrapping them around the hose.
Cocacola wraps strips of tape around the radiator hose. Photo courtesy of Cookie Pie.
We poured water into the radiator and it ran right out again. The hose had been repaired in another spot and was leaking where the plumbers putty had failed.
By this time the neighbor across the road had come down from his shack to shout at us to move on and to not even think about coming on to his property. He returned to his porch and sat there with a rifle on his lap, glaring at us.
It was getting late and the other hikers decided to hitch on to a place where there were no angry armed hillbillies shouting at us. They promised to call SoleSaver’s husband so he could come get her. SoleSaver was still in the car, sobbing into the steering wheel.
Cocacola and I got back under the car, scraped off the putty, wrapped the connector with tape, then wrapped the whole assembly over and over (its hose clamp was also stripped) and poured in the water.
This time it held. We made the remaining 15 miles to Seiad just a few minutes after the hitchhikers, who insisted on buying us beers at the store.
It was too late to start hiking so everyone converged on the Wildwood Tavern which offered good food, a camping lawn and showers (but no beer, they lost their license).
But that was ok. Not being stuck on a roadside after dark with angry armed rednecks yelling at me was a good enough end to the day.