Last nights rain cleared the air and opened expansive views at the first pass.
It was nice to walk through air that was clean, clear and cool. I’m still feeling traumatized by my 2018 hike from Tahoe to Shasta, where the last week was a horrible walk through a doomscape of smoke and red skies. There are fires this year too, big fires, but maybe I will escape the worst of the smoke.
Would that be an escape or just escapism? Summer wildfires and smoke are the new normal now in western forests. Are today’s blue skies an illusion, a way to pretend that the natural world around me — a world of green forests and blue mountains, a world I have loved and enjoyed for all of my 64 years — is not fated to destruction? I don’t know. Maybe. All I can do is walk.
The Marble Mountains beamed back the light of the early morning sun, white rock looking like snowfields spread across the horizon. I will be there in a few days.
The Marble Mountains, not so far away
In the meantime, the trail continues its easy going ways, contouring around mountains, heading north, south, east and west but mostly west, staying high above the Klamath valley.
There are few streams or lakes in this region, but a fair number of springs, some of them sprouting along the side of the trail, requiring nothing more than to hold out a bottle to enjoy clear cold water.
A spring supports a few flowers and butterflies
The easy walking ended at state highway 3. There is a campground here and I took a break with another hiker waiting to be picked up by her husband. There’s no water, but the last car camper of the weekend hands me a frozen water bottle on his way out of the campground, a small bit of trail magic.
It is a bit that I soon appreciate. The day has grown hot. It is humid still from yesterday’s rain. The climb up from the road is long and steep and hot and I am grateful to drink melted ice water.
The outlet from Mosquito Lake is the first real stream seen all day. Hikers naturally post up there. One of them is TimeWarp, whom I’ve been leapfrogging with all day. He is finishing up his PhD dissertation in microbial ecology. We talk about PCR, how sample prep is the hard part, how it can lead to false negative results. He is glad to hear that it is not just him who struggles with this.
We are joined by Tumbles. She immediately strips and sets her self down in the deepest pool to cool off. She is a nurse from Arkansas. TimeWarp asks her about his ankle, which is swollen and sore.
“If you don’t have a vagina and your pants are on, then I can’t help you “. It turns out that she is a labor and delivery nurse, and is not dispensing orthopedic medical advice.
The trail goes along just under the ridge, continuing to climb, but more slowly now. I hadn’t intended to hike 20+ miles today but there is little choice – the ground slopes steeply down to the valley below, there is no possible place to camp.
The first flat spot comes just before a pass. It is rocky and dusty and has been favored by cows, but will have to do. I lay out my ground cloth and cook dinner as the shadows stretch to the east.
