After a rough night due to pesky mosquitoes, then persistent flies buzzing around my head, I was up at 6am. Wifeless (now reclaiming his former trail name Tabasco) was up too and proclaimed it the worst night of sleep for him the entire trail. When we began hiking at 6:30 it was 56 degrees up on the rim. As we dropped to lower elevation on the valley floor, temperatures dropped into the high 30s and the hiking was quite enjoyable. The trail was rough in sections where we hiked over old lava flows and some young flows as well. Where the lava ended we were hiking in volcanic dust that covered our bodies quickly and was a pain to deal with all day.
By late morning we had covered 12 miles and I was thinking that we only had 5 more to go to get to Burney Falls. As we broke for water and an early lunch, I reviewed the data book and saw that Burney Falls State Park was an additional 7.7 miles past the road to hitch into the town of Burney. Earlier I had known this fact, but when we were back at Old Station, Happy convinced me that we only had 40, not 47 miles to Burney. Technically she was correct because she was looking at data to town, while I was thinking all the while that she was talking about the distance to the state park.
So as we ate lunch I realized that we had a much longer afternoon of hiking in store than originally planned. As the afternoon wore on, it got hot. There was no breeze and lots of open areas where the direct sun beat down on us. We hiked until just after 5pm when we finally reached Burney Falls State Park. One of the factors, beside the sun that slowed us down today was the meeting of a wave of SOBO’s, including Wildcat, Nickel, Jym Bean, Rain Queen, Skittles, Cedar, Recess, Hugemongous, and Lookout. The latter two are a mother and son hiking the PCT together.
At the state park’s concessionaire/small general store I retrieved my resupply box and a letter, for which I was charged a holding fee of $5.25, even though the park is only seven miles from town. Tabasco and I sat at a picnic table adjacent to the store with Hugemongous and his mother Lookout. I organized my pack for the next section of trail while they waited for a friend to arrive, who had flown into Redding. Tabasco and I sat at that table almost three hours, had some Sierra Nevada ales, ate dinner from the concession stand, and waited to see if the rest of our gang was going to make it to the park. When they didn’t show by 8pm, when the store closed, we rode ¼ mile with Lookout and Hugemongous and their friend to a designated camping area.
Tabasco and I set up quickly, then headed to the bathroom complex for coin operated showers to get cleaned off. The amount of dusty dirt on my body that accumulated in one day was just unbelievable. Quickly I returned to my tarptent to get in some writing time before going to sleep. It was a long, hot day and my feet took a beating. Lots of new blisters to deal with going forward.
Today’s weather: sunny, low 56, high 95. Today’s mileage: 24.5. Cumulative mileage: 1,011.5.
