Diary - Mile 1599.7
Goodbye, California!
That was a one long state. Technically, this is not the end of the PCT in California, there’s another 100 miles of trail, but we finished in a town of Etna, on the border of McKinney fire and from here onwards the trail is closed. We hitched to Ashland, Oregon. Unfortunately, central part of Oregon is burning too, so we won’t get to walk a big chunk of this state either.
Last week was the wildest part of trail I’ve seen so far. Since most hikers skipped ahead, the trail felt unusually quiet and I’ve seen more wildlife than on the rest of it taken together. Two rather timid bears- one of them galloped off my way before I even saw him, the other was bushwacking into the trail right in front of me, not aware of my being there, and banging walking poles together sent the poor fella running for life, back into the woods.
I was told that rattlesnakes warn you way before you approach them, but both in the desert and here I have passed right by them and only then they decided to rattle. So much for warning…In both cases they could have bitten me, since I was only centemeters away, but it was pretty nice of them not to. The third one bluff- charged me but I was too far, so it gave up and escaped into the bushes.
We happened to accidentally witness a sturgeon moon. We camped on a ridge to see a supposedly nice sunrise near mount Shasta, and it was nice, but what was even nicer was the pale, gigantic moon that rolled across the pink skies from behind blue mountains. I wish I was a better poet to describe it, or a painter, or at least have a better camera. Instead, I watched it go up, turning brighter like a lightbulb that slowly heats up to its full brightness. It was with us the next day too and at night, mountains resonated with a whole orchestra of wolves, howling at it from all directions.
California was finished with the finest example of how food affects hikers on trail. There’s this bakery in Etna with a comment on our app saying “it is the only bakery that lives up to french standart”, by a guy named Gaspard. When I see a comment saying “it’s the best burger on trail” those are all lies, there is no such thing as a best burger on trail, but when a bakery is good enough for a french man, it’s gotta be good. So it’s Friday noon, we are having lunch in the middle of nowhere, having hiked 16 miles, when I notice its working hours- it closes at 2PM tomorrow. This is disastrous. The essentials of a town day are: shower, laundry, ice cream, beer, coffee and baked goods. We planned to hike 25 miles tomorrow, we’ll never make it on time. We quickly change our plans- we’ll hike another 20 miles instead of 10 today, kill ourselves till the night but we will make it before it closes tomorrow. So we hike and we hike and suddenly, Stumbles gets service on top of a hill and googles bakery’s hours- google says it closes at 9PM, but their web page says noon. Noon?! We will not make it by noon however fast we go. Tragedy. But. Despair not. There’s also a phone number. So here we are, a 21st century wilderness sight: two hikers on Friday evening, sitting in some valley by a stream, in wildfire smoke, with a grey snake (probably harmless..?) slithering around us, some animal’s skull casually lying nearby, eating dried ramen and unsuccessfully cold-soaked pasta, because somehow we both ran out of gas the day before, calling some bakery: “Hi! We are pct hikers wondering what time you guys close so we know how fast we need to hike tomorrow?” The answer is 9PM. Merci, oh lord of baked goods! Our hungry souls are salvaged. We no longer had to hike till dark. We made it to the bakery on time.
Now I am no bakery expert, nor a french woman, in fact, if I bore resemblance to anything french, it would be to a french homeless cat with extensive knowledge on Knorr pasta and what to put on a tortilla wrap, but that only croissant they had remaining and the cookies were damn good.
By now, after 91 days, I feel like I’ve really visited California well.
Time to visit Oregon. This one shouldn’t take so long.
