Farewell to good friends

Pounce: we will miss your contagious laughter and your beautiful voice will enchant our hearts for years to come. 

With heavy hearts we had to say farewell to to friends at Sierra City. Pounce, a music therapy major from Germany, and Little One, a student at Texas Women's collage. We will miss you both.
Pounce: we will miss your contagious laughter and your beautiful voice will enchant our hearts for years to come. 

Pounce trying her first American BBQ

Little One:  we will miss your sweet spirit of adventure and gentle kindness

FIRE & RAIN

Soooo...Northern California is basically on fire.  And, for some bizarre twist of charma or whatever, it seems to be burning mostly along the route of the PCT.  The result of which has been the closure of at least 3 sections of trail.

So, only two days hike from our halfway point, we made a somewhat emotionally wrenching choice.  We would skip over 430 miles of the trail and start hiking again in Ashland, OR.  

The logistics of getting to the open areas, and then hitching around the closed places to the next open areas looks unrealistic. So we are now in a Chico with bus tickets to Ashland.  

Adventure to be continued... 

Some days rock...

It's raining...continuously...since yesterday evening.  Clouds are hanging low and heavy over steep slopes of spruce and fir.  It is chilly...every inch of earth, leaf and bark is wet and dripping.  We are warm, dry and well fed.

I am writing this post from the beautiful art studio of our host...I'll let Shiny tell the rest of the story​...

Sunday, August 3

Totally unlooked for, out of the blue, but when we most needed it...

Actually, hiking had been going along quite well. We were feeling great and our pace had been increasing without effort, in fact, we were feeing stronger than we had the whole trip. Then, yesterday afternoon, Gregg's energy just tanked and he felt his throat get sore.  We were 36 miles from Beldon, our next resupply with some fairly big climbs in between us and our destination. We decided to finish our our planned day of 25 miles, and the see how far we could get the next day before low energy turned into a full blown cold. Our hope was to get to Beldon first and find a place to rest.  Then, to make matters worse, the following morning, I fell and smacked my knee pretty hard, making steep descents, such as the 6 mile one that was coming up much harder. 

Our host, Janet, setting out the feast

Grim, right?!  Well, as we plodded along the following day we met three wonderful ladies from Quincy; Shelly, Mary and Janet, three friends who were out for a day hike.  As we chatted, they offered to cook dinner for us and give us a place to stay the night. We were absolutely blown away! They even let me do our laundry!! What a huge blessing.

They gave me vitamins and other remedies for my impending cold, and put me to bed.  

That night they cooked a feast for us...Talapia fish tacos, home made spring rolls and a salad with veggies from Janet's garden and hard boiled eggs courtesy of her chickens.   After dinner we lingered over wine and talked of life, politics, hiking and many other things.

Thank you Janet, Shelly and Mary.

 Shiny learns to make spring rolls from Shelly.

Here are some more photos from this leg of the trip.

Great camp site...right?

Yeah...not so much

The next night...another great camp spot

Stands for P...C...T

Cat prints on the way into Beldon...any body have a really big ball of string!?

New Day

Boy, what a difference a little sleep and a couple of camp meals can make.

We got up early and got on the trail to catch the rest of the gang (they blew past us last night when we stopped.​  

Everyone eventually ended up at Richardson lake, a placid mountain pond surrounded by forest and meadow.  We all had a swim and a fire.  Great day...even saw a beautiful cinnimon colored bear.​

The rest of the three days into Donner pass were just as good.  The trail stayed at altitude most of the time, skirting along many of e famous ski slopes of North Lake Tahoe, as it made is way around the lake.​

Upon arriving at Donner Pass​, we all split a taxi ride into Truckee for burgers and beer.  Here are some pix...

Donner Pass waiting for the taxi

Lunch on the trail...literally

Survival tip...great fire starter!

Great hike...weird little place

This was a great couple of days of hiking.  There was a lot of elevation gain, but nice trails and beautiful forest.  The highlights included a stay at the Peter Grubb back country hut, our first 24 mile day, a camp ground with running water and a beautiful golden bear and her cub (running away from us...thankfully.

We arrived in Sierra City...an old mining town, a weird little place.  One local described it this way:  "everything is open unless it isn't ."

here are some photos

Lorelle, a friend of the family and trail angel to us...breakfast and a grocery run into Truckee

Here are a few photos of the Hut.  Follow this link to learn more about it.

http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageServer;jsessionid=B4AC493D266A8453CF31E53691FC9A63.app234a?pagename=PeterGrubbHutHome

signed guitar reads "Gift from Big Daddy Hardwick to Peter Grubb Hut, take good care"

sleeping loft

2 story outhouse

Some days just suck

Maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but we knew there would be days like this. 

By all accounts, this should have been a great day.  We had just spent 2 and a half days in Lake Tahoe (Heckle's parents sprung for a cabin and invited all her friends.  We ate we drank we watched Harry Potter movies.)

The Echo Lake water taxi took us on a beautiful ride across the  lower and upper lakes.  The weather was perfect, we were well rested and well fed.  Once the taxi dropped us off at the upper lake landing we started up the trail.  We hiked for two hours or more over rocky, foot bruising granite.  Somehow, our moods just got worse.  We made it seven miles to Suzie Lake and called it a day, ate dinner and went to bed.  That just seems to be the way it goes out here some days.