Adam, Leigh and the Trees

Thursday 22 August 2019
Day: 116
Location: Mile 1603.4
Distance travelled: 3.7 miles / 6 km

After a much needed early night and sleep in at the Hikers Hut in Etna, we borrowed some push bikes from our hosts and rode down to Bob’s Ranch House at the other end of town for a big breakfast. They told us we didn’t need to lock the bikes up as there weren’t good enough for anyone to want to steal them!

Breakfast at Bob’s did not disappoint. I got the hash brown pie and a banana split milkshake (which was a contender for best milkshake on trail so far) while Leigh got a generously sized spinach and cheese omelette. We also ran into and caught up with an old friend, White Noise, who we had not seen since before South Lake Tahoe.

We then rode our rickety bikes off to the Dollar General to buy our food for the next week on trail. With groceries for this week sorted, we then turned our attention to the next few weeks on trail where access to towns is limited. We’re thinking that we will probably need to send food parcels ahead in the mail for us to collect along the way for a few stops, but for now we just wanted to organise our first food parcel for our first trail stop in Oregon, at Crater Lake, so it was good to get that sorted through Zero Day Resupply.

The rest of the day flew by really quickly. Before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to Etna and return to the trail. We ware able to organise a ride with our host from the Hikers Hut, which turned out to be a good plan as we heard other hikers waited over an hour for a hitch on the road back to the trail without any luck.

    

We were both feeling pretty lazy still after some tougher days recently, so decided that we would only climb as far as the top of the first hill, which was a few miles from the road.

       

It was kind of eerie setting up camp in a burnt out forest. We were joined later on by a few other hikers.

   

We’re planning to get to Seiad Valley in two days time and cross the California/Oregon border into Ashland within 5 days, but with temperatures between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius forecast for the next week, we will have to take it day by day.

Friday 23 August 2019
Day: 117
Location: Mile 1629.0
Distance travelled: 25.6 miles / 41 km

I didn’t get a great night’s sleep last night on account of the roaring wind. You could hear the wind moving through the valley all night, which was a slight concern given our campsite amongst the dead trees. Fortunately, we had a bit of protection from the full force of the wind based on the direction it was coming from. Still, the tent ended up tapping my head everytime a wind gust came through, which kept waking me up all night.

We were aiming to do close to 30 miles today, but once we slept through our alarm in the morning it was always going to be tough to make up the miles.

       

At one point we came across some wild berries that Leigh was keen to try. She downloaded a guidebook when we were in town and has been eager to find some berries that we could eat without poisoning ourselves. When we stumbled on something that looked like a raspberry, she decided to give it a try after consulting the guidebook. She was still alive at dinner time, so I figure she must have been right.

 

The rest of the day felt like a struggle. The heat of the day was affecting me and everything felt harder than normal. It didn’t help that we passed over 40 hikers headed south by lunchtime as it kills your momentum everytime you stop to let someone past or have a quick chat. I guess we’re now in peak SOBO season for those hikers headed from Canada to Mexico.

 

I made the mistake of having a big lunch but not sitting for long enough to digest it probably, which left me feeling a bit off for the rest of the afternoon.

   

 

Today wasn’t my best day. Starting to feel a bit depleted after only one day since being in town when a town stop would normally gives me the boost that you need to get through 7-10 days on trail. I’m starting to think that I’m probably not getting enough rest to recover properly when we’re having to hike from sunrise to sunset most days just to meet our minimum mileage target. With another 7 or 8 weeks to go at this rate until we reach Canada and our ability to take days off limited due to the Washington weather window likely to close in on us in October, I’m starting to give some thought to the possibility of taking a few days off at some point soon and meeting Leigh further up the trail. I’ll see how I feel over the next few days and make a call after that.

   

Saturday 24 August 2019
Day: 118
Location: Mile 1658.4
Distance travelled: 29.4 miles / 47 km

We had a big descent of a few thousand feet ahead of us into Seiad Valley, so we made sure to get an early start to give us as much time as possible to reach the bottom.

   

The upside of such an early start is that you get front row seats for the sunrise and today was an absolute cracker.

   

The melodic sounds of cowbells rang out in the valleys below us as we completed the last hill climb before heading down to Seiad Valley.

   

The descent was relatively easy but with no breeze and 35 degree temperatures, we felt like we were being cooked.

In addition to being uncomfortable in the heat, the trail was pretty overgrown in parts and we had been warned to look out for ticks (the ones that carry Lyme disease) and poison oak.

After a couple of breaks, we finally reached the bottom and took the opportunity to rest at a picnic table before being joined by some other hikers.

   

Some time had passed before we realised that the general store in town closed at 7pm. As it was already getting close to 5pm, we had to really power through the 6.5 mile road walk if we were going to get there in time for the cold drinks and ice cream we had been fantasizing about for the past few hours. To our amazement, we ended up doing the 6.5 miles in under 2 hours, which is faster than any section of trail we’ve done so far!

 

   

We were originally hoping to be able to hang around in town until tomorrow morning in order to have breakfast at the cafe, but with another hot day ahead of us tomorrow we decided instead to push on a few miles up the hill before it got dark. As we have a big climb of a few thousand feet tomorrow morning, the thought was that this would give us the chance to do most of our climbing out of Seiad Valley before the sun got too strong.

Sunday 25 August 2019
Day: 119
Location: Mile 1683.2
Distance travelled: 24.8 miles / 40 km

Today was a day of two halves. The first half being not as difficult as expected and the second half turning out to be more draining than expected.

 

We were up and hiking before sunrise. The idea being that we get as much of the exposed climb out of Seiad Valley behind us before the sun gets too hot. Once we got above the treeline, we also had a bit of help from a nice breeze which was unexpected.

 

We had been dreading this climb after hearing a lot if negative comments from other hikers but it turned out to be surprisingly pleasant with some great views too.

 

After finishing the climb, we found a nice shaded spot near a trailhead car park to stop for lunch. Even though we’re still in California, you can tell that we must be getting close to Oregon now as all cars in the car park had Oregon plates not Californian plates.

   

   

The afternoon was a bit of a drag. The heat was in full force and we still had a bit more climbing to do. I was definitely glad when we finally reached our campsite at the end of the day.

Monday 26 August 2019
Day: 120
Location: Mile 1710.6
Distance travelled: 27.4 miles / 44 km

Another hot one today – something like 35 degrees Celsius in the middle if the day.

The morning flew by as we said goodbye to California and hello to Oregon, crossing the border around mid morning. As awesome as California has been, we’re definitely ready for a change of scenery in Oregon.

It’s crazy to think that you can walk almost every day for 4 months and still be in the same state.

 

In crossing the border, Leigh has now walked 1,691 miles from the Mexican border while I’ve completed about 950 miles. I was super proud to be able to share the moment with Leigh as it is a huge milestone on our journey to Canada.

 

With our next town stop in Ashland only one day away, we made the decision to spend two nights there to have a proper rest before tackling the remainder of the trail. The trail doesn’t really go through any decent sized towns after Ashland, so we figure this may be our last chance for a good zero day and may as well make the most of it even though time is not exactly on our side.

   

 

After passing the 1700 mile mark, the heat started to get the better of Leigh by the afternoon, so we took an extended break to wait for the temperature to drop a bit.

   

 

We were feeling pretty flat once we started hiking again, so it was a massive morale boost to receive two trail magic’s in one afternoon. The first was an esky full of soda and the second was a box of organic apples. We basically floated all the way to our campsite further up the trail after that.

Tuesday 27 August 2019
Day: 121
Location: Mile 1717.7
Distance travelled: 7.1 miles / 11 km

We didn’t have too far to go today, so wanted to reach the road as early as possible to make the most of our time in town.

 

 

The walking was fairly uneventful, with the trail running parallel to the road for most of the descent. You know you are getting close to town when the trail takes you past what looks like someone’s house.

    

We eventually had to take a bit of a side trail to reach a good spot for hitching into Ashland. The only downside was that the trail was pretty much all downhill which means we’ll be going back up it in a few days time when we rejoin the trail. Not looking forward to that.

Upon reaching the highway, we started walking towards our planned hitching spot when a big American ute slowed down opposite us and the driver yelled out to check if we were ok. A short conversation later and we were on our way into Ashland. Leigh was happy to take the back seat and accompany the driver’s two dogs. He was a super interesting guy, telling us about his recent travels to Tibet to help collect and translate old Buddhist manuscripts, before dropping us off at the Morning Glory Cafe in Ashland for breakfast. The cafe turned out to have really good food and some of the biggest portions we have seen to date. Easily my favourite cafe breakfast in America to date.

 

After breakfast we tried to catch a bus to our motel but didn’t have the right change (they don’t give change on American buses in our experience), so started to walk there instead. We only got about 100m down the road before a car on opposite side of road stopped to ask if we needed a lift. Turned out they had already picked up another hiker and were headed in the same direction as us, so we jumped in the back of the ute and headed off down the road.

It was supposed to be 40 degrees today and by the time we got to our motel it definitely felt like it. We cranked the air con before heading off to do our standard town errands of grocery shopping, bounce box collection from the post office and laundry.

We were spoiled for choice when it came to groceries in Ashland, with 4 or 5 supermarkets in walking distance of our motel. The only downside with having so many options is that you feel like you need to go to all of them to see what range of stuff they have and what their prices are like. We were blown away by the choices and started to think about sending some food forward to places where our choices will be limited but our brains couldn’t handle the increased complexity so we decided to leave it for tomorrow.

Once our washing was done, we caught the bus into the main part of town to collect our bounce boxes and have a look around. I ended up buying a new hiking lightweight hoodie from Mountain Provisions and finished our town stop paying an obscene amount for frozen yoghurt, but it was totally worth it given how hot it was outside.

 

 

We spent the evening watching movies at our motel, relaxing and eating microwavable frozen burritos (which were unexpectedly good).

Wednesday 28 August 2019
Day: 122
Location: Mile 1717.7
Distance travelled: 0 miles / 0 km

Our first genuine zero day in 4 weeks! Possibly the last one until we reach Canada now as time is still not on our side.

We spent morning organising food parcels for our upcoming stops at Big Lake (Oregon) and White’s Pass (Washington) after breakfast at the motel.

Our next assignment was to find some boxes to use to send our food forward. We tried unsuccessfully to get some boxes from a few of the supermarkets before eventually getting an empty Oreos box.

We spent some time getting the packaging done before awkwardly waddling off to the post office only to find it was closed for the next half an hour. We had planned to go to an Indian buffet at the other end of town but this delay meant we would be pushing it to get there before it closed. Once the post office reopened, our boxes were sorted quickly and we quickly jumped on a bus. We reached the buffet with less than 20 minutes to spare but this turned out to be more than enough time to demolish two plates of food and a dessert.

The rest of the afternoon was spent chilling at the motel, watching American Ninja Warrior and planning for the next sections of trail.