Another day another burger and also something about a river

Day 72

Despite the unexpectedly early sleep I got yesterday I was surprisingly unable to muster the energy to get out of bed (or rather sleeping bag) when my alarm clock rang, so I slept in a bit. Hope it didn’t wake the hikers next to me with that alarm that I didn’t even need. Sometime later I got my things together and before heading out I wanted to fill up my water bottles at the nearby spring. A couple had put up their tent right where you would get to it so you would have to bow down and closely circumnavigate it to get to the water. If you do something like that I would suggest at least not making smug remarks when people come by to fill up on water. That is not how you get friends. It wasn’t any kind of major nuisance, though.

Going was smooth possibly aided by the extra sleep. Much of the time it was below the trees, but occasionally the trail went up to show views of tree covered rolling hills. The landscape was gradually becoming softer and less steep as we moved further north of the Sierras. The haze that I wrote about two days ago was mostly gone. I never found a real reason for it. The trail brought us across a couple of paved roads, which was something to had not seen in the more remote Sierras that we had just left. At one of such crossing, luck befell me and other hikers as there was trail magic yet again. It was two women, Jill and Ann, who were staying there in a trailer for a couple of days. One of them, Jill I think, had a son hiking the PCT, but he was still in the Sierras and they wouldn’t still be doing trail magic when he came by. They just wanted to be part of our journey and help us. They were making burgers for us. Awesome!!! I had one along with a coke and spoke briefly with some of the other hikers who apparently had been in the Sierras a week before me and had a lot more snow there, which made me glad about my choice of going into the Sierras, though they said it had been beautiful.

I didn’t stay long at the trail magic site, as I felt that I had a lot of energy that needed to be converted into trail miles, even more so after that burger and coke. I thanked the trail angels and left. The going was still easy, but I had to take a small detour to get to a spring as it was a dry section.

At some point I met a bicyclist going in the opposite direction and told him that this was strictly a footpath (you’d have to include horse feet for that to be true). He just said “Oh…eh.” without apologizing. I moved over and he passed me. When I came to the next road crossing I checked to see if the no bicycles sign was in place. It was, so he couldn’t use that as an excuse. That was the first bicyclist I have seen on trail, but the reason I don’t like it is the possibility of a bicyclist hitting a hiker while going all too fast downhill.

After doing a lot of miles the trail brought us down to The Middle Fork of Feather River. That took some time as I was feeling today’s mileage and don’t really like going down hill. When crossing the river on a bridge I saw two hikers, who had passed me earlier, taking a dip. What a nice idea! I hadn’t thought about that earlier, when I planned to camp next to the river and made me excited to get in there as well. After a short scramble I got down next to the river in kind of a small island between a stream and the river where I put up my tent. Afterwards I went for a swim, which was super nice. The water was just warm enough that you didn’t feel cold when you had gotten under. Following that, I changed into my sleeping clothes, which weren’t as sweaty and smelly as the clothing that I had been hiking in all day. What a nice end to a pretty long day.

This days miles: 1220-1250