Day 85
Getting up today was not easy as I got too late in bed but still wanted to beat the heat and do decent milage today, but the sleepiness gradually disappeared after sun had risen. As mentioned previously I hadn’t seen where Hardcore had camped yesterday, which made me a bit nervous as she had seemed somewhat off. Turns out that she had misunderstood what the other hiker had said to her and gone looking for a new camp site and found one a few yards down the trail. She said that it was the heat that had gotten to her and she was fine now. Nice!
The trail quickly got out of the forested area where I camped to reveal decent views of the surroundings. It continued a slow but steady climb for most of the day, which wasn’t a problem for me at all. Before Shasta the landscape had been mostly flat, but now it was getting more mountainous and rocky. Maybe because we were at higher elevation it never got terribly hot like yesterday, in fact it was quite pleasant for most of the day. I felt much more relaxed today as there were no town chores, no rushing, no poison oak, and no worsening of my rash. It was just walking, though it was a lot of miles and my backpack was still heavy with the food.
By midday I got to Porcupine Lake, which I guess isn’t much different from other small alpine lakes, but it was easily accessible for bathing, which I did. The water was not too cold and I felt rejuvenated afterwards. Very nice! I met a section hiker, e.g. a person hiking just a section of a long trail potentially with the intention of in the end having hiked all of it, called Woodchuck. He was an older with a huge white beard and somewhat scrawny but filled with positivity and enjoyment. He had come to the US from Holland with some of the last people arriving per boat in New York for emigration. He was taking his time doing ten miles or so per day and taking the side trails and seeing all the stuff that he wanted because he had the time. I said that I somewhat envied that he could take things at the speed that he wanted as I felt that us through hikers sometimes were rushing too much to get to Canada. You can’t have it all though. At least not if you only have one summer. Woodchuck had enjoyed hiking all his life and it was a large part of his life.
I pushed on for quite a while until I got to my planned camp site around eight pm and was very relieved to see that there was still room as I didn’t have much energy to go further.
This days miles: 1515-1544
