Day 110: Mile 1655.9 - 1670.7

There are two pressing (actually not pressing) issues that must be addressed, if not affirmatively and actively answered, before leaving Seiad Valley via the PCT.

(Before discussing these, know this: the way out of Seiad Valley is a climb. The trail itself goes from 1700 to nearly 6000 in about 7 miles. And it's supposed to be hot in Seiad Valley today: forecast calls for a high of 103 F.)

Issue the First: whether to get breakfast at the Cafe in the morning. The Cafe nominally opens at 7am, but on some days that gets pushed to 8am. Bruce felt that this might be if the firefighters come into town and ask for, say, 40 breakfasts: they get priority (and rightly so). So there is some ambiguity as to when the Cafe opens. Do you want to eat a real meal and risk possibly starting later in the day when it's hotter, or get going?

Issue the Second: whether to road walk or take the trail proper. It turns out the trail out of Seiad Valley was heavily overgrown earlier in the season, with plenty of poison oak and fallen trees. So folks were instead taking an alternate route up a road that joins the PCT actually here, at the campsite I'm in. But supposedly a PCT volunteer crew has been through this part, so it's better now. But do you risk it? And how paranoid/sensitive are you about/to poison oak?

On Issue the First: I skipped the Cafe breakfast. The morning weather was just too good--cool, and the sun occluded by either morning haze-clouds or wind-blown smoke (the sun rose blood red again) so it wasn't beating down on you--too good *not* to hike. On Issue the Second: well, I'm not that afraid of overgrown trail (I've dealt with worse on my day-hikes), and while I *am* afraid of poison oak, I'm not so afraid that I'll take a road (roads are absolutely terrible for hiking--great for driving and for permanence, but murder on my feet and legs). So I took the trail.

And it wasn't that bad. As usual Double Snacks got out of camp before me (makes sense: I was up late last night fighting with Guthooks--argh) and as usual we leapfrogged throughout the day, only hiking together after lunch. So I did the climb pretty much by myself. And while it was steep-ish, the day was still relatively cool and the incline was definitely infinite-able (had I been more patient). There was poison oak in spots--not a lot, but in spots--but it turns out poison oak is easier to identify and avoid when you're moving slow because you're climbing. And poison oak disappears after about 4000 feet, so if anything I found myself wanting to climb a little faster, a little steeper, just so I wouldn't have to contend with the poison oak! Otherwise, a bit overgrown in parts, but nothing severe. The only tricky bit came about 6 miles in, right before the first water source at Lookout Spring, where the trail became very overgrown and I lost it entirely. Ended up bushwacking up the mountain looking for the trail, finally finding it, going down it, realizing I'm going the wrong way, and turning around. This was a real bushwack, through actual brush that was maybe waist-to-chest high, and without a trail. But even then, it was nothing more difficult than, say, the western approach of Brown Mountain, up the old firebreak. And it was pretty short, too (the Brown Mountain firebreak is the "trail" for a couple miles; today I bushwacked for maybe 10 minutes at most). But other than that, for the most part the trail wasn't that bad. Lots of people took the road, but there were still plenty of hikers on the trail, and I would see them at water sources, where there would be one or two people sitting there, pushing water through a bag, and suddenly it would balloon to a dozen people. It turns out there was another series of fires just north of Etna recently, so a lot of folks skipped from Etna up to Seiad Valley, causing a new influx. Ah fires: the great equalizer!

But as I said, the hiking today wasn't bad: a steep trail, but doable steep, poison oak that was easy enough to avoid (well, fingers crossed), a brief bushwack. All under mild temperatures--my watch stayed in the mid-80s--so not that bad. Rather, the tricky part today wasn't the trail, but the skies: as we progressed, it just seemed to get smokier and smokier. Enough so that I did start to notice: maybe it's the reduced lung capacity owing to my fall, but when the air gets smoky I notice that I can't take in full breaths, and the soreness on my right side, around the rib bruises, that starts to come back. So if I reach my right arm out and it's loaded by some weight, while normally that's fine, in smoky weather I start to feel the spasms in my ribs, the weakness in those core muscles, starting to creep back in. I talked to Double Snacks about it: she felt that the skies were smoky, sure, but it wasn't affecting her hiking. But me, I'm more sensitive it seems, and I do notice it.

Luckily, today was a short day--less than 15 miles--owing to the fact that the climb was a lot of work, and the fact that the next campsite is 5 miles hence and that's just too far to go on a day with that climb. So a shorter day. But the scenery here looked to be very nice if we could but see it: at one point, Double Snacks (who's been through this section before) looked up and pointed out how pretty the mountain peak rocks would be, all in red, against an azure sky, but now they were faded by smoke against a plain gray (or, as Magnet and AM Drive--who other folks I leapfrogged with on the trail--put it: against the "beige abyss"). And looking out over the ridgelines, in clear skies you could probably see out pretty far--there was a Guthooks comment saying from such and such point you could see Mount Shasta--but I could barely see two ridges over, and the second just the barely shadow of a treeline, the faintest blue against a plain gray. Lots of smoke, but at least where we're camping the air moves some, and it's amongst live trees (we passed through lots of burn areas today), so here's to hoping that the winds change and it's clearer tomorrow!

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Some notes:

-- Seiad Valley RV Park > Highway 96 > Lookout Spring > Kangaroo Spring > Dirt Road

-- Yesterday, going into Seiad Valley, the tree puzzles were much more tricky and I found myself thinking, I wonder if it's possible to make tree puzzles into a video game of some sort? And today I idly throught about it some more, and figured it would be possible to make a PCT video game, and make it a management game (rather than a simulated hiking game--that would just devolve into Desert Bus, I think) (and I mean Desert Bus without the For-Hope-charity part!). Something like the soccer simulator that Alvin would play back when I was in college or, more palpable to the vernacular, Oregon Trail. Managing miles and water and resupply. Then make tree puzzles a sort of mini-game (like hunting for game in Oregon Trail). Here you wouldn't die of dysentery: you'd "die" of one of the Big Three: injury, illness, or run-out-of-money. Well, if I ever wanted to learn video-game coding, there's a project to start with!

-- In the morning, I got to talking with Tags, whose actual name I discovered is Tague (pronounced like Hague, but with a T). It's his real name and his grandmother's maiden name so has some heritage. It's also unique enough--it's nice being the only Tague in the world, as he said--that he doesn't really need a trail name. I asked about it because I'd been saying Tag (like the game), but then noticed some other people saying Teg (like Miles) (that's a Dune reference), and wondered. He doesn't seem to mind: whenever he here's that hard T sound he suspects people are talking to him. I talked to him about his time in the Sierras--I think the last I saw him he was heading into Lone Pine--and he had some interesting stories about permits and rangers in the Sierras and adventures therein, but I don't it's a good idea to repeat them in a public forum. Suffice to say he had an interesting time in the Sierras, and that he's looking ahead to going all the way to Canada without holding his breath as much!

-- Today I saw Bloom again, first at the store in Seiad Valley as I was heading out, then leapfrogging throughout the day. I hadn't seen her since, gosh, across the street in Big Bear she said (although I think the last I remember was at Cajon Pass). How have things been going, she asked. And I didn't have a good answer to that. Well, I went through the Sierras, then NorCal, I replied, and they were fine. That is the standard order of operations, she said. Yeah, not so good with the conversation, me. But she was happy to meet Double Snacks: Bloom's current trailname is Good Snacks, and everywhere she went, people would ask, have you met Double Snacks? She's close by! And they never would meet, would always miss. Until today!

-- Bloom did try to come up with a trail name for me once she found out I still don't have one. At one point, she was throwing out names like Salt and Pal, and I joked that since now you're just trying random words, why not go with something like Antediluvian. What does that even mean, Double Snacks asked. And Treebeard knew: it means very old, technically before the Biblical Flood. They seemed to like that one, played with a bit (it's too long, though), but I don't think you're "supposed" to suggest your own trail name. At this point, I'm over halfway through the trail--both in terms of distance and time--and I think it's rather late in the game for a trail name. (It's never too late, Bloom attested.) In all the trail registers I've just been signing "charlie", and it'd be strange to change that now--nobody would know who I am! (Not that anybody does, but in theory if someone *wanted* to, and I changed my name, they *couldn't*.)

-- If yesterday was about discovering blackberries on trail, today was about discovering thimbleberries, which I'd never known about, but Double Snacks knew. They look like the beds of sunflowers, only much much smaller and very red, and you sort of squeeze and pull off what looks like a thimble cover of little berry-lets from the main bulb. They taste pretty good, although they're so small so it's more that I got the hint of their flavor rather than a full experience of it.