Miles Hiked: 34.3
PCT Mileage: 1365.6
This morning I woke up in Susansville. Having a bed last night was great. I quickly packed up all my things and waited on Trail Diva and Midnight to get ready to hitch hike. We stood on main street for about 20 minutes before John picked us up. We had our backpacks plus boxes of things that Midnight needed to mail home from her friends wedding she went to last week. John was one of the most interesting people who has ever picked me up. He works at the recycling center in town and told us all about how it works. He also told us all about his off the grid tiny home in a shipping container and how he and his wife built everything themselves and go on adventures all the time. He said one of the best parts is that when it’s fire season he can lock everything inside the container and leave if he needs to. This area we are in has been hit hard by fire for the last few seasons. John drove us all the way to Chester. It was totally out of his way.
We got dropped off at the post office right when it opened. I picked up a box of food that my mom sent me. It included my shoes, socks, and insoles. I was excited for this box. After we did all the things we needed to do at the post office. We started to hitch back to the trail from Chester. It was 9:45am when a fire lawyer picked us up and dropped us back off in the burn scar of a trail we have been walking through. How fitting. Today we wanted to hike 30 miles despite the late start. We ended up having to hike more because there is a camping restriction in Lassen National Park. You must have a bear can to camp there so we had to walk 34 miles to the parks northern border to legally camp. A lot of PCT hikers have reported bear activity in the park. I find it funny that everyone ends up camping directly outside an arbitrary border. As if the bears don’t cross the national park boundary. I also wondered how on earth any animal could live in the area. Almost everything was charred black. As far as I could see there couldn’t be anything to eat there! I did find my first Morel Mushroom ever today. I was so excited about it. I have been hunting for them for a long long time. Unfortunately it was way past it’s prime and I don’t have a stove to cook it. Out of precaution I decided not to eat it because I did not want an upset stomach. Apparently the mushrooms thrive in burn areas. Despite being burned so bad, lassen seemed like a cool national park. In the distance we could see the 10k foot Lassen peak that blew up in 1915. It is a volcano. The park also had a few thermal features.
I had a ton of fun hiking with Midnight and Trail Diva. We stopped and took breaks together. My feet hurt because I normally take way more breaks but I wanted to keep up with them. At the end of the day I was so tired when we were hiking in the dark. It was 11:30 pm when we got to camp. I laid down my sleeping pad and passed out. It was a cold night despite it being a pretty hot day.
Happy Trails!
-Early Bird
Des Hikes Thru 