I woke up before Mikella and had changed and packed up everything inside my tent before she heard me moving around and started packing herself. Factoring in my walking back up to the water pool we had passed to grab a couple more liters of water and filtering it, we finished packing at the same time. I asked Mikella if she had enough water. She said she had a liter, which she thought would be enough to make it to the next water source at least. Based on the coolness of the previous day and the “I need the sun” coldness of that exact moment, this was not an unreasonable guess, but it was a fateful one.
We climbed 2 miles out of the Kangaroo Mountain’s “pouch” to the top of the Devil’s Peaks ridges, along which we would descend. We stopped here for a break just out of the wind.
I called a stop a little way down from there for my morning break, but it was windy and Mikella chose to keep going. I caught up to her a few minutes later when I had finished.
Generally speaking, she is a very careful downhill walker, which put her downhill pace at not much quicker than her uphill pace. It managed to be faster by dint of involving fewer breaks, but it seemed like a very slow walking pace. I had to kind of drag my feet and take small steps to stay far enough behind her.
Near Lower Devil’s Peak, Mikella decided to take a break. As we descended, it steadily got hotter, and she She had drunk through her liter already. I knew we were near Lookout Spring here, so I took a look at the map and saw it was 0.2 miles away. I said I was going ahead and stopping once I got to the spring and left her there, dealing with foot pain related to the constant descent and shoes that probably didn’t fit right.
Halfway down the hill, I realized I had misread the app, and we had passed the spring already, so I stopped on the hillside to wait for her to come down. I started up a podcast and then, noticing there was cell service, a TV show. Nearly twenty minutes later, she still hadn’t arrived. Finally, I heard her yelling for me and called her over. It took another ten minutes for her to make it down the hill to me.
It turned out she had accidentally gone off trail toward the lookout tower at Lower Devil’s Peak at the end of a ridge that I had previously told her we weren’t going down involving far more climbing than I thought she would willingly take on after I had told her we had begun the descent into Seiad Valley. She kept going down it even after it turned into rather a mess of a trail, which left her a bit weak and panicky for a bit, but I’ll leave it to her to describe the ordeal.
When she caught me, I gave her half of my water in lieu of the spring, another liter, then left to go down to a flatter, clearer spot we could see from there to have lunch. I had nearly finished lunch by the time she came down to join me, so I packed up and relocated to the shady spot she had picked. I also gave her the last cider to drink with her lunch. It was still as cold as if it had just come out of the fridge. It had water and calories in it, so I figured it would help her keep going in the heat.
We had another 4 miles of descent, much of it hot and exposed by a forest fire, to reach the next spring, and she quickly ran out of water again. She refused to take more of mine, and also wasn’t eating. She had a very small snack when we stopped at a shady spot. I started another TV show here and was halfway through by the time she picked herself up and walked on past. She said she wanted to just fall asleep. (She had slept very poorly with the cold and not being able to find a comfortable position–maybe four hours.) I stayed to finish the episode, then caught up to her very quickly further down the hill.
At some point even after we’d reached a section low enough to have occasional shade (which is when I started standing in the shade waiting for her to get as fast as the next shade, then walk my normal fast pace to that spot so as to spend less time in the hot sun), Mikella was suddenly overcome by all the symptoms of dehydration and threw herself to the pinestraw unable to go on. She sent me ahead, saying she was sure she could make it the last 0.4 miles to the spring on her own.
So I went down to the spring only to find the pipe wasn’t flowing. I could hear water running through a metal culvert under the trail, so I followed the pipe up into a mess of ferns and made some adjustments allowing water to pool and flow into the pipe. Finally, I could collect some at the end and begin filtering it. Mikella arrived just as I was getting the filtration started. She said she was very happy to see me. She soaked her bandana in the spring water and used it to cool off, then reclined next to the spring box.
After some water and forcing her to eat something with simple carbs to get her going again, she seemed mostly recovered from the dehydration and somewhat regretful of refusing my offer of water earlier. She said she was fine to go the last mile to the road if I would take the keys and some cash and go ahead to buy a cold soda and pick her up at the trailhead.
It didn’t take too long to get to the road, and I started walking east along it. I was accosted from across the road by a lady who made me come over and tell my story. Apparently she was the new operator of the Wildwood Tavern and was planning to reopen it at the end of the month. I told her I was off to get the truck to pick up my sister, but still it took her getting an important call before she would let me go.
So I got to the truck, took it to the store, bought a ton of drinks at the store, picked Mikella up. She had only been waiting five minutes or so. She drove us to get gas and then to pay the lady who had rented her a parking spot the previous day. Then we decided to drive east toward bigger towns and better food.
As soon as we left the Klamath River Valley, we had cell service again, and I found a nice Italian restaurant in Yreka since we had our hearts set on a cold fresh salad after the heat of the day. Once we found it and put on less smelly shirts to go inside, we got a table and a tall glass each of ice water, which turned out to be better than any of the drinks we were imagining.
We added to that an iced tea each and an order each of the bottomless Minestrone soup, salad, and bread. It was all very good (after a bit of salt and pepper). I finished mine off with a perfect tiramisu.
The whole time we had planned that Mikella would take me back to Seiad Valley that night, drop me off, and then go… somewhere. That was a considerable part of the discussion before and during dinner. She had a campsite paid for in Crater Lake, but couldn’t reach it before 1:30am, and I was worried that would mean drowsy driving. The hotels in Medford weren’t much closer and were strangely expensive. I suggested she just car camp in Seiad Valley where she dropped me off. Eventually, we decided to share a much cheaper hotel room in Yreka, which would mean we could go to bed at a reasonable hour, put me back on the trail at about the time I would hike out if I did camp in Seiad Valley, and put her in Crater Lake somewhat later, which was fine since she had lost interest in hiking after the day’s events.
So we swung by the grocery store and Dollar General to get me enough resupply to get to Etna, and then to the Best Western for cold showers (the place was booked solid for a convention and the other guests had used all the hot water) and a night’s sleep, if not necessarily a full one, sharing a king bed. The plan was to get out bright and early the next morning with maybe a bit of the hotel breakfast in our bellies.
Trail miles: 10
(The Mikella version continues:)
The next morning, we woke up, packed, and were out by 7:40am. David had a breakfast shake. I couldn’t get myself interested in food. After 30 minutes of hiking, I felt more interested and stopped for a granola bar that wasn’t fulfilling to me. Shortly thereafter, I told David I’d need more water soon (I was an idiot and didn’t fill up that morning) and he told me that there was a spring 0.2 miles away. We hiked on. We got up to the ridgeline and I stopped for a break, but David didn’t need one so I told him to go ahead to the spring and I’d catch up soon. Well, I happened to send him ahead at the exact place a trail split. He began his descent and I hiked up towards a lookout spot. David had told me that the PCT is mostly well marked and easy terrain. The area I was on seemed treacherous to me. It was right on the edge of a steep decline with a lot of rubble. But it also sort of looked right…
It was not right.
I got all the way up, peed, panicked a little, saw a snake, and panicked a little more. I had no water, I couldn’t find David, and I was totally off the trail. I yelled his name with no reply. I decided to retrace my steps back to the last place we’d been together. As I came down, I noticed the trail splitting and decided to go the other way. I kept calling David’s name as I went and finally got a reply about 15 min later. He was sitting in a little clearing just totally chilling. He also informed me that the spring was not there. By this point, it was noon and he pointed to a larger clearing below us where we’d have lunch. I told him I needed a quick rest, but would meet him down there. He went ahead. The area we were hiking through at this point had shoulder height (on me) brush and it made the footwork slightly tricky since you couldn’t see your feet at all. It was not my favorite.
We got down to the clearing, ate lunch, had another blackberry cider, and rested for a minute. We also stretched some against a tree. From there forward, it was all downhill. Which may sound like a pleasant reprieve from the uphill of the night before but it was sort of worse. David and I realized that my shoes probably are not the right size which was affecting my foot comfort. I realized that I have absolutely no calf strength which is important for downhills. Also, the sun was now high in the sky and the further you go down into the valley, the hotter it gets. By 1pm, I was starting to get cranky. David had given me some water from his bag after lunch and I was sucking it down pretty fast. I ran out and I was still pretty far from the next water source. David told me to let him know if I needed to drink out of his but I was feeling weird like not really interested in food or water but sorta gross. As it turns out, feeling gross is pretty much the definition of dehydration. My stomach felt a little queasy and I had probably only eaten about 500 calories across the whole day. Yet, I just couldn’t even consider food or water. It was affecting my mood and my hiking ability as well. We were close to a water source and I told David I was resting but to go ahead. He went down, repaired a pipe that was supposed to be a water source, collected water, and started filtering all before I got down. When I arrived the water was close to ready and I wet my bandanna, cooled myself off in the cold water, and relaxed under a tree. I told David how I was feeling and he was like “yep, that’s dehydration! Have you at least eaten?” Well, of course not! He instructed me to eat something while I waited on my water. I pulled out beef jerky and he told me that I probably needed something with sugar/carbs and gave me some Starburst.
I instantly felt better.
We had about another mile to get out of the woods. David hiked ahead so that he could keep going straight to pick up the car and bring it back to the trailhead. It took me about 45 minutes to finish up. In total, the second day of hiking was about 9 miles and it took me about 9 hours. Normal people hike at least twice that speed. Oops. David told me repeatedly that the way to be fast on a downhill is to “be more reckless” but I watched him walk recklessly downhill and I know for a fact I would have fallen a bunch more times. I had already fallen twice on this journey while hiking carefully. I couldn’t risk more!
Over the course of the two days, I learned some stuff. For one, David knows a lot of songs! Like at least four by heart and one is in French. I learned that David’s pack is normally under 50lbs but may have gotten over 60lb at some points when he did the AT. I learned that the PCT is the easiest terrain out of the three “triple crown” trails (sometimes called the “piece of cake”), but that the AT has the most support for hikers. I learned that the CDT has both the hardest terrain and the least support. I learned that you can trade Darn Tough socks in for free for another pair. I learned that if you don’t want to eat you should just force it.
Anyways, the hike was done.
David had gone to get the car, picked us up some sodas, and came back to scoop me up at the trailhead. I was fully lounging against my backpack. We left Seiad Valley having completed 14 total miles over the course of ooohhh a million hours. Sorry for the slow down, David! We went to the nearest neighboring city called Yreka. I had told David that after the hike I’d take him wherever he needed to go for a resupply and that we would do dinner. I had planned to get out of Seiad Valley by early afternoon and thought I’d be able to head back up into Oregon to camp near Crater Lake, but when we didn’t get out of the woods til 5, I began to revise my plan. I looked at a couple of different options but ultimately figured I might just take David back to the trailhead then go back and stay in Yreka. I figured I’d mull it over during dinner.
While I drove, David googled various restaurants and read them out to me. I had already told him I wanted a salad after a hot, hot day so when he found a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place, we knew it was perfect. We were worried we looked to disgusting for an Italian restaurant, but we walked in to see a super casual crowd and knew we were fine. We feasted on salad, bread, minestrone soup, and cold iced tea split with lemonade. David had tiramisu and we discussed my plans for the night. David did not think it was a good idea at all to try to get to Crater Lake and we discussed the staying in Yreka thing. When I mentioned it, he was like “well, I can just stay too and then you can take me back to the trail in the morning instead of tonight”. NICE! I was excited because after filling my belly, the sleepiness had quickly come. I wanted a shower and to get horizontal. I made an online hotel reservation and secured the plan. We still had to grab some of David’s resupply so we went to a nearby shopping center then made it into the hotel room around 9pm just in time for showers and bed.
