Day 47: Castle Crags Wilderness

I actually woke before the 5am alarm. The birds were already raising a ruckus well before sunrise. I tried to go back to sleep, but then the alarm was going off. I opened my eyes, turned on my phone, and finished the previous night’s blog post. Then I got out my needle and thread and sewed up a gash in my sleeping bag I’d pulled open the night before trying to free the zipper (poor design, Kelty!) before the down could all spill out.

I was packed enough to leave the tent shortly after the 6am alarm and I finally got a good look at the lake I had camped above just as the sun was touching the top of the opposite ridge. It was somewhat anticlimactic actually. I’ve seen more picturesque lakes. Upper Deadfall Lake reminds me most of Blue Lake up in WA: big, open, unscenic, utterly enveloped by people in tents. (On my way out later, I went out of my way to walk up to it from a different side, and it was even less interesting from that angle. Not even worth a picture.)

The couple from the night before was still asleep in their tent on the other side of the campsite. The man was loudly snoring away. So I packed up as quietly as I could. I also had to pointedly avert my eyes from the girl who was digging a cat hole in a spot in clear view from my campsite. She saw that I saw her, comprehended the situation, and looked away, so I tried to keep a tree trunk between us until I thought she must be done. I’m sure she was desperate or she would have gone further up the hill away from the lake and all the other campers.

Anyway, I was back down the hill to the trail by 7, and I got to do the first few miles in the shade of a ridge. When I was about to go through the pass to the other side of the ridge, I stopped to put on sunscreen. (I also downloaded some more music and a podcast to hike to because there was good cell service at the pass.)

And after that, it was all sun all day. The sections with lots of trees were short and far between. There were a lot of sections with a few sparse trees casting short, single shadows, but lots of sun in between. And it was also a hotter day in general than the previous two.

I took my first break a quarter mile uphill from the trail at Porcupine Lake. This one was a lot more scenic and smaller, but it was still popular. The last guests had left a ton of trash, packages full of uneaten food. I packed out what I could in my own trash. I also collected water from the lake, and had my usual morning snack and vitamin drink.

My next stop was at around noon. I had passed up stopping at White Ridge Spring because I had plenty of water and there were already people gathered there, but this meant I had to stop at the road crossing where lay the trail to Picayune Spring. I had my break first to energize for the climb down to and back up from the spring. It was a great little spring, but the trail was 370 steep yards down and up.

After I got back to where I had left my pack in a little roadside campsite with some shade and started filtering water, I felt a headache coming on. I don’t know if it was the heat, the lack of sleep (darn birds), or just sitting too long after I had been walking hard because I basically don’t get headaches. But I figured I had a cure. I took a naproxen and a Stacker 2 B-12 supplement I had acquired for just such a circumstance. No headache could possibly stand up to the one-two punch of Aleve and 150mg of caffeine. That’s like two times more potent than Midol, right? And it did, in fact, work. The headache was pretty much gone within the next mile of walking.

Since I had taken such a long stop at the spring, it was lunch time a little more than an hour later. I usually hike more than an hour at a stretch, but lunch is one of those things you just don’t want to put off for two long. There was a rock in the shade and I just knew it was time.

A lady passed me just before I was ready to start packing up to walk again, and I used that lunch energy to catch up to her within a few minutes of starting hiking again. She was looking for Helen Lake. I told her the side trail to it was still ahead and then I beat her to it by many minutes.

Here I was climbing in the sun, but I had turned on a podcast upon leaving lunch and could basically turn that distraction into an ability to climb the long uphill section I was on without noticing the heat or the exertion.

I took my afternoon snack break at the top of the climb, the highest spot I would reach that day and the next day too. I was pooped, temporarily, even though it hadn’t really been that steep. I also noticed there was cell service at this point too, and wasted a few more minutes here just trying to download one more podcast that just wouldn’t come fast enough. I gave up and kept walking down into the Castle Crags Wilderness.

Soon I found myself on a cleared promontory overlooking the entire valley between me and Castle Crags. I saw Mount Shasta behind them, lurking stealthily under a dark raincloud. You might not think a 14000 foot peak that towers over the landscape visible more than 100 miles in every direction can hide, but it really was doing an admirable job of blending in with the dark sky.

It sure looked like that cloud was headed my way. Just a little way beyond this, I met Presto heading north. We were both eager to continue north, and we shared what details we knew about the trail ahead (and the town of Etna in my case). The cloud did come up, especially in relation to how it wasn’t supposed to rain that day. Then we both hurried. I passed two more thru hikers who had just left Dunsmuir that afternoon but did not get their names.

Then it was 7 and time for supper. I dropped down into the next tentsite I passed. It had a nice sitting rock to cook from. Another hiker passed and asked if I thought it would rain. I said I thought it was about to start raining, but it would only rain a few minutes and blow away.

It did start raining pretty good while I was waiting on my food to cook. I got my coat on and covered my pack, but then I started doubting my prediction. I could see no end to the cloudbank. What if there was another storm coming in right behind this one? I knew that I didn’t really need to go any farther that day, so I just decided to go on and pitch my tent. It was a really cute tentsite after all, and I had plenty of water to hand.

I was in my tent before 8 that evening, the earliest, I think, I’ve encamped this year to date. I did all my set up from inside because it was still sprinkling out. I even cooked my after dinner drink from within.

My prediction turned out right, of course. It didn’t rain hard again after dinner. It even stopped sprinkling by 8:30. I could very well have hiked on after dinner. But why bother? I could get a nice full night’s sleep for once.

Trail miles: 20.6

Distance to I-5: 15.1 miles

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