Monday, June 28, 2010

1000 Miles Baby!

Day 76-June 28th
Destination: Swan Lake
Miles: 17
Cumulative Miles: 1002 Miles

After the Heitman's spoiled a small collective of hikers to cheeseburgers last night, they continued their gracious offerings by making biscuits and gravy for breakfast. It's amazing the energy the 72 year old lady has for hikers. Her and her husband are Grade-A trail angels.

After breakfast they returned us to the trail for our continued trek. They even sent us off with left over biscuits which were enjoyed later in our day. We began our hike with a gradual easy climb skirting Hat Creek, which is swollen above high levels due to the snow melt off Mount Lassen. Georgi "Firefly" Heitman said she has never seen the creek running so high.

The heat was not too bad, but we were thankful for it. The heat wave passing through this area is doing a great job at melting the abnormal snow quantities. The most recent report said that we would be snow navigating the last three miles of our day, and while there was snow, the trail was easy to find. Overall, today's hike was the easiest we have had in a month.

We hiked with "Old Scout," a middle aged man (and scoutmaster), and "Wyoming," a quiet lady our age. Both made similar jumps as us, and are the only other thru-hikers we have met thus far (outside of "Colter"). Taking lunch with them, and generally hiking the latter part of the day in their company brought back a bit of the trail culture we have been missing since the jump.

Tonight we are camping with them at Swan Lake, just past the 1000 mile mark for us. The frogs and birds at the lake are engaged in a rather heated debate about who's the appropriate resident of Swan Lake. It should be a fantastic night of "soundfull" sleep.

--side note--

Today we walked past a series of 15 foot wide clear cut strips of land...stretching straight as far as the eye could see, all spaced evenly apart... One every hundred feet or so... About 10 of them, all total. Kinda curious what they were.

Any ideas?


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

2 comments:

  1. Uhmmm yummy biscuits. Again the trail angels have spread their wings and given you food, shelter and respite.

    As for the clear cut strips...I can't imagine why.It definitely sounds odd.

    Hope all is going along well with you and that your snow challenges are melting away.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ps...like the pic...are you going native? :)

    ReplyDelete