Miles today: 19.9

Trail miles sum: 722.1

Trail location: 1397.2

Elevation: 3946

Spinning on the turntable: Sinead O’Connor: I’m not bossy, I’m the boss

This is the view out of my tent as I write this today.

Today we started hiking the Hat Creek Rim area outside Old Station, CA heading north towards Canada.

After the continual up and down of Southern California I (and my knees and ankles) were thrilled at the elevation gain/loss from the first day of hiking in Northern California! Today our objective was to hike about 16 miles, from the left of the screenshot to the far right of the screenshot.

Noelle would hike out with me and then hike back to the van tomorrow while I continued ahead.

I won’t lie, it’s good to be back on the trail! It was impossible to not notice the constant stream of south bound Thru hikers headed for the Sierra. Most went to Ashland Oregon and are now reversing their entry into the snow.

We met one hiker yesterday who started about 150 south of Old Station heading north and it sounded horrific. “I slid 75 feet down a steep 45’ish degree icy embankment and managed to self arrest with my ice axe five feet before a huge cliff.”

Uh, no. Just no. Happy to be heading away from the snow.

The weather today is 75 degrees with a breeze.

The moderate temp, slight breeze, flat trail and rim views made this a great day of hiking. We stopped for a break with a hiker who recently traveled through Vietnam with his family. His experiences filled us with excitement for our own SE Asia trip later this year.

Unfortunately Noelle was feeling ill and bailed out around noon and headed back to the van. I suspect that she caught whatever I had last week.

The water cache this afternoon was a thing of beauty! It’s the first time I’ve seen someone accept donations via Venmo. We’ll certainly throw a few dollars in their direction.

Since Noelle headed back to the van I just kept hiking until 6PM and cranked out a few more miles. Why not?

I tried a new recipe for corn chowder for dinner and it was less than ideal. It ended up taking about 30 minutes of boiling time to rehydrate the corn. Not good. Next time I’ll cold soak the corn for a few hours first and see if that makes a difference.

8:45 and it’s time for this hiker to go to sleep. Nite.