PCT: California Section R minus 7 Miles- Ashland to Seiad Valley

 Once agian, we are hiking this section Southbound.  This section actually begins or ends at Callahan's and we started a bit higher on Mount Ashland and will tuck on the remaining 7 miles to next year's Oregon hike. 

Ashland Ski Road to Somewhere:

Our afternoon:

We finished section P: Etna Summit to Castella and Interstate 5.  After  a 26 hour rest at the lovely Dunsmuir Lodge we are back on the trail near Ashland, Oregon heading south back to our vehicle at Etna Summit.   

If we accomplish this section we will have finished all 1692 miles of the PCT in California.   It’s been ten years, so far, that we’ve had this intimate relationship with this ribbon of trail and we love it.   Sometimes, I think a thru hike of this trail would be a super cool accomplishment , but today, walking through fields of flowers, I was very grateful to have walked it when the trail was at its best.   We’ve had Poppies in Mohave, swimming and fishing along the JMT, Hat Creek in May with cool temps and rock garden flowers, and now this lovely stretch of trail.  We definitely have the posh, easy kind of hike.

We also got some trail magic today. 

And made a new acquaintance.  Rainbow is from Bolivia and gave us lots of helpful information.  She’s another solo woman hiker.   They seem like the biggest  demographic we’ve seen this year.  

We also met a group called Field Trip.  They are a 4 teenage boys and one older lady.   We don’t know how they got together, but it looked like a den mother with her scouts.   They are all from New Hampshire and are having the time of their life.  

We are camped on the edge of a Douglas fir forest on an old skid road.  It looks like home to me.

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Somewhere to Somewhere:

Stats:

Big views and a big day of hiking for us.  I felt like crap most of the day with a headache, leg aches and shoulder pain and yet I still loved hiking the trail.   When you love everything changes.  

The young Japanese man came toward us on the trail and he bowed ( deeply) and said excitedly in broken English, “I saw brown bear,” he pointed back down the  trail, “and two baby black bears”.  Then he beamed and said, “I like nature”.   We complemented him on his achievement of hiking California and he bowed deeply again and thanked us.   

All day long we have brief encounters with others on the trail.   Too many for me to document in detail, but it adds a very human connection while enjoying nature and pushing our bodies a bit to feel more alive.  

This is the adorable Czech couple we met.  Lumber and Jack.  She said in the beginning they both had plaid shirts.   Lol!   Jack also has a really bad case of poison oak on her legs.  

The trail in Oregon was quite soft and smooth and no blowdowns.   Then we made it to the border and it all changed.   

Rocks and blowdowns and a very dying and decaying forest.  The soil type did change, and that’s part of it, but we also need to manage our forests better.  We should be logging our National forests.   This will help clean them up and protect them from fire.  I’m climbing off my soapbox now.  

We saw a fawn and many birds and lots of flowers today.   This one looks like it’s fake. 

These tiny ones are really weird and covered hundreds of acres.  I will have to do some in investigating later to figure out what they are.  

Our destination for the day was mud springs.  When we got to where our app said the springs were and we opened the map on our app, the springs disappeared on the electronic app.   A man walked up to us at this moment and said he needed water, and did we know where some was.   He’s doing some big adventure across the western states and doesn’t have any map app and you could tell he looked down on PCT thru hikers.   He said he used paper maps and a guide book.  We were cool, he said, because we were out doing our own thing.   He shook our hands and said we looked great ( for our age! Lol)  We did find on our map app a different spring, but it was nearly a mile in the wrong direction for us and not on trail, so we decided to continue a few miles on to a stream, while Travis the adventurer hiked off to the spring without his own map app, but pleased to have used ours.  

 Hawkeye wins again though, by noticing a very well used cow trail that led to water.   It wasn’t even on our map, but he found it with his keen observation skills and we did not have to hike two more miles in the twilight.  

We found a camping spot, just below a ridge and are enjoying watching the clouds float by and a few late hikers.  We haven’t been using the map app’s listed camp sites very often because they are crowded with all the thru hikers.  I don’t think we’ve ever section hiked against the flow of northbound hikers before. 

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Somewhere to Seiad Valley and then to Grider Creek Campground:  

section R formally ends in Seiad Valley

Stats:

We hiked more miles than usual, but with all the descent it wasn’t too hard. 

We left our ridge line camp and continued along a ridge with big views off both sides.    It was quite lovely.  Soon, we entered another burn scar, but all the multitude of flowers made up for the destruction.    Even having to go over more blow downs didn’t lessen my joy because of all the flowers.   Here’s a new one for me. It looked like little pink crowns.  

This sleeping giant was adorned with flowers too.

We met APB (anal pavement beater) running up the trail.   He was an angel of optimism and we were blessed by our conversation.  He hasn’t missed a day of running since some specific day ( I forgot) in 1983.   He’s run 68 marathons and has two more scheduled for this year. Todays run was a 19 miler.  

Many of the hikers we met going northbound suggested we take a forest road down to Seiad Valley, as they said the trail was overgrown and full of more blow downs.  We went for it and enjoyed it.   There was even a little waterfall called Pony Tail Falls to splash in.  We met a hiker at the waterfall, named Pancake and learned all about the group we saw a few days ago called Field Trip.  Pancake had hiked with the group for one thousand miles and then he got sick and they continued on.  You could tell he missed them a lot. 

As for the group called Field Trip- it’s a family!  (The mother looked too young to have birthed those strapping lads). They hiked the AT last year and enjoyed it, so came out west to do the PCT this year.    The CDT is on their radar for next year.  Dad stays home and works, while mom and the boys hike.  Her trail name is Ms. Frizzle and the youngest boy is 12, weighs 80 lbs. and carries a 20 lb. pack; one fourth his body weight!   His name is Hermes.  His older brother is called Unbreakable,  because he hiked 700 miles on the AT with a hairline fractured femur.   They are quite the hiking family and you can find them on YouTube by typing in Fieldtrip and PCT.  

The 11 mile road walk we took was pleasant, but a bit boring.  Although, did you know Coors grows on trees?  

It was full.  

We also saw a bear, deer and. turkeys on our road walk.  The wild animals apparently like roads better than blowdowns and burn scar too.   Lol!

We ate lunch and bought a bit more food at the Seiad Valley store ( longest running business along the PCT at 40 years going).  We chatted with hikers while waiting for the temperature to cool.   It was a very warm day.  One hiker named CornDog says he likes thru hiking to see what his body is capable of doing.  He’s also a wild land  fire fighter.   Another young fellow said he’s doing this hike because he’s had a lot of failures and wants a success.   He also said he hasn’t slept in a bed since he’s started the hike because he’s low on money.  Boy, that in itself, is quite the accomplishment! 

In the evening, we hiked the six plus road miles, that is the trail here, to Grider Creek Campground.  The campground was full of thru hikers.  Tents were everywhere.  We found a flat spot near the creek and who should walk into camp-  KZed from Australia that we had met last week by Castle Crags.   Lovely chat and we exchanged digits, as he and his wife will be traveling around the US after he finishes his thru hike and they might be in our neck of the woods.