Old Station to Castella
DAY 104 (August 14) | First time 30 miles!
To Crystal Lake
31 miles
Hat Rim 20-mile stretch without water. 18 miles done by noon.
Local trail angel showed up at water cache with some homegrown peaches and delicious bacon-cheddar-bread.
First sights of Mount Shasta
Dry but beautiful landscape finally something different than always the same forest
With Sue and Bubble Boy camped at Crystal Lake just 2 milles from Burney Guest Ranch.
DAY 105 (August 15)
Nero day at barney mountain guest ranch
1.5 miles
DAY 106 (August 16) | Burney Falls
To Tentsite Mile 1425
18 miles
Got up early and headed out of the ranch at 5.20 am. Got to a campground close to the falls where I met Bubble Boy and his friends.
Went down to Falls with Fancy Pants. Hanging around at falls during the day with Fancy Pants and Backout was way too hot to walk (99 degrees Fahrenheit). Pickles and Forget-me-not showed up again too.
Headed out again at 5.30 pm with Backout. We had dinner by the creek at 7 p.m. There were some wasps around and I thought I better put my empty tuna pouch into my trash bag. While doing that I suddenly felt a pain in one of my fingers and it turned out that a wasp had just stung me.
We continued walking into the night and reached camp at 22h completely soaked. Still quite warm, guess roughly 28 degrees Celsius.
DAY 107 (August 17) | Hot, Hot, Hot
Meet giggles again. Long lunch break.
DAY 108 (August 18)
To Fitzhugh Gulch (Creek)
25.9 miles
Woke up early and couldn't sleep anymore. Started walking at 5 am.
Met Giggles 5 miles further up the trail having breakfast in her sleeping bag. Camped by a short road but south a garr view of Mount Shasta.
Had breakfast by a creek at around 9.30 and had walked 10 miles by them already. By 2.30 pm I had already walked 20 miles! Will this be another 30-mile day?
Crossed quite a few southbound thru-hikers that had started in Canada. One of them (with a small pack) had started on July 1. He confirmed that Oregon is quite flat with one major ascent to Crater Lake which seems to be very gradual though.
Arrived at 6 pm at a creek and decided to set up camp there. Did 25 miles today which was my objective. This leaves 27 miles to Castella tomorrow.
DAY 109 (August 19)
Castella State Park Campground
27 miles
My alarm was set to 4.30 but I was way too tired and snoozed a bit before packing and finally starting to walk at 6 pm.
Decided to do 3 sets of 9 miles to tackle the 27 miles to Castella which worked quite well. There was some climb during the day and I was a bit short on water as I had overlooked a bigger stretch without a water source but I managed to “stretch” the water I had and the climb was compensated by some great views of Mount Shasta.
When I finally rolled into camp at the State Parc I could not believe my eyes: I saw a face that looked familiar and it was Caveman indeed. What a surprise! Hadn't seen him since Sierra City and he had skipped a few miles in the meantime. I felt fired after dinner but could not end the day without some (free!) hot showers. Amazing feeling after a super hot and sweaty day.