Mile 1347.8 to 1370.0 (22.2)
up/down: 1800/2850 feet
I so anticipated walking through Lassen National Park, but the reality was a disappointment. After the fun boiling lake yesterday afternoon and the awesome evening at the Drakesbad Ranch, today was a bust. The trail wandered through some pretty boring forest before passing a couple equally boring lakes. Then we entered a mega burn from 2012 that still looks like scorched earth. The highlight was a lunch stop at the little Soap Lake that was hopping with birds including Spotted Sandpiper and Vaux's Swift. The flowers in the burn were pretty nice. I know there are more spectacular places to see in this park and we will definitely be back to explore. It's a shame the PCT goes through such an uninteresting part of the park.
Tomorrow we tackle another challenge of the trail - the 29 mile dry Hat Creek Rim. We are staged this evening just outside the town of Old Station and will get going early for the Subway Cave parking area 5 miles from here where we can fill our bottles. From there we will walk the rim to Forest Road 22 where there may be a cache of water. That will be a little over 20 miles into our day. If the cache is there we're good, if not we press on to a cow watering pond some three miles further on (and off trail). Let's hope this all works out!
True enough!
ReplyDelete