Start point
Tentsite at mile 1425.8
End point
Kosk Spring, mile 1441.5
Miles hiked
15.7
Wilderness area
Shasta National Forest
People I met
Kevin and AP
The day on trail
Some days are just easy and cruisy. The group is only doing 15 miles and change, so I can kind of just veg out on the hike and take it easy.
It does feel a little odd hiking with a pack after slackpacking all day yesterday. It’s slower, for sure, and you can feel the extra effort. But it becomes familiar again fast, and the miles started to fall off for me.
Trail legs are kind of a superpower. Just…go.
I found a weird chip on one of my tent pole segments this morning. It’s a little concerning and I’ll email Nemo when I have a chance.
The blaze, uh, additions continues on. Some are wholesome, others are delightfully raunchy.
The blowdowns are massive. This one tree was almost as wide as I am tall.
How do you get over them? Sometimes you go around, sometimes you vault on top of it, sometimes it’s under. But the choice is get past it or don’t, and I’ve always chosen get past it so far.
There were some mushrooms I liked. I’m excited to be getting close to mushroom territory again. There’s lots of potential morel foraging spots, but I haven’t gotten lucky yet. But I’m always up for a ganyderma sighting.
We had lunch at a water spot and the bees and butterflies were swarming us for salt. There are so many native bees out here it’s so cool.
I always enjoy seeing how signs are salvaged and propped up when their posts fail.
There were these sprouts of something. I’m not sure what they will grow into, but I enjoyed spotting them. They look almost like yellow snow plant, but I really don’t know. I don’t think snow plant either comes in yellow or starts yellow.
And some power lines. The further we go, the less often I see massive power grids. I like it.
Mt Shasta kept popping out.
We all were just enjoying the hike and bumping into each other.
One thing I saw which gave me a lot of hope is new growth on the trees. New growth on pines is lighter green and it means the forest is expanding.
We soon crossed into private property, which I think is owned by a logging company.
There was a tree which used to have a sign in it. The sign is gone but the evidence remains.
After a nice short day, we got to camp and I set up. It was going to be a warm night so I left my rain fly off for better circulation. On these warmer nights I also only use my base sleeping pad, a foam one. The insulated inflatable one that I put on top is so warm I just sweat all night if I use it.
It wasn’t a bad day. Uneventful, pretty, and with great weather.