Start point
Etna Summit Trailhead, mile 1600.8
End point
Summit Lake Junction, mile 1619.6
Miles hiked
18.8
Wilderness area
Klamath National Forest
Marble Mountain Wilderness
The day on trail
It’s so nice to be on trail again. I get so antsy the latter half of a zero day. I’m just ready to move.
We started by going to the coffee shop early. Coffee and pastries are great, and this shop was exemplary. Plus I have some weird coffee shop luck with finding rides.
Sure enough, there was a trail angel who was supposed to pick someone up, but they changed their plans last minute. We had a ride to trail! We bought her a pastry and chai to say thanks and headed out.
Etna drivers are odd ones. She gave us her whole traumatic life story. Yikes. It was a 25 minute trauma dump. Instead of offering to help her with gas, we should’ve billed for therapy we weren’t qualified to provide.
Hell, we’re back on trail though!
And there were some really cool feathers.
There was a burn zone, likely not started to try and get our prior hitches out of their house.
I came across this lily and was delighted. I haven’t seen lilies out here!
And I could see the trail stretch onward around the mountain.
But there were some blowdowns. One stretched along an entire section of trail, the other gave a snaggy path to navigate through. Another was a jungle gym of obstacles.
I found this lizard.
This next section of trail was really cool. The valleys, stonework, water, and trail construction felt a lot like the Wonderland Trail. I took a bit of extra time to sit and think here. It was quieting for my head.
It’s interesting how there’s so much noise in my head despite all the quiet, time to think, and energy being burned by walking. The thoughts just don’t stop. Sometimes they’re of my past with family trauma. Sometimes they’re thoughts of work, either things I do for work or ideas of things I might want to do. Sometimes they’re bizarre art projects I’d love to do. Sometimes they’re just random running thoughts.
There can be so much noise in the quiet.
It was time to move on from this pseudo-Wonderland. Miles aren’t going to hike themselves.
I found succulents, both blooming and not.
I found a wolf spider looking around.
I found lakes and flowers.
There were a couple final views before we got to the junction where we were setting up camp.
And one really encouraging log.
What a day. It’s so good to be back on trail.