Chocolate at the creek...

Here's Tom enjoying his favourite chocolatey treat as we relaxed for lunch at a great cold creek.

Billowing forest fires.

After the previous thunderstorms, the lighting had left it's mark!

The past few days...

After leaving our campsite in Burney Falls SP, we had an easy morning, winding through the pines along wide flat trails. As I mentioned at the time, the smells were great as we hiked through!
The latter part of the morning through into the afternoon was a bit more of a challenge as we crossed Britten Dam and made a good climb up through another very dense pine forest. We stopped for lunch at a nice cold creek before more climbing took us up and out of the pines and onto a bush covered ridge from where we could see for about 40 miles.

The previous nights thunder & lightning had left it's mark, not just with the dampness from the rain, but also with a small forest fire that was sending dense white smoke into the sky. Luckily, it was about 20 miles away & downwind of us, so we pushed on unworried.

The next day however, we could smell smoke a lot closer, & whilst taking a break, saw 2 fire-trucks grinding their gears as they bounced up a rutted logging road nearby. Shortly after, as we were hiking along our trail, 2 firemen in heavy yellow firesuits came towards us from further up the hill. It turned out there'd been another small fire down the side of the hill from us, but it was all out & they were just checking around whilst their colleagues finished some clearing.
It had been a few miles away again, but it was closer. Good to know the fireies were all over it though & were fast to respond. They said the green trees and lack of dry dead wood made it pretty unlikely for it to be hard to handle, & we were fine to hike on & shouldn't be concerned.

Stopping at a rocky outcrop, we had our first good, un-hazy look at Mt Shasta, rising alone and impressive out if the pine covered hills right before us... So multiple pix were taken both on my camera as well as Toms, & on this iPhone!

As we made our way up and around Grizzly Peak, the biggest fire yet was billowing white smoke high into the sky ( pic above this post). We were again glad it was a long way away from us.
Walking further along, we could see the trail was being maintained by a volunteer crew, their tools stacked up here & there along the trail. We walked along enjoying the nice newly-made trail & it wasn't long before we dropped down the other side of the hill & came across all the crew in camp. They were as pleased to see us, as we were them! Over a cold soda & some cookies, we told a few yarns before thanking them kindly, & full of sugar, trucking on down the hill looking for Butcher Knife Creek, & our camp for the night.

Things didn't go quite as planned, mostly due to the (this time) innacurate & vague info in Toms data book. We managed to get water at a small spring, but the main big creek was a few hundred feet off trail, straight down a steep bank. After some GPS consulting followed by some bush-whacking, I found us the only likely area we might fit our tents on. We managed to do so, but they were not the most level, so both of is had a slipping, sliding, somewhat restless nights sleep.

After breaking camp today, we had a pretty good day of it, as posted earlier. The views of Shasta were great again, & after a great lunch a a crisp cold creek, ( Tom & his M&M's pictured in another post above) we soldiered on for another pretty big day of 28 odd miles. Camp was looking to be another unlevel bushwhack, so I had a good look along the trail on the GPS & found what I hoped was a good spot another mile along... & it was perfect. 2 spots, already leveled amongst the pines, right on the trail. So this is where I am now, laying in my tent after a hearty dinner of noodles, cheese & tuna, tapping away on my iPhone.
Time to save this I think, upload it, as I seem to have a good signal ( yee- har!) then upload the other pix for y'all.
Cheers!
RWK.
Out.

Panoramic views of Mt Shasta.

We have made some good miles today, so as we should be in camp plenty early, we decided to stop here on the ridge & just sit & enjoy the view of Mt Shasta. Using the great stitching app in my iPhone, I can recreate the experience for you too... Well, kinda!
Hope you like.
Cheers.
RWK.
Viewing.

Another '14-er'

We got our first really good look at another '14-er' today... Mount Shasta. Pretty impressive as it is by far the largest thing around for miles!

Burney Falls State Park.

GeoTagged, [N40.98204, E121.61793]

What a difference a day makes...
Yesterday, we were getting royally toasted as we dropped down through the volcanic scrub of Lassen State Forest along the Hat Creek Rim Trail... But today, after a spectacular lightning & thunder storm last night, the air is cool and crisp, the forest is quiet, and the smells are amazing. Waves of olefactory nostalgia are washing over me as I try to recollect the memories of when and where I have experinced the smells before... It's awesome! Plus, the trail is wide and smooth, and as opposed to yesterdays dry upper 90's heat, the trekking is easy in this cool 60 F we have now.
We just stopped for second breakfast, and are overlooking a huge lake... In another 3 miles we will hit the falls of the park where maybe we'll have 3rd breakfast!
RWK
Smellin'!

I can almost smell the bacon...

Well, at around 1400 hrs today, we officially crossed the half-way point on the trail! 1325 miles done, 1325 to go.
Going by the data books Tom has, we knew we were roughly going to cross the half-way point sometime in the afternoon, but it was pretty sweet to find a proper marker.

As we have passed various milestones along the way, we have seen some clever ways of indicating the miles: 400 & 500 were both written in pine cones, 900 was big sticks and 1000 nicely done in large stones. My favourite though, was 600. The '6' was made up of a few sticks, but the two '0's were two big fat round dry cow-pats! Classic!!
So now, at roughy 1335 miles done, we are stopped for the night, ensconsed in our tents to avoid the bugs, & waiting to see if the rumbling overhead actually yeilds any rain tonight. We did get a bit of a downpour earlier as we stopped for lunch (lousy timing!), but since then it has been dry. Cooler too, which made the afternoons hike a bit easier.
Ok, time to upload then sleep!
Half-way! Yer-har!!
Cheers.
RWK.
Out.