From 3.5 miles on the Breitenbush Trail to Road 46
The Breitenbush trail resembled a stream bed more than a trail, but we saw a surprising amount of people going up the trail for a Thursday. Two hikers out for a long weekend told us we were just over two miles from the parking area which thrilled me. It's really a really odd feeling to not know how long a trail is, or where we are on the trail, or when we will rejoin the PCT.
A few of our questions were answered at the parking lot by White Jeep (who we had met back near Etna, CA). He had turned the trail head kiosk into a PCT fire detour kiosk. He had printed out Halfmile's detour maps, added notes about how long parts of the detour were, and where we would joined the PCT. I was a little shocked looking at the information to find out we had thirty miles of detour walking ahead of us. A very large chunk of that walking was on a paved road- which we knew. On Halfmile's maps near the end of the detour was the note "Start bushwack here." That's something to worry about tomorrow, I guess.
After the parking lot we could continue on the B trail, or take a gravel road that parallels it. We decided trail, figuring we were in for a lot of road walking already. After two miles of tiny ups, downs, winding, and stream hopping, we decided to take to the gravel road at a crossing. Our speed picked up, and I didn't feel like I was missing anything the trail had to offer.
Where the gravel road met the paved one was B Creek and Halfmile suggested filling up on water there so we both did. On the paved road there was small stream after tiny stream taunting me for having 2.5 liters of water. For a road, the forest along it felt very lush. It was also late enough in the day that we were almost completely walking in shade.
Around 5:45 the road started to climb. I assumed that a road wouldn't ascend for very long, which is pretty irrational considering the roads Portrait and I have hitched on into town. Going into Sisters' was 15 miles of downhill. Thankfully this ascent wasn't anywhere close to that, and I had Portrait reading aloud from his iPhone to entertain me.
I really wanted to get to the top of the climb before stopping for dinner in a pull off of side road, but there didn't seem to be an end to the climb. So I told Portrait I was going to take the next pull off for dinner and that ended up being five minutes later.
As we were finishing our meal a woman in a car stopped to tell us
there would be a hiker shuttle in the morning-we told her thanks, but we
planned on walking it. Not long after her a Sheriff's pick-up truck
with 6 or so hikers in the bed flew pass. They waved but didn't stop.
Then the tow-truck right behind the Sheriff's truck stopped and asked if
we were hobos, we told him PCT hikers, which seemed to mean nothing to
him. After that we decided it was time to get walking again.
Portrait started reading again and the road finally topped out and I
ate a Snickers bar on the mostly flat section then brushed my teeth as
we walked. It slowly got dark and the half-full moon shined on our
backs. Traffic lessened. I tried not to worry about where I would sleep,
and didn't worry much, mainly because Portrait was confident that we
wouldn't have any problems finding a camping place.
We passed roads on the right hand side that were closed because of the fire. We though off of one of those roads would make a good place to camp-quieter than the main road. We checked our maps and figured we were about a mile from a closed road and made that our tentative end point for the night.
We either weren't where we had thought we were or missed the road while story time was going on, but we didn't see it. We were both starting to yawn so we cut into the woods. They weren't as flat as they looked from the road, but thirty feet back from the road we found a place that would work. Dinner was eaten so at 9:30 we were able to just call it a night and climb into our bags.
The Breitenbush trail resembled a stream bed more than a trail, but we saw a surprising amount of people going up the trail for a Thursday. Two hikers out for a long weekend told us we were just over two miles from the parking area which thrilled me. It's really a really odd feeling to not know how long a trail is, or where we are on the trail, or when we will rejoin the PCT.
A few of our questions were answered at the parking lot by White Jeep (who we had met back near Etna, CA). He had turned the trail head kiosk into a PCT fire detour kiosk. He had printed out Halfmile's detour maps, added notes about how long parts of the detour were, and where we would joined the PCT. I was a little shocked looking at the information to find out we had thirty miles of detour walking ahead of us. A very large chunk of that walking was on a paved road- which we knew. On Halfmile's maps near the end of the detour was the note "Start bushwack here." That's something to worry about tomorrow, I guess.
After the parking lot we could continue on the B trail, or take a gravel road that parallels it. We decided trail, figuring we were in for a lot of road walking already. After two miles of tiny ups, downs, winding, and stream hopping, we decided to take to the gravel road at a crossing. Our speed picked up, and I didn't feel like I was missing anything the trail had to offer.
Where the gravel road met the paved one was B Creek and Halfmile suggested filling up on water there so we both did. On the paved road there was small stream after tiny stream taunting me for having 2.5 liters of water. For a road, the forest along it felt very lush. It was also late enough in the day that we were almost completely walking in shade.
Around 5:45 the road started to climb. I assumed that a road wouldn't ascend for very long, which is pretty irrational considering the roads Portrait and I have hitched on into town. Going into Sisters' was 15 miles of downhill. Thankfully this ascent wasn't anywhere close to that, and I had Portrait reading aloud from his iPhone to entertain me.
I really wanted to get to the top of the climb before stopping for dinner in a pull off of side road, but there didn't seem to be an end to the climb. So I told Portrait I was going to take the next pull off for dinner and that ended up being five minutes later.
 |
| Dinner, with nearly endless road walking ahead |
Portrait started reading again and the road finally topped out and I
ate a Snickers bar on the mostly flat section then brushed my teeth as
we walked. It slowly got dark and the half-full moon shined on our
backs. Traffic lessened. I tried not to worry about where I would sleep,
and didn't worry much, mainly because Portrait was confident that we
wouldn't have any problems finding a camping place.We passed roads on the right hand side that were closed because of the fire. We though off of one of those roads would make a good place to camp-quieter than the main road. We checked our maps and figured we were about a mile from a closed road and made that our tentative end point for the night.
We either weren't where we had thought we were or missed the road while story time was going on, but we didn't see it. We were both starting to yawn so we cut into the woods. They weren't as flat as they looked from the road, but thirty feet back from the road we found a place that would work. Dinner was eaten so at 9:30 we were able to just call it a night and climb into our bags.
No comments:
Post a Comment