Day 126 (23 August) - Mile 1597.25 - 1615.98

Paved Sawyers Bar Road [Etna Summit] (Stayed in Etna) to Campsite at mile 1615.98

My last morning waking up in a hotel room for a while. We actually got to sleep in till 6:30 AM which seems like a small thing, but it was awesome. We left the hotel around 7:15 AM and headed to the supermarket to buy some food for the next few weeks. We then headed to the trail and was ready to hike just before 9:00 AM.

Ready to hike

Today's good news is Brad is back on trail today. We have 2.5 days of hiking to get to Seiad Valley where Tim is going to meet us for a resupply.

As soon as we got on the trail we noticed smoke in the air. It made for a pretty cool picture:

Smoky skies

Just under three miles from the road we hit PCT mile 1,600. How incredible that I have hiked 1,600 miles!

Proof I'm standing at PCT mile 1,600

Mile 1,600 pose

After hiking over 5 miles we were ready for a "shoes-off" break, but there was no place to sit, so we decided to just sit right on the trail.

Breaking right on the PCT

Check out the incredible scenery we had just before lunch:

Pre-lunch climb

We stopped for lunch next to a meadow that had about 8 cows grazing in it. It was kind of cool hearing the cowbells while we ate. When we were packing up to leave a woman came by. She was a biologist for the forest service. She was out there examining the local reptiles to see if they are affected by the grazing cows...interesting.

The after lunch view wasn't too shabby either.

Wow!

Today's hike was pretty challenging. We had to climb 4,252 feet and go down 3,647 feet. What made it even harder was the terrain was very rocky making it difficult to hike. However, the scenery made it all OK:

Beautiful

The incredible PCT

Mountain, lake, and burned tree

Because we started hiking at 9:00 AM, 90 minutes later than we usually start hiking, we were still hiking as the sun was setting. I would have preferred seeing the sunset from our campsite, but then I wouldn't have gotten this great photo:

Sun setting behind burned trees

Finally, just after 8:00 PM, we made it to our planned campsite. There was already 2 guys set up there so we joined them. It turned out to be the guy with the polka dot shoe print that we have been following for a week now. They are brothers from Calgary, Canada doing a three week section of the PCT.  They usually go to sleep at 8:30 PM, but we kept them up talking till about 10:00 PM...cool guys.

Today we hiked 18.73 miles, short of the 22 we were supposed to do based on our schedule. Tomorrow we plan to hike 23 miles so I better get some sleep.

My home for the night