It was hot, but we saw some stuff

This section can best be described in three words: exposed, hot, and climbing. Castle Crags towered over us in the beginning looking quite cragly but providing little shade, and the trail stretched before us, rugged and climbing. Though incredibly beautiful, our victories on this section amounted to reaching the end of the steep part of the climb, finding shade large enough to pitch our tent in to nap, and cooling off with a swim in a beautiful lake.

Oh yeah, and not getting bit by a rattlesnake. That was an early but important victory considering I put my foot down right next to its head. Turns out humans also give off audible warnings, though they’re about three octaves higher than the snake’s.

But let’s return to this lake for a minute, because it was a really special treat. For most of our hike so far, we ended up at nice swimming holes either too early or too late in the day to truly enjoy them. This time, we arrived at the lake (Porcupine Lake) around noon after a hot morning. We stripped to our skivvies and waded in to the warmest water we’ve yet experienced on the trail… Meaning we got a refreshing 5 min swim before the chill reached our bones. Oh but it was worth the dip! And the next couple hours were spent lounging in the shade, reading and gazing at the crystal waters – truly a beautiful experience.

That evening brought another cool encounter (cool as in neat… it was still hot as hell) – seven deer along the trail all within a mile. It was as if we stumbled into there territory and just missed the sign. One was even lying in the trail and didn’t move until we got within 5-10 feet of it. We thought it was injured. It was not. That’s how hot it was. The deer wouldn’t even leave its shady spot on the trail until we were close enough to hug it. And even then, it seemed to rather lumber off over prancing away. (Unfortunately, we could not have gone around the deer safely as that portion of trail was lined on both sides by boulder fields.)

 We’d decided before leaving this week to cut out early to check on weather. It had looked like storms might be coming, and we were hiking through very exposed terrain with little opportunity to get into trees for protection if need be. The evening before reaching our out, as we set up camp, a woman came hiking along and set up camp near us. She introduced herself as Steady, and we said, “Steady, wife of Subway Steve?!” [of the previous week’s mini pie fame], and sure enough it was! We were lucky to run into Steady, because Subway Steve picked her up the next morning and gave us a ride to both a ranger station to check weather and back to town once we saw the weather was turning bad again. And of course that was only after peppering our pallets with pastries. Yum!

Unfortunately, we did leave the trail for several days to let the weather pass. We’re continuing to check on it, but look for our next post to cover our 4th of July weekend backpacking the coast in Redwood National Park!