Separate Ways

The five of us woke up way past our designated time, and thus had a late start. Around 0830 we were hiking. Today for me was a dull day, but Jukebox said that she thought it was real pretty. The terrain just didn’t seem to change, and the smoke had found its way into the valleys again.

The terrain was gradual ups and downs mostly. We stopped here and there to fill up at water sources, but didn’t really linger anywhere because we planned on having a long break at a lunch-spot, 17 miles from where we hiked out this morning. It was a late lunch as we arrived at not before 1500 at the national parks campsite. We got comfortable at one of the many pick-nick tables and ate a big lunch. After which I rolled down my tyvek and closed my eyes for a while. Free-wheel and Peach-man have been joking about their tendency to give in to the Town-vortex, because they just love to take breaks and indulge in the many good things that the towns have to offer. We’ve been saying that it’s not the towns, but themselves that are the vortex, because they love to drag other hikers in with them, throwing sweet lines such as: “why don’t you come with us into town? First round is on us”.
The overall mood after lunch was one of tiredness, and it seemed that the others were not really keen on hiking further. Peach-man used the opportunity to suggest to get beers in the nearby town of Callahan, and to not hike any further. His idea gained traction and one by one the others fell prey to his plan. All but me. I packed out enough food to make it just into Mt. Etna and I felt like we had had plenty of chill-out time in Dunsmuir. They tried to convince me to tag along, but it was not happening for me. I’ll admit that I was a little bummed out to say goodbye to them as they hiked towards the road, trying to get a hitch, but I was happy I stuck with my decision to hike on.

I ended up hiking another 11 miles, with an hour of night-hiking until I got to a campsite which puts me 27 miles away from the road to Mt Etna. I will have to get up early tomorrow to improve my chances of getting a hitch before sundown. The sunset through the smokey clouds was beautiful and the hiking in the cooler afternoon had been more enjoyable than this mornings stretch. Booking it a total of 29 miles today however made me pretty tired. Happy to be in my tent now.