Moments in Dirt and Ink

Klamath National Forest Shasta-Trinity National Forest Six Rivers National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4 Red line for day 4. Click for map. (Day 4 of  6  4.) I woke up with a sore throat, not that it had gotten visibly smokier. I was pretty much decided on not wandering down Devils Backbone Trail when I got there, anyway. A day down and a day back seemed to just get the hard bits while leaving no time to poke around an area that probably has a lot of trails for a reason. There's a few other trailheads to give access to the area, too. I had a little breakfast and packed up to hike all the way out via Red Cap Lake. The morning light flows into the lands below. It takes a while to get out of shadow at Rock Lake. Morning view of Salmon Mountain from Rock Lake. Light was just getting to the iffy camp sites on the west side as I headed down the good trail. Not worried about time, I cleared the trail a bit as I went. There were a couple big things I cou

Shasta-Trinity National Forest Klamath National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4 Dark teal line for day 3. Click for map. (Day 3 of  6  4.) I got a bit more than halfway through breakfast before the dread of anticipation of the day's hike got to me and my stomach threatened to bring it all up. Just five more miles, I told myself, and there's a former fire lookout peak to bag. I pushed back any thoughts of bruising and scrapes the overgrown trail might produce. I tried to push back the thought that everything I pushed forward through would have to be faced twice. Just five miles and a peak barely off trail and a second with over 1000 feet of prominence if I'm up for it, then camp in the meadows where there are springs. That's all of the plan for the day. Just five short, brush pushing miles. I tried to push the dread back again, but "back" is where the automatic functions hang out and my stomach wasn't having any of it. I sealed up bre

Six Rivers National Forest Shasta-Trinity National Forest Klamath National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4 Orange line for day 2. Click for map. (Day 2 of  6  4.) I got packed and moving, climbing back up the vanishing trail to the old bulldozer line marked on the Forest Service topo map as a high route to Salmon Summit. The pair of trees just past where I had turned up for the peak were a bit of a climb to cross, but they were not repeated. It was nice trail through the switchback and down to a manzanita choked fire scar where it became hard. From there, the map shows a junction with the trail dropping down sharply or turning back to regain the ridge again. I turned back and found it even harder to travel through the brush. Once under the trees again, I still found none of the trail. I found only game trails doing approximately as the map suggested, gaining the ridge and dropping along it. While not always easy hiking, it was nice, especially on the ridge.

Six Rivers National Forest Klamath National Forest DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4 Pink line for day 1. Click for map. (Day 1 of  6  4.) I decided it was time to get out to the Humboldt County high point! The weather machine at NOAA said there would be a cooler week coming although the boffins there also have a chart indicating the highest temperature of the year is likely to happen the last week of the month of July . There's a trail short enough to day hike, but I wanted to have a big trip. The first big plan got discarded because it was way too hot for the lower elevation (~2000 feet) parts. A second plan would stay high along the ridges and do a loop through what was the big population center of what is now designated Wilderness and was Primitive Area before that. (The plan can be found here to import into Caltopo or Google Earth or similar.) As near as I could tell after researching my route, it wouldn't get far because "the trail is impassible eas