Day 146 – Mile 1196.5 – 1221.7

Sierra City to <unmarked site>

Miles to go: 370.1

Miles hiked: 1221.7 + 1063.4 = 2285.1

Canada: 2655.2

Today I saw my 2nd bear (the first wasn’t that notable back in June).

Rob (the Old Sierra City Hotel owner) dropped me back to the trail at 7am as we’d agreed last night. The first 7.5 miles out of Sierra City are all uphill & the trail was quite tough going too. I was pleased to get to the top around 10am. Next I descended to 2 beautiful lakes – ‘Tamarack Lakes’ where a couple of weekend ‘car campers’ were setup (They’d obviously used the very rough dirt roads to get to this remote spot).

The rest of the morning & early afternoon were constantly up & down through pine forest and very rocky open hillsides. As it approached 3pm and I was looking for a good log to sit on for lunch I saw a juvenile bear turn away from the trail and start running uphill. I made sure I made as much noise as possible to see him continue his run uphill through the trees until he was out of sight. Phew!

Shortly after the bear sighting I bumped into Min, Stoat & Tortoise (hikers I’d been hiking with in Oregon) it was great to catch-up on what they’d been doing. I eventually took my lunch break at about 3:30pm, 20miles done.

My next priority was water as it looked like I’d be ‘dry camping’ as tentsites at my favoured mileage were few and far between. I filled up on water at ‘A-tree spring’ then hiked another mile uphill to a site someone had commented on, on FarOut. Dinner; cold mash & tuna.

Water filtered: 469.5 litres

PCT Miles hiked today: 25.2

Nights under canvas current streak: 1

Max streak: 18

Total nights under canvas: 110

Total nights in a building: 36

Lake swims: 1

Showers: 33

Trail Magic: 19

Thought for the day: Tomorrow doesn’t look very good for tentsites either & apparently there’s lots of ‘burn areas’