I managed to survive the night without being run over. Today’s goal was a river 32 miles away. Supposedly it is great for swimming because it isn’t very cold. We would have over 9000 feet of descending today. It was gonna be tough on my knees.
The last snow I passed today was at mile 1220.8. There was no snow for 27 miles after that, so it’s very possible that’s the last snow I’ll see on the whole trail.
We climbed up and down ridges all morning and decided to take lunch at a paved road. As I approached the road, I saw a single truck parked near the trailhead. Next to the truck was a large sun shade. That meant trail magic!
The trail magic was from a family in Sacramento. Their son did the Appalachian Trail last year and is currently doing the John Muir Trail. They wanted to help our hikers after hearing how much their son appreciated it on the AT. They made us hot dogs, gave us cold drinks, took our trash, and refilled our water. It was seriously the best trail magic I’ve had so far.
We had 15 more miles to go and the trail magic break didn’t make that much easier, so we headed on. Not long after the trail magic I saw my first on trail horse. The trail was extremely overgrown in this section and at first it looked like a 9 foot tall woman was barreling through the bushes. It was so bizarre.
Then we came to a sign about a detour. Apparently a tree had fallen and was blocking the trail so it said to walk on a forest road around the fallen tree. They did a good job building a little trail to the road, so it seemed legit. The detour was about the same length as the trail so I wasn’t too concerned.
When I got to the end of the detour, there was another sign for people going the other direction. On it, someone had written “What are you? A horse? Walk around the tree!” At this point I felt pretty silly. I made it through the impassable Sierra and I road walked around a fallen tree. About 100 yards after the detour there was a huge tree blocking the trail. I climbed over it.
Then, we came upon the west Fork of the Feather River. There is a very tall bridge over the canyon. We crossed and found a campsite.
I went and got in the water. Today was the hottest day since the desert and it was nice to clean off the sweat. Despite getting in at 8 pm, the water wasn’t too cold and the air was still warm after getting out.
It’s still warm out, even after dark. It might be a no sleeping bag night.