Here are Entry 1, Entry 2 and Entry 3.
Day 4 on the Pacific Crest Trail started out bright and refreshing. We were in no hurry to break our camp high above the snow line. Ken, Howie and Dan finally left around 8:30 a.m.; I waited around an hour longer for our tent to dry and for Savitt to catch up from camping with friends the day before. About an hour later I became impatient and left as well.
I was alone without a guidebook or maps, trudging over snow with no visible trail, but I was not worried. The three others ahead of me made obvious tracks in the snow and I knew they likely be the only tracks until I caught up to them soon enough. After an early ascent I hiked for the most part along a ridge until I came upon a surprised. The tracks split up into three different directions. There had been enough time passed and snow melt so I could not tell which sets were coming or going. There was no obvious trail junction, and certainly no sign. In 1977 the Pacific Crest Trail had few markers of any kind anywhere.
I stopped for lunch and did my best Sherlock Holmes imitation of figuring out which tracks were the freshest. With some confidence I followed the tracks to the right. That confidence slowly eroded as I descended steadily. I eventually came to Gold Lake, where I got advice from the caretaker of a campground where to find McCrae Meadows, the group’s destination for the day. I busted my butt back up the ridge until it occurred to me that at this point I had not a clue whether the group would be at McCrae Meadows or not. After all, perhaps Ken finally made an orienteering mistake or something had happened to one of the tenderfoots. Maybe I had been following my group’s tracks after all. Back down to Gold Lake I went.
I talked to a variety of folks at the campground. Two old guys were suspicious that I was scouting their fishing territory. A 5th generation Californian was cordial enough and interesting to listen to. Some teenagers gave me a beer. None of them knew anything about a group of backpackers. I spent the night at the campground and resolved to hike on roads to our next resupply stop in Belden. At least I was able to dry my boots by a campfire.
I started the next day around 9:30 with a structured plan for making miles on the State Highway towards Belden. I would take breaks at 12:30 and 3:30 and finish up at 7:30. At my 3:30 break I asked a woman doing yard work for water. She asked if I was connected to the hikers who had been through that morning. After being told that I noticed the rest of that day that I had been following Vibram sole prints whenever the shoulder of the roads became sandy. Psyched!
I knew the group could not have been too far ahead of me because of the tenderfoots. I went a little extra that day, about 25 miles, which placed me in a neigborhood of houses by the train tracks the State Highway paralleled. I went up to the first person I saw to ask about crashing on a lawn for the night. Unfortunately, the first person I saw was a teenage girl, and an adult male made himself known when a rock whizzed by my head. I thought “Uh-oh, he thinks some vagrant is hitting on his daughter.”
“Get away from my ****ing truck!” he yelled. Um, OK. I went a little farther down the road and found a patch of grass by the train tracks. The next morning I woke up absolutely confident I would catch up to the others that day. Alas, I was due for one more surprise.
Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales