Day 107 (4 August) - Mile 1265.47 - 1284.29

Paved Bucks Lake Road to Belden (Staying in Portola)

Surprisingly, the night just off the road was pretty quiet and comfortable. I did wake in the middle of the night with a strange foot discomfort, but I took the sock off and kept it out of the sleeping bag the whole night allowing it to air and it felt much better in the morning.

Yesterday when we arrived here we noticed an outhouse up the road, so Share Bear, Pogo, and I went to check it out. It was well worth the walk. What a luxury to not have to dig a cat hole this morning.

Tim arrived right on schedule, just after 7:00 AM. The bad news it that he has a cold...poor Tim. We all packed our bags with just what we need for the next 20 miles and put the rest in the 4Runner. A 20-mile slack pack...so happy. Painter and Pogo left ahead of us since Pogo felt she needed extra time become of her knee aches. The rest of us were ready to hike just before 8:00 AM.

Ready to hike.

Today we have 20 miles to get to Belden where we plan to take showers, do laundry, and spend the  night. Tim will be meeting us there, obviously since he has all our gear, but he won't be spending the night with us. He will be headed back to the Airstream.  With slack packing, we figure we could make it to Belden before 6:00 PM.

As soon as we started hiking we entered Bucks Lake Wilderness. 

Self-portrait "Bucks Lake"

All day we looked for this Bucks Lake, but never found it.  However, the area was beautiful:

Wide trail through pine forest.

Check out this cool PCT sign I saw today:

PCT sign of the day.

Massive pine trees with lichen.

Oh yeah...right from the start of today's hike the trail climbed, but pretty gradual. At the top of the climb we were rewarded with some awesome views:

Nearing the top.

Wow!

Silver Lake from above.

I was pretty happy to see a sign pointing out Mount Pleasant, but seeing the trail not going anywhere near it. 

Not climbing Mount Pleasant.

Such docile deer out here. This one barely looked up from whatever it was eating.

Cute deer.

We stopped for lunch around 1:00 PM and was shortly joined by Painter and Pogo. They are utterly enjoying their day of slack packing as well.

Painter and Pogo taking a break.

Somehow we managed to take a 1.5 hour lunch break. We really need to shorten our lunches!  At 2:30 PM we were still over 9 miles from Belden, so tried to hike a hit faster.

Hiking faster?

By 2:55 PM we were 8 miles from Belden...not bad.

One more mile down.

Wow. Today's hike was really amazing with different views throughout the day.

The amazing PCT.

The day was great, and then came the last 7 miles of the day that pretty much did a nosedive from 6,200 feet to 2,254 feet...4,277 feet of hiking down. Blah...it was awful, plus there was poison oak everywhere that I had to look out for.

We made it to the bottom and even though we had less than 0.5 miles to Belden, we sat right on the trail for a break:

Taking a break after an awful down.

Share Bear was amazed that the PCT trailhead was right on a railroad track:

Crazy place for a trailhead.

We got to Belden and Tim was waiting for us on a picnic bench. He said he had checked out the place and didn't think it was fog to meet our needs. A wedding party has taken over the entire place including all the rooms and even the campsites. Share Bear and I wondered around to access the situation and unfortunately, we agreed with Tim. It was decided that we will take the 1.5 hour drive back to Portola and the Airstream with him. So we jumped into the 4Runner and headed out. We stopped in Quincy for dinner and made it to the Airstream after 9:00 PM. By the time we were all showered it was after 11:00 PM.

We will sleep in tomorrow and then prepare to get back on the trail. Until then...

Our home for the night.