I always wake up first and play with my phone until Ben or Dr Who how I named him wakes up too.

 

Dr Who, because well he’s almost a doctor and becauer he’s into technics an building things.

 

The mosquitos were not as bad as yesterday, but we still had to hurry up as soon as we left our tent to avoid getting stung to much.

 

As most of the days the first few miles were uphill because we try to sleep next to the mountains. Ben complained for about half an hour that it was cold, but it really wasn’t that cold 🙂

 

After this first climb the trail got very smooth and we could keep a nice pace. For lunch we had done already 15 miles.

 

 

On the pictures you can see the smoke from the forest fires 100 miles away.

 

I am still amazed that even after 10 days where you are stuck together for 23h and 55 minutes per day we still find new and different topics to talk about. Sure there are times where we don’t say a word for half an hour but there arr hours where we just keep talking and talking.

 

We got trailmagic right on trail where 3 older ladies handed out sandwiches and mandarines to us 🙂

 

 

The day after resupply the meals are more fancy than usual. I had couscous with 2 saugages. And way to many cookies…

 

The afternoon was mostly downhill with only 2 minor uphill parts for less than 15 minutes. The trail was still smooth, the motivation was high so we kept going with a good pace.

 

3 miles before the tentsite, we had to take a break to clean our socks and have some snacks before heading out for another last our.

 

 

After getting water it only was 20 more minutes to go to complete another marathon day with over 26 miles 🙂

 

We were 4 people having dinner together at the tentsite and 2 eating at their own tent…

 

After Mac&Cheese with port-wine we got into the tent and watched some more Netflix before sleeping for a few hours.

 

 

 

I heard the alarm but snoozed it for another 5 minutes of relaxed waking up. Ben however was sitting upright in the tent and so I gave up and got dressed too. A powerbar inside the tent and we were on the trail at 6h15.

 

5 minutes uphill and 3 hours downhill had to be done before we reached the road to Sierra City.

 

 

While walking downhill Ben suddenly disapeared as I was looking at some chipmuks. I just saw him running looking for a place to take a shit because he tried to reach the town with toilets. It was funnier for me than it was for him 🙂

 

Because it was only a 1.5 mile roadwalk we decided to start walking while trying to hitch. Half a mile before we would have reached the town a truck picked us up and drove us next to the supermarket.

 

Because we wanted to get breakfast first we hiked back to the Moose-cafe where we got a table. Coffee, orange juice, French toast, scrambled eggs and bacon. The classic breakfast is still the best one 🙂

 

 

After finishing we did our resupply with a very limited choice of food. In fact we needed 4 dinners and 1 lunch and there were only 3 different dishes to chose from.

 

 

Poor hiker coming after us had only 1 dish left because we took 15 of them. 3 for 2 people to be sure to have enough 🙂

 

On the front porch we used the wifi to check some social media because it was too early for lunch. The beers I bought were not ment to drink on the porch so we had to move over the street to drink them there. More and more hikers with beers joined us to chat until we left to get back to the Moose-cafe.

 

Chicken strips with french fries. I dont think the americans ever heard of having a menu with something different than fastfood on it. The choices on trail are so limited and I still want sushi or a steak but I think I’ll have to wait another week before I’ll get another chance.

 

The hitch back up to the trailhead was not hard, but the hike was! 8 miles and 2800 feet in elevation gain, half of it exposed with no shade and all of it with a bad trail. Smal stones, big stones, rocks everywhere on the trail forced us to slow down.

 

But eventually we reached the summit and had to go back down another 4 miles to reach the campsite.

 

After pitching our tent, the real world got us back quite fast. “This would be his spot and our tent is to close to his, we should move” the less friendly reminder that a lot of people are assholes. The urge tp start a discussion with this guy was high but we just moved the tent to another spot.

 

The difference between hikers and idiots. Hikers would move their tent a few inches so you don’t have to continue walking if there is not enough place for another tent. And yeah, this guy wanted a good 20 yards free space around his tent so no-one would come to close…

 

 

After dinner we sat down and talked with 2 other hikers for an hour until it got dark and we moved to our tent to sleep.

 

I slept with my earplugs and overheard Bigboy trying to open the bearlock but when my alarm whispers “its 6h05” I wake up even before the music starts.

 

Just after 7 we left the camp after trowing away some trash. We were realising that after all these days joking about the bad weather when we saw a tiny clowd, today we had the sky covered in clouds.

 

 

2 hours into the hike I felt the first drop on my arm but it took almost another hour before we had to put on our rainclothes. We had second breakfast at this occasion, the bread we carried is delicious and a nice change to all the tortillas I ate during the last two months.

 

It rained for about 2 hours. We didn’t talked a lot and focussed on not slipping on the wet rocks.

 

 

We had to hike 2,5 miles more then we planned because the source we wanted to cook at was dry…

 

We took of our rainclothes while cooking and the sun came back out again. Ben spilled about half of our Gatorade and had to deal with pink toes from that moment on.

 

 

We heard about trailmagic 13 miles away but we already did 16 today so we denied the offer and we decided to continue our pace. There is no reason to arrive even earlier then we will already arrive. We hiked faster then I thought so we have some time of for a trip to San Francisco before we fly back.

 

The afternoon was relax for me, but Ben had to deal with some bad charfing so we went slower. Because we did well in the morning we arrived at 18h with 23miles done!

 

We cooked, charged our phones with the rest of the sun before it would set and anjoyed the beams outself too 🙂

 

At 19h we got into the tent for a Sense8 marathon! Well 2 episodes at least… hikers are tired people and don’t stay up late in case you wouldn’t have noticed yet.

 

 

 

No alarm has been set and we still woke up at 6am. But because we were not in a hurry we left the camp at 7h20.

 

After the first small hill we had reached the highest point of today an the rest was mostly downhill.

 

The sun was compared to yesterday very present again and made the hiking hot and sweaty.

 

The trailmagic was at the exact spot where Bigboi told us and we had a wonderful second breakfast with pancakes amd sausages.

 

 

Apparently the americans dont know anything else…

 

But it was tasty, not that I would complain 🙂

 

They had icecold lemonade and we could refill our water. After signing their trailregister Ben consulted a girl with health problems and luckily I had the right pills with me to help her.

 

An hour later we had third breakfast but because we rationise the bread we both still left hungry looking forward to have lunch.

 

 

The whole day we walked in the forest so it was nice and cold most of the time, but as soon as we got into the sun the temperatures became -for me- unbearable.

 

We had lunch around 13h30 next to a small creek. The place was somehow in the shade but sitting on a small treetrunk is not the most comfortable way to spend your break.

 

3 hours of downhill later we reached middle fork feather river where we took a bath and washed our clothes 🙂

 

Ben even saw an otter and I almost missed it but still got a picture of him.

 

 

3 more miles and we reached our tentsite, pitched our tent, cooked and because there were mosquitos again we went straight into the tent after doing the dishes.

 

 

The days might seem all quite similar, waking up, walking, eating and going to sleep,… and in fact they quite are! 🙂

But the landscapes change!
The people you meet change!
The talks you have change!

We are somehow in a routine but still on holiday and enjoying every single minute 🙂

 

 

 

 

5h10 first alarm -> pulling clothes into sleeping back to get them warm.

5h15 second alarm, get up and have warm clothes to put on 🙂

6h00 perfect start hour! The first section is a 7 mile 3000 feet climb trough the forest, so we had almost no sun at all to warm us up.

 

The trail was in a great condition and not too steep so we could keep a good pace and had enough time to have a long break at the summit.

 

 

4 miles after the summit we hit the road to Bucks lake which we walked to not cheat on the trailmiled because we did a loop of 6.5 miles instead of 5 on trail. There were a few hikers passing us on trucks, bit we saw again them at the front porch of the supermarket.

 

We bought two beers, two cokes and a family pack of cookies an have been invited to sit in their garden. An old lady came to us an trew a roastbeef sandwich on our table.

 

 

We thought it was leftover but after we ate it she came back because she made a mistake and it was another costumer’s. The good humans we are, we payed for it eveb if it wasn’t our mistake.

 

After this appetizer we went to the restaurant half a mile further and went inside. But they didn’t want us to stay there and kicked us out to sit on the terassee with a free beer for each one of us 🙂

 

 

The waiter seemed to be drunk and made things complicated but the steak was great!

 

A few beers and a dessert later we left tipsy and 80$ poorer to get to the next store 1 mile closer to the trail to get another beer for the road 🙂

 

On trail we did 8 more miles before we set up our camp right next to the cliff, but the view behind the tent was better than the one of the cliff.

 

 

After dinner we went to bed around 9pm to get up early again tomorrow. But the deers outside of our tent had other plans… it took us 15 minutes to scare them all away before we could finally sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Early is a  flexible term and we left camp just before 7am.

 

We had 12 more miles to Belden where we wanted to resupply for the last 2.5 days and have lunch too. All of them were downhill. Almost 3000 feet lower than our campsite we would have to cross a river only to get back up again.

 

 

The first part was close to the cliff so the views were breathtaking and it was hard to focus on the trail while the sun did rise.

 

The trail looked steeper than it was on the maps but because of several cellphone breaks and Ben’s feet who were causing problems we couldn’t keep a good pace.

 

 

Which was not a problem because we were not in a hurry. From Belden to Chester where we would quit the trail it’s only 44 miles for 2.5 days and we would hike out a few too this afternoon. So a lot of low milage days 🙂

 

There were a lot of negative but a lot positive comments on Guthooks, the app the hikers are using about Belden. The service in the restaurant was as horrible as described. Normal people are favorised to order, we have to pay right away, beer has to be picked up at the counter,… the food was ok but the service was so bad that we didn’t left a tip at all.

 

After the lunch we bought some beers, showered and did laundry. Sounds short, took us 3 hours. No hurry, so we could enjoy the cold beers and charge our powerbanks. No wifi though, they don’t give their password out to hikers…

 

Not hikerfriendly at all!

 

 

Now to the ugly part, it was still very hot and the mountain we had to climb was exposed. 13,5 miles and 4800 feet.

 

No way to find a halfway similar mountain Luxemburg to understand how far and how much elevation this is. Semi-marathon for distance nd 5 times the Eiffel Tower for elevation all with a 15kg Bagpack.

 

But we had no choice. 4 miled into the hike we saw a rattlesnake! Didn’t know they would still live this far up the trail…

 

2 miles later we found a good spot to pitch our tent and were happy to have done already 1/3 of the mountain.

 

At 22h00 we had were ready to sleep after a long day. There were still people arriving at this time and I thought about not wanting at all to set up my tent in the dark.

 

 

 

 

No alarm! No stress!

We left camp just before 8am to continue one of the longest uphill sections so far.

 

The morning was quite unspectacular, a lot of trees, minor rivercrossings, no views, no mosquitos, no sun,…

 

Second breakfast was nice 🙂 I start to realize that I miss Luxemburgish bread an I could for sure eat a whole pound alone.

 

 

Hunger is always present and the last time I felt saturated has been weeks ago even though I consume about 5’000 calories a day. I gained back some weight after the sierras where I lost way too much.

 

We had lunch with about 10 other hiker next to a nice and cold spring wherewe had a bit of service. We are both glad to have backup at home who checks activities and books hotels and rental cars because the internet is more than slow out here and its barely enough to text.

 

The afternoon we only hiked 11 more miles to get closer to the road where we can hitch out. We are not decided yet if we will camp next to the road tomorrow or hitch out late to get a cold beer and some goodies from the store.

 

 

The campsite was one of the best ones I had the whole trail. It was not comfortable at all but the view was gorgeous and we would see a great sunrise tomorrow 🙂

 

Dinner and a few snacks later we were in the tent after the sun set to watch the last episode of Sense 8 an go to have an early sleep.

 

 

 

I woke up because the sun started to shine right into the tent at 6am. There was no way to sleep longer so we got up and left around 7am.

 

 

After the first 4 miles we had to take a short side trail to get water for the rest of the day. A 1500 feet climb over 5 miles and back down after the summit was the hardest part of the 12 mile dry stretch before we would get some more water.

 

Halfway up the mountain we had second breakfast to get some more energy.

 

After all the past mountains this was not too bad and we soon passed the ridge to start going back down.

 

 

Another big milestone in the way up to Canada is the halfway marker we reached at 1pm. 72 days on trail to reach half of what I want to walk in total. Strange feeling that this long period was only half and the same miles are still ahead of me.

 

 

We had lunch a mile passed the marker and the last 5 miles downhil went pretty good too.

 

At the street we got some last trailmagic before heading out to Chester. We ended up staying there for almost an hour talking about the trailangels past in South Africa an her medical studies there.

 

We got a hitch after a short time and in town we went straight to the laundromat wo had showers too. We then set up out tent behind the local church who offered her backyard to the hikers.

 

After a trip to the supermarket we had our last hikerdinner we had left an drank some beers. After the mosquitos started to attack us again we went into our tent to sleep