Day 89 – Monday, Aug. 21

PCT Mile 1,459.1 to PCT Mile 1,485.0 
Day Total: 25.9 miles

I saw a bear cub this morning although it was too far away and much too quick to able to take a photo.

The cub was 50 yards away and ran into the trees and out of sight immediately after I shouted to Stephen, hiking behind me, to look down the hill. It's interesting that there's more bear activity in this part of Northern California than anywhere else we've been.

That's interesting, especially considering the night we spilled Spanish rice everywhere around the tent.

Happy Eclipse Day to all! We picked up a flyer about the eclipse at Burney State Park a couple days ago, and found out that where we were in the range of 88-percent totality. We were in a highly tree covered section of the trail, but we wound a sunny spot to stop and watch (safely) the eclipse.

We used a hole in a piece of paper to show a circle of sun on the ground. As the eclipse happened, most of that circle went dark.

We ate lunch in the shade under the bridge over the McCloud River. Despite the heat, the temperature at the river in the shade was OK. But as soon as we got hiking again, it was hot.

And we saw another rattlesnake today.

We chatted with five more SOBOs in the afternoon as we climbed up from the McCloud River. They all had helpful information about the smoke conditions and about the towns along the trail North of here.

It's looking like we will have lots of fire closures to deal with in NorCal and Oregon. Stephen pitched the idea of flipping up to Washington rather than hiking through smoke and dealing with multiple trail closures. We'll try to get more info when we're in town tomorrow and use that to figure out what we'll do.

It was dark by the time we pitched our tent. We were most of the way up the last big climb toward Interstate 5 and the next resupply town.

UPDATE: We did flip to Washington and so avoided the fires raging in Northern California and Oregon. The tentative plan is to hike Washington and then finish Oregon and the rest of NorCal after reaching Canada. Hopefully the fires will have subsided by then.