We only have 16 miles to get to McArthur Burney Falls, we should be there by late afternoon!
Besides the bugs, the hike comes easy.
6.5 miles into our 16 mile day, we come across Burney Guest Ranch. The ranch is a retreat of sorts that offers showers, laundry, meals, and a small resupply store. I talked joe into stopping in because I read the store there is better than the camp store at the falls. It didn’t take much to convince Joe, so we stopped in and we’re welcomed by the lady that runs the Christian Retreat. She told us stories of their local mountain lion population, provides information on her retreat and offered us advice on what to do if there’s a wildfire.
The resupply store was simply a supply closet with loads of dehydrated meals, and other items hikertrash would enjoy. We splurged on a couple Backpacker Pantry meals (for lunch and our dinner, we were going somewhere very special after all.)
Back on trail around noon, with 10 miles to knock out.
All I could think about while hiking was “is there a mountain lion stalking me now?”
After all I did find some poor animals skull off trail... “did a mountain lion do this?”
Last May, for my birthday, Joe and I took a 4 day trip to Northern California- we saw California’s highest waterfalls; McArthur Burney Falls at 129 feet. It was our first stop of the trip. There is a short 1 mile loop hike around the falls- halfway through there is a sign posted that read:
<-Mexico 1,418
Canada 1,232 ->
And we took a photo with it, thinking how neat it was that we were on THEE PCT! Who knew, that 13 months later we’d actually be walking those 2,650 miles?!
Once we saw it (we were quite anxious), we recreated the photo from a year ago. It was a happy moment for us. Although, the moment wasn’t as special, since we skipped 600 miles to get here. :(
Afterwards we walked into the picnic area near the visitor center to see about camping. That’s when we met a wonderful group of PCT hikers that we spent the rest of the evening with (a Swiss and French couple, a future doctor, and a Mexican). The men of the group went swimming at the falls (water temp 42-48), after we bought a few bottles of wine (Redneck Wine), and sat around our camping area chatting and laughing and talking about our life stories until night fell and all sunlight diminished (that’s late for hikers).
It’s times like these that are rare on trail, but constantly wished for. I thoroughly enjoy hearing about others journey on the PCT. Often on trail, when we roll into camp everyone is too exhausted to socialize as much and as soon as that sun sets, it’s bedtime.
No comments:
Post a Comment