July 11

1368-1389

A few miles in the morning takes us next to hat creek, a large creek that runs off of Mount Lassen.  Living trees surround us for the first time in a week, and the shade is a huge psychological boost. A fat bear walks next to us along the creek, and gets spooked away when he hears us.  Good bear.  This is a popular fishing and camping area, and I walk into a small fishing store and buy an Italian wrap. From the outside of the package, it looked tremendous, but upon eating it I realize it only has one piece of pepperoni in it.  They folded a tomato tortilla inside of a flour tortilla to make it look like it was more full of Italian meats. 48 hours later, I am still mad about this.  

We walk into the tiny settlement of old station, as temperatures start to soar.  Upcoming is a notoriously hot and dry stretch of trail along hat creek rim, where you walk the rim of a canyon.  It is colloquially refered to as “hot creek rim” by those surrounding the PCT.  Due to the porous volcanic, rock, there are no natural water sources for about 30 miles.  Fortunately this is broken up by a large cattle trough that serves as a water cache about halfway through.

Old station has a little cafe and shower and laundry  facilities, so we grab some food and clean up while we wait out the heat of the day.  It is over 100 degrees and the black volcanic rocks surrounding this area  radiates the heat of the sun back at us.  

At 6pm, we begin our climb up to hat creek rim, sweating profusely.  Up top we get our first view Mt. Shasta.  The Cascade volcanoes are lined up in a trail in front of us that will guide us home.  

Up on the rim a couple camping in their truck offers us a cold beer, and we happily accept.  

To save ourself some miles during the heat of the day, we continue hiking a few hours into the night. Occasionally hot gusts of wind hit us, feeling like the warmth of an open oven on our faces.

We camp near a trail register, where we sign our names and date and time we hiked by. It serves as a way for hikers to track who is ahead of them. We treat people we know on the register as a rabbit for us to chase. Run run run little rabbits.