Day 79 - Thursday, July 15

Tenting in a pine forest (mile 1341.7). Walked 10.4 miles today, skipped 44.3 miles.

With no alarm set, I slept in until almost 6 am! I packed up and walked back across the river to Belden where I connected to the Wi-Fi to gather more information on the fire.

It had grown to 2,200 acres overnight...not a good sign for us today. Frank joined me after a while and after looking at the burn and air quality maps, talking to other hikers, and thinking, we decided to hitch around to Chester, meaning we'll miss 44.3 miles of trail including the PCT midpoint that we've been looking forward to hitting for weeks now.

The Forest Service was advising everyone to wait another 24 hours and if things went well, the all clear could be given tomorrow; however, there was no way I was hanging around here for another day. I felt comfortable enough making a run for it, but Frank has asthma and I didn't want to either leave her or have her be put in a dangerous breathing situation. We went out to the road and a couple of work vehicles passed and then the first car by pulled over for us. It was an old dude in a Charger. He had classic rock on the radio and talked about his time as a Vietnam veteran. He was a really cool dude and took us to Greenville, about halfway to our destination.

Once in Greenville, we took advantage of the Dollar General by buying some drinks and ice cream. One satisfied, we began trying to hitch again. After 20 minutes or so, a woman and her young daughter (who just happened to be named Dixie - same as the fire we're fleeing), who was going the opposite direction stopped to tell us about a bus that could take us to Chester; however, she invited us over and decided to give us a ride to the trailhead - 30 minutes one way in the wrong direction from where she was headed. It was absolutely amazing. We chatted about the trail and she told us that she used to work for a dentist who hiked the trail and was very supportive of the hikers who came through the area. It was just another person to renew your faith in humanity.

Once at the trailhead, we met Godfather, Rugrat, and a few more who were going into Chester. Airdrop, who we haven't met yet but have heard about, was coming through shortly and her parents were at the trailhead to do some trail magic and take her and her trail family (or tramily as it's often called out here) into town.

We set off into a very different environment than we had left.

The forest was more open here and had a more volcanic feel to it. I checked for an update and found that the trail just north of Belden would be closed by the Forest Service imminently, so we made the right decision to skip that section. We hiked along and after 4 or so miles, got to a spring where we ate lunch and hung out for a few hours.

Finally, we hiked on, up and over a relatively tame mountain and down to the North Fork of the Feather River.

Here, Frank got some water and I hiked in to save us a campsite because we think it might be busy in this area. When I arrived, only Minnesota Jocko was here. We had met this morning in Belden and he got around the fire too. Frank hiked in and then Cleopatra and another hiker showed up shortly after.

Tomorrow we'll make a "run for the border" as Cleopatra put it. Basically, we'll enter Lassen National Park tomorrow which requires bear can to camp within the park. As we sent ours home weeks ago, we don't have one. We can get around this requirement by hiking the 20+ miles through the park and camping just past the northern boundary.