8/13/2023
Section: Milepost 1657.5 to 1635.6
Total Trail Miles: 1304
Distance: 22.64 Miles
Moving Time: 09:32
Elevation Gain: 5676 ft
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The next morning we woke and got out pretty quick, wanting to get to the café by the time they were open. This was another one of those mornings where Amanda would tell me I was being “unnecessarily pushy” to get a move on and, in this rare case, it did truly turn out to be unnecessary. We folded up the tent and put our air pads away before packing it all into our packs. By the time we were ready to go, most of the rest of the camp was already headed north. I added our name to the guest book and did a quick peruse of the other hikers and, indeed, the group I was snooping on last night was Cat and Mouse from Bellingham, Wa. I put our names right below theirs - “Sheets and River Dancer, Bellingham, Wa” after which we departed for the Seiad Cafe.
Twenty minutes of walking back down the main road brought us to the Seiad Cafe and general store. My Aunt Joni had sent her second care package, the one with many of the meals in it, to this general store, so we were excited to get that package and maybe score some pancakes at the cafe. We arrived at the store about 20 minutes before either it or the cafe were supposed to be open. While we waited we talked to the fairly…insufferable hodgepodge of people that congregated at the store with us. There was the UK kid who was already not our favorite person for the dinner comment the night before, then there were two guys that had been sudo hiking with Markus. One guy kept going on about how he lived this vagabond, dirtbag lifestyle but also had a wife and several adult children at home so… yea, seemed like a solid mid-life crisis in the flesh. The other guy, from the UK, seemed okay but just generally avoided talking or saying anything more than necessary.
At 8 am, a beat-up Windstar van showed up and a woman got out and began opening the store for us. We went inside after her to look around and when she was settled asked after our package which she quickly found for us. We took it outside and our little cohort of misfits, being the “elite” thru-hikers that they were all made comments about how heavy it was. We shrugged it off with a comment about making a nice donation to the hiker box. Probably should have avoided saying that because UK kid decided it was an invitation to hover over us while we unpacked it. I’ve been married to Amanda for 8 years and known her for 14 now. She’s the most gentle person i’ve ever met but in that moment she was giving off really strong “i’m about to punch this kid in the face vibes.” Fortunately she controlled what was probably a strong urge to do physical harm and we turned out a few items into the hiker box which were promptly scrounged up. At this point, the lady saw us looking over at the cafe and said “the family that runs the store has a few young kids that they have been taking down to the county fair each night and coming back late - they probably won’t be in today despite what the hours say.” We thanked her and looked at each other. Seiad valley was quickly becoming one of our least favorite places on the trail. The hiker family showed up in their dilapidated van and Amanda and I started to shoulder our backpacks to get out but, just then, one of our favorite people on-trail showed up. I turned to Amanda “I think that’s Niccolo,” pointing to a figure about a block away coming up the road. As he came up i let out a “Holy Shit - Niccolo!!?” He smiled and gave me a hug as a few others hiking with him showed up just behind. They went into the store, also dismayed that the cafe was closed, and came out with pints of ice cream which they promptly started tucking into. We sat near the street while Niccolo recounted his time in the Sierra and what had happened to the others we had been hiking alongside with around Julien while Queen Bee hovered nearby. Eventually, we said goodbye to Nicollo and wished him luck on his 40-a-day sprint to the Canadian border and got the hell out of Seiad. The time was 9 am and it was already in the upper 80’s - today was going to be hot.
We walked the road, which was the PCT, across the Seiad river and turned to walk alongside it for 9 brutal miles. At one point, as we made our way along, a group of NOBO’s stopped and pushed peaches into our hands. Along the road were several orchards with hiker-friendly owners who like to make offerings to the hikers during the season. We reached the end of the road at a campground that demarks the transition back to dirt trail and stopped to snack. My favorite snack on this trail is quickly becoming potato chips - specifically, Kettle Brand chips. I don’t really have a specific flavor, they’re all good, but Kettle is the clear winner followed by Tim’s. They are salty and delicious. I make small slits in the roof of the bag and deflate them so they pack well and generally go through a normal sized bag a day.
At the campground, we relaxed for a while before crossing the stream and heading up the trail. The day was hot - like triple digit hot - and straight-up oppressive. The trail made its way along the Seiad river, climbing steadily upwards as it made its long march out of Seiad. We crossed into a burn zone and things started to get really ugly. Without shade and in the full force of the sun I started to feel nauseous, even at the snail's pace we were going. Finally, we made a stop at a shaded water stream and pulled our shoes off to enjoy the cool spring water flowing by. A girl we had been hopscotching with since the campground went by and said “Solid idea taking a break here - I wish I had waited for this spot,” before continuing on. We sat for a while and I got up to set the Sawyer to gravity filter. As I made my way to the backpacks, Amanda looked down at where I had been sitting. “Hey Payden,” she said incredulously, “did you know you were sitting on a scorpion?” “No way!” I said quickly returning to where I was sitting but as I looked down, sure enough, there was a medium, brown scorpion in the space I had just vacated a second before. Now exposed, the brown insect was attempting to get back into some cover while Amanda and I were scrambling to take a picture of it on Amanda’s nature identification app. The scorpion was faster though and soon had itself tucked into a log where we couldn’t get to it. “That was crazy!” I said smiling to Amanda.
Eventually, we left the refuge of shade and returned to the oven of pain. Fortunately, the burn section ended and we were soon back into the trees where things were a solid 10 degrees cooler. At the end of the burn section, the trail started to climb steeply, switching its way out of the river valley and up onto a ridgeline. We climbed and climbed for what seemed like hours, passing a good spot with a few other campers already setting up. On the way up I saw a pretty yellow breasted wren and ran into a few groups of deer that refused to yield the trail to us. The sun set and we carried on, observing more scorpions and some chubby bullfrogs as we switchbacked ever higher.
Just when we thought the climbing would never end, the trail dumped out into a clearing signifying our arrival to Buckhorn Spring, our camp for the night. Already at the clearing were several tents and about 20 sets of red eyes glaring back into the shine of our headlamps, greedy for salt. “These California deer are super weird,” Amanda muttered as we struggled to find a campsite without lighting the neighbors up with our beams. Eventually we did and I ran to get water while Amanda set the tent up and set up for dinner. It was 10 o’clock and so much of our nightly regiment went out the window. We were fed and in bed in about 30 minutes, happy to be out of Seiad and through the worst of the heat.
