8/16/2023
Section: Milepost 1600.8 to 1586.3
Total Trail Miles: 1353/2650
Distance: 14.1 Miles
Moving Time: 06:03
Elevation Gain: 3307 ft
Click here for current location
Day 92 was an interesting one – this was the first day we really had to think about fire. Throughout Oregon there were fires in the distance but Etna was where we had to start making decisions.
We woke in the morning and headed to the Etna Bakery, which was a wonderfully lit and decorated place serving some excellent pastries. As we headed over I texted Dusty to let her know we were going to breakfast and would be ready around 10 am. I had to return a platypus style filter I had purchased at the outfitters the day before and they did not open until after 8 am. We ordered drinks and some breakfast sandwiches at the café and did some blogging/’gramming. The place was bumpin’ for a midweek morning. While we sat there, a lady walked in and introduced herself as a forestry representative for the Marble Mountain Wilderness. She asked if we were hikers and we said yes and she said “I have some bad news, unfortunately the trail is closed at Etna summit northbound due to fire activity.” “Ah,” we said “we are SOBO’s, any info on the trail south?” She replied that she thought it was still open and then said if we gave her our phone number she would make a call to the Trinity Alps folks to find out for us. We thanked her and went back to our breakfast. “Well, that became an issue fast…” I said to Amanda. “Yea, a lot of lightning last night,” she replied. We still had an hour or so before the store opened so I brought up the fire filter on my Gaia App. A really handy tool, Gaia interfaces with Nasa’s fire scanning raster files to overlay active fires in a given area. Looking at it, I told Amanda “I don’t see anything near the trail southbound, there is a fire about 20 miles south of the trail near the Trinity Reservoir – I really hope they aren’t going to close the trail for that.” I checked my messages for something back from Dusty – nothing. “Think I should start reaching out to other rides?” I asked Amanda. “Yea, we wanna get a move on before they close much more.” I shot off some texts to a few other trail angels and went across the street to return the Platypus filter. As I headed over I received a text back from Robin saying she could come get us in about 30 minutes. I wrote her back saying that would be great. After the return, we walked back to the Inn and got our backpacks. On the way back Dusty got back to me asking where she should pick us up. I let her know that we had organized another ride which she took…less than eloquently. There were a flurry of text messages saying there was no need to go with another trail angel and that she could get us back up to the road which made for a few awkward texts over the next 30 minutes but, eventually, she relented. On our way back to the pick-up spot, in front of the outfitters, we ran into several groups of hikers, including the German couple, who told us they were skipping down to Dunsmuir/Mt. Ashland due to the fires and that we should consider that.
Much, much farther down the trail we would find out what happened that made so many people skip the Etna to Ashland section on this day. A hiker, who I won't name here, but whom we had run into a few times in Oregon had, the night before, gotten down to highway 3 which was about 2 days south for us and made camp there with a few other people. In the night, they had woken up and smelled smoke. Worried that a fire might be moving in on them, they had packed up and hitched back to Etna in the early hours of the morning. Once there, they told their story to many other SOBO’s who seemed to have interpreted it as though a fire had actually moved onto the southern section of the trail and that it now needed to be bypassed. This was false and anyone with a fire overlay could see that there were no active fires around the trail SOBO or simply have made a call to Trinity Alps to see if they were closing the southern section. Amanda and I deliberated, wondering if we should make the jump down as well. I texted the Marble Mountain Forestry Service lady who promptly replied that Trinity Alps was not closing any sections of the PCT south of Etna. “Can’t get much more direct than that,” I said. Our ride showed up and Robin repeated the same schtick about the PCT being closed. I let her know that I had just heard from Trinity Alps that there were no closures. She looked unsure but just said “if that’s what you heard, I will take you up there.”
The ride with Robin was fascinating. Got some hardcore MAGA vibes but she was interesting to talk with. One of our favorite quotes from a woman who said she “hated living in Corvallis” when I asked her about her 541 area code was, “Small town, small minds” in direct contradiction of her seemingly “small town America values.” In any case, she got us up to the pass without incident. The day was starting to look pretty Armageddon-ish with all the spot fires that had sprung up overnight. We got out at the pass as a NOBO was coming out of the woods. We said hi and Robin immediately informed him that the trail NOBO was closed in a way that was less than gentle and made him visibly bristle. He asked if he could get a ride down and she said yes while we walked across the road and started our warm-ups.
Given the late start today, we had planned to go a short distance, just past the southern flanks of Russian Peak. This would allow us to exit out on the Callahan-Cecilville Road if the fire situation got ugly. The route for today climbs out of Etna Summit and gains the upper flanks of a southeast running ridge, passing above the Smith, Taylor and Paynes Lakes while crossing into the Russian Wilderness. Towards the end of the day the path passes back out of the Russian Wilderness and turns east and then south before crossing under Russian Peak and switching down onto a cattle road where a spring makes for a nice place to make camp.
After our warm-ups we started our watches and made our way up the trail, which climbed out of the summit saddle. We walked for some time before running into a NOBO heading towards the summit. “Hey, you guys know the trail is closed this way right?” without a hello or anything. We informed him that we had talked directly with a forestry service representative who contradicted that information and that, to our recent knowledge, Trinity Alps was open. “Well, there was a group that had to bail out just this morning!” a bit self-importantly. We told him that may be but the closest fire was the Upper (later called Deep) fire, 20 miles off the trail and with a whole lot of ridges and roads between it and the PCT – to which he responded, and I will always remember this, “Ok, well, be careful I would hate to see you guys get into a bad situation” with zero actual care in his voice. Northern California was where we started running into some really frustrating characters. The real problem here, I think, was that this guy was very aware that he was going to have to flip up and maybe he had made it through the entire Sierra without having to do that and was loath to do it now. Misery loves company so, for him, if he was getting derailed, then everyone should have to. This is, unfortunately, a sentiment we ran into a few times on the trail – if I have to flip, everyone should have to flip, a sentiment that usually masqueraded as a concern for others safety. So that was irritating but we continued on and soon ran into a forestry maintenance crew strung out along the trail. We said thank you to each of them because no one appreciates clear trails as much as PCT hikers. When we reached the foreman we said hi to each other and then peppered her with questions about trail maintenance. How do you decide which sections to do? Do you think chainsaws should be allowed during really bad years to help get the trails cleared sooner? Do you work with the California Conservation Corps? It looked like you were using pack mules, where you? She smiled and answered all of our questions in turn and in detail and when we were done we said thank you again and carried on up the trail.
Another couple hours brought us out of the Russian Wilderness boundary and dropped us onto the south side of an east-west running ridge. We hiked on and ran into two older ladies hiking NOBO. They were doing the Northern California section and had left their car in Siead. Evidently, a large fire had sprung up east of Siede and was moving west. One of the women added, wryly, “I hope I still have a car when we get there, if we can even get there.” We all laughed about that and then went our separate ways. The sky opened up and we briefly put on rain jackets. Amanda asked if we should modify our end point due to the thunder and lightning that was around. I looked at the map and found that we were going to be in the trees and so said we could continue on to our original destination. We hiked for another 2 hours, passed under Russian Peak and wove our way down some switchbacks to the old road grade that was going to serve as our tent pad that evening. In the distance, we could see the mushroom cloud forming above the Upper fire near Trinity Lake. “That does look concerning,” Amanda said. “Yea,” I agreed “but they always look worse and closer than they are. This one would have to hop a lot of roads and ridgelines to get to us.”
We reached the road and set up camp. Amanda got the tent going, being wary of the many ant hills that permeated the road while I tramped down to the bee infested spring to get some water going. I had really hoped we were going to get a new filter in Etna, but alas, it was not to be. I collected some water out of a cleverly devised “leaf” spigot that someone had left and returned to the tent. A belly drop plane flew overhead toward the fire, which was worrisome. Amanda had things set up and I sat down on the mat to boil water while listening to the clinking of cow bells below us. “I really hope they don’t use this road in the night to come up to water,” I half joked. “That would be quite the wake up,” Amanda agreed. After dinner we passed out – this time before dark.
