8/12/2023
Section: Milepost 1684.3 to 1657.5
Total Trail Miles: 1282 / 2650
Distance: 23.19 Miles
Moving Time: 08:56
Elevation Gain: 1220 ft
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Ah, today was the great descent to one of our least favorite spots along the Pacific Crest Trail - Seiad Valley. The first half today’s path traverses near the top of a ridge system above 6000 feet through some small burn sections before making a brutal, 4000 foot descent into Seiad valley itself.
We woke in the morning and both laughed about our sad attempt to stay up and catch the meteor shower. My GoPro’s attempt wasn't much better… We ate some fancy fig bars and drank some tea before embarking around 7 am. As we walked, we talked about a book Amanda was reading (well, listening because it is difficult to walk and read at the same time) called “Thirst.” It’s the story of a Bellingham woman who set the unsupported speed record on the PCT a few years ago. At around 8 am we ran into UK Sam and stopped to talk with him. Again, this was our first meeting since Whitney and we were excited to catch-up with him. His backpack waist strap had broken a day or so before but he was persevering, if not easily. The good news was that Osprey was replacing the backpack wholesale for him…once he got to Ashland. He told us about the descent into Seiad - it was a mess. The Manzanita bushes had grown wild over the summer and taken the trail back such that whole sections of the descent involved bushwhacking and navigation. Supposedly, the trail was gone and extremely difficult to get through and many people were opting to take road 48N20 down from or up to the saddle. We thanked him for the info, said our goodbyes and continued on. One hour along we ran into none other than Markus and sat down beside the trail to catch up with him. He reiterated the same thing UK Sam had said about the trail conditions and regaled us with all that had gone on with him since we had split up, including what sounded like an epic SKI-ERO day in Mammoth in July. It also sounded like most of the group was going to head to PCT Days in Portland and he asked if we were going as well. We said no and that we couldn’t justify losing 3-4 days to go back to Portland. We talked a little longer and then split up, heading our separate ways and wishing each other good luck.
Another hour or so brought us along a ridge and down a slow descent through burn zones to a saddle where we stopped to gravity filter water and eat lunch. During lunch we weighed our options for getting down. It was 95 degrees and still heating up. Hacking through 9 miles of manzanitas on a non-existent trail seemed like a one-way ticket to suck-fest so we decided to forgo the trail and hit the road.
We finished lunch and started down the trail, the mercury inching ever higher. The road was far from fascinating. We meandered further and further into the Seiad River canyon. At one point, a group pulled alongside us in a Toyota pick-up and asked if they could offer us a ride down. We politely turned them down saying we wanted to walk it all. After they left Amanda looked sideways and said wryly “I would have taken that ride.” “Yea - me too,” I said back. Hours moved by at a snail's place as our knees began to protest the not-too-terrible but relentless march down. A few sharp switchbacks brought us alongside the river and we stopped to pick some late season blackberries along the road. We hiked on and eventually started to notice houses and cabins built up along the river. Suddenly Amanda stopped, clutching her nose. “Bloody nose,” she said, rolling her eyes. We stopped to let it re-clot and as we waited a random man pulled up in a Prius, jumped out and in an Eastern European accent asked - “do you need some tissues?” Bewildered, Amanda smiled and said yes to which he threw open his trunk and pulled out a roll of paper towels and dispensed them to her. With the help of new materials, the nosebleed was stemmed and then, this Romanian angel took the bloody tissues back, wished us luck and drove off. “What was that?” I asked Amanda with a bewildered smile on my face. “So random, but exactly what I needed,” Amanda said looking back at me. We tried to walk but Amanda was still feeling a little light headed, so we sat on the side of the road under a “State of Jefferson” sign eating Fritos until she felt good enough to leave. We hiked down the road, eventually coming into the “center” of Seiad valley just as the light was fading. Once we hit the central intersection, we turned right and hiked up highway 96 about half a mile to a hiker-friendly campground, called Wildwood, where other thru-hikers helped us find a spot and get settled. One kid from the UK, who maybe wasn’t the most socially with it, was kind enough to let us know we had missed a full, complimentary dinner by only 30 minutes. His exact words were something like “if only you had been here 30 minutes earlier - the table was full of food!” I thought Amanda was going to kill him. We got our tent set up and ran a quick load of laundry. In between I kept looking over at the couple next to us in their tent - felt like a creeper, but I kept thinking the guy’s shirt said “Ski-to-Sea” on it, which might have made them the other “Bellinghamsters” we knew were somewhere around us on the trail. By around 9 pm we finally turned in for the night, fighting against the heat still holding on to get some sleep in preparation for the big climb out of Seiad the next day.
