Overall, I remember Northern California as being “mean.” It was very hot and dry, the climbs and descents were very long and often boring, and the nearby wildfires threw smoke into the air, obscuring what views there were. It was the section that I’d heard the least about, but it’s the second longest after the desert at roughly 670 miles. Trekking through NorCal was difficult mentally, knowing that. After we hit 1200, we soon ran into Piglet again! We kind of yo-yo-ed for a few days with her and her boyfriend, who came to do part of the trail with her. We ran across a river and decided to stop a little early for the day and take a swim and do laundry. Daisy was feeling sick with a sore throat and a cough, but we didn’t really need any more excuse to sit in the water for an hour after a long, hot day. Tinkle modeled a Princess Leia-like hairstyle and a bandana shirt while her other clothes hung to dry. It felt good to get semi-clean and to have fun with the tramily.

My sleeping pad had been having issues for a few hundred miles and my lovely companions were letting me sleep on their stacked sitting pads. I had ordered a new sleeping pad to come to Chester, a small town about a hundred miles away yet and was very much looking forward to it. I started late that day after not sleeping well. So began a 3000 foot climb. I purposefully didn’t look at the elevation during the climb (it doesn’t help anything) and felt good until I caught up to Tinkle, only to find I was roughly halfway up. NorCal! *shakes fist* However, the view at the top was pretty nice. We met Mermaid there, a hiker from Germany so named because of her fish scale leggings. We also ran into some day hikers/trail angels who told us to grab sodas out of the cooler in the back of their van. When we got there, we saw they had a circle of camp chairs set up for us! Chairs are highly underrated and it was a treat to sit for too long and walk not enough miles that day, while drinking can after can of soda. After we got going, we caught up to Piglet and Alex again and camped with them.

The next day in my journal holds one of my favorite phrases I’ve come across in my writings, “Had a lovely walk in the woods, cool and refreshing until I almost pooped my pants.” I was leading the group, thinking it was going to be okay, when it suddenly wasn’t and I had to run off trail to try and avoid “becoming a real thru-hiker” (it’s a saying on the trail that you’re not a real thru-hiker until you’ve pooped your pants.) Having to dig a hole to practice proper leave no trace principles while feeling that kind of urgency is the stuff of nightmares. I got back on trail soon after, feeling a true survivor’s relief.

The trail changed from forest to desert-like, complete with low brush, sandy soil, heavy sun exposure, and lizards. I started up my lizard count (tally for the day at 45), as was traditional for the desert. I wound down switchback after switchback and my feet and knees felt every one. At the bottom of the valley lay Belden a small town known for having crazy raves and festivals on the weekends. It was pretty tame on the Wednesday that we arrived. There was a train blocking the trail so we had to do some climbing to get over it. Mermaid climbed over just ahead of us but forgot her trekking poles. I threw them to her just as another train started coming down one of the other tracks. We hesitated for a while to climb through the train, paranoid that it’s start moving when we tried, but made it without incident. We hitched to a restaurant with trail-famous milkshakes. A guy named Tyler, who set up stages for the many concerts gave us a ride. Thinking back, it was really cool to hitch and learn a bit about people who live in those areas, or just to be exposed to someone else’s life, especially because that person is doing something really kind for you. Anyway, the milkshakes lived up to the hype and after a very refreshing shower, we hid from the brutal heat inside of the restaurant. It was 104 degrees outside. Daisy was still feeling pretty sick, so he left early to hitch to Chester, the next town north. Tinkle and I hitched back to town from the restaurant with a lady named Brenda, or “Hippy.” She was as cool as her nickname sounds.

Tinkle and I got sodas and apples and sat with our feet in the river that cut through the valley. We had a long climb ahead of us and waited for the heat to break a little. It was still pretty hot when we started the ascent through dense brush. We stopped and camped after dark, about four miles into the twelve mile uphill that led to mile 1300. There were eight miles of uphill in the morning. At the top, we had service and took a break (breaks with service are always longer than planned). We ran into some other hikers at a water source, Cactus (the neuro ICU nurse I’d met at VVR, maybe 500 miles earlier), Thai Spicy, Melt, Pika, Piglet, Alex, and Sidetrip. Tinkle and I didn’t stay long, but were slowed down after. Right on the trail, maybe a quarter mile from where the hikers were sitting, there was dead fawn. It had obviously been killed and partially eaten by a predator. We decided to try and move it a little bit off the trail with our trekking poles, not an easy or pleasant task. Sometimes, since there are people around and the trail is pretty well maintained, it was easy to forget that we were in the habitats of predators, but this was a pretty harsh reminder of the fact.

That night, we camped at a place that we had wanted to avoid, but it was our best option for the time we had. All the comments in our navigation app warned about the deer in the area. These deer were bold and unafraid of hikers, obsessed with salt, and ready to do almost anything to carry away a sweat-caked shirt or munch on a trekking pole strap. That night, I woke up a few times to the sounds of crashing around the tents made by deer driven crazy by the scent of salt, but not so crazed as to attack us in our tents. It kind of felt like a near miss a few times, though. I was excited for three things coming up the next day: Butt Mountain, the halfway point, seeing Daisy Dukes, who was waiting in Chester, and, most importantly, town food.