Day 65 - The Bounce Box

27 Jun Day 65 – The Bounce Box

Posted at 23:38h in PCT North California, PCT Thru Hike by mmbowden60 0 Comments

At mile 1613.7. Hiked 14.1 miles today.

I rode the Hiker Hut provided bicycle all over town. Among other destinations was the post office where I sent my first ever bounce box. IThe postal service will allow you to keep forwarding a package as long as you don’t accept delivery by opening the package. Hikers use this to send themselves things up the trail. In my case I had fleece pants and a down jacket that I won’t need until it gets colder. I sent it via Priority Mail from Etna to Cascade Locks, OR. This is about 300 miles up the trail. When I reach Cascade Locks if I dont need it’s content, I can ask the postal service to”bounce” it further up the trail. With the bounce, my pack is lighter than ever. I still have a down vest and a Marmot jacket to keep me warm on cooler mornings.

Fire season has started. Here is the Fire Finder App on my phone. I use it to get up to date info on fires such as extent, location, and percent containment. Orange flames indicate active fires. The blue dot is my location. The object of the game is to keep the BLU dot as far away as possible from the orange flames. Since I’m north of the fires and headed north things look good for now.

Here are beautiful sloping ridges that I hiked through.

There was a lot of burned forest along the trail today. The trail was also very rocky which caused me some issues with my new shoes. The next day I figured out that I needed to tighten the mid foot portion of the laces to give my feet more stability over rocks. Until that adjustment, I felt very maladroit, like I was stumbling with every step. Even with the burn and the rocky trail this was one of my favorite areas.

The trail extends across this slope and the next as it disappears in the distance.

I liked this bouquet.

I like being up high in the wide own spaces.

This is an example of the beauty of this area. The fires didn’t get everything.

We camped next to Fischer Lake, a small deep lake. As we sat on rocks along the shore an Osprey? flew to the top of a shoreside tree and just stayed there. We stopped paying attention. Suddenly the bird dove into the water missing his mark, then alighting at the top of another shorter tree. It dove again, coming up with a fish and flying in circles in front of us over and over as if it were showing off.