PCT 79 – Shasta

Daily Miles: 24
Total Miles: 1499

Got up at 5:00 again this morning. It seemed so dark as our campsite had no view of the sunrise this morning. Beardoh was still not feeling good when he got up today…just feeling nauseous and generally blah. Even still, we managed to pack up quickly and Beardoh was first to head out at 5:30. The rest of us left over the course of the next 20 minutes.

Even though we are constantly meeting new hikers, it seems like every 3-5 day stretch has a core group of people we continue to leapfrog with over those days. Today was no different and we continued to see some familiar faces and chat with folks as we hiked together for short periods.

It continued to be really hot today. When we think it is hot before 6am, there is no doubt that it will be a scorcher of a day. Luckily there was a lot of shade that we were walking through, but whenever we had an exposed section of trail, the heat was really intense.

We tried to keep up our pace today and to take short breaks. We were hoping to get to the road into town at a reasonable time. We made motel reservations when we stopped for lunch. When we got to the road, there was a sign up for shuttle rides to Shasta for a reasonable price. So we called the lady and she even brought us to Castella to pick up our resupply packages before driving us to Shasta. It all worked out really smoothly. We were surprised to see that her car registered an outside temperature of 100 degrees at 6:00 in the evening. We knew it was hot, but didn’t realize it was that hot!

We are now in our air conditioned motel room relaxing. Beardoh started to feel better as the day progressed, so hopefully he will be as good as new after a rest day. We are looking forward to a day off from walking and from being out in the heat. We’ll have to enjoy our time in the cool room, because it looks like we will be getting back on trail on a 107 degree day! Yikes!