Day 101: Marble Mountain Wilderness

Date: Fri 7/27

PCT Start Mile: 1599.7

PCT End Mile: 1623.7

PCT Mileage for Day: 24

Total PCT Mileage: 1623.7

The Highlights: lots of rocky hiking, more bears, and lots of deer

This morning we packed up, grabbed a quick breakfast at the coffee shop on the corner, and made for the trail, getting a ride from the wife of the hotel manager. I sat in the back seat with their two and a half year old, Abby, who ate pretzels from an Emoji Movie cup that had rainbow poop emojis printed all over it. What a time to be alive.

I clenched my stomach with every turn on the mountain roads, not good with winding car rides. Thankfully, we were back at the trail soon enough. Just behind us, another car pulled up, dropping off Spooked and Frizz (aka Miss Frizzle). We leapfrogged with them a bit on the first climb, but otherwise didn’t see them the rest of the day.

Starting down the trail around 10:20am, we crossed the 1600 mile mark less than half a mile up the trail. Woot! Great way to start the day.

The mile marker was along our first climb of the day, because all town departures seem to begin with a climb. That said, this one was only about three miles and fairly mellow.

The day would continue through undulating rocky terrain, through burn areas that looked relatively recent (last year or within the last few years?), and past a kaleidoscope of wildflowers.

We also heard plenty of the bark beetle today – their static popping sound filling the air. Shawn finally placed what their noise sounds like: lawn sprinklers. The ones that have the slow click-click-click as they cycle to the beginning of the spray, and then a barrage of chick-chick-chick-chick-chick-chick-chick as the sprinkler fans the water across its spray radius. This is what these beetles sound like, as a slow and then fast staccato of static pops. I think the noise itself is actually coming from their wings. It’s an interesting sound.

Shawn was able to capture this awesome pic of one of these little buggers. They look a lot like grasshoppers.

The views today continued to be hazy, with smoky haze filling the valleys from fires further west and north. There is a huge fire around Redding right now, over 38,000 people have been evacuated.

Less than a mile from our tent site, we heard a noise ahead well above the trail and saw a mama bear with two cubs, running uphill into the brush. We made plenty of noise as we walked down the trail to continue making our presence known, eventually getting one more glimpse of mama bear as she peered down from the forest above.

Kind of a dark photo. Lots of wildflowers.

Unlike our last several days on the trail, after about 1pm, we didn’t see any hikers for the rest of the day until getting to our tent site just before 8:30pm.

A couple others were camped about 100 yards from us, and not long after we’d set up, another hiker arrived and set up near us. His name was Snacks, aka Snackajowea, from the Chicago area. We chatted with him a bit while we ate our dinners.

One thing this area is not short on is deer. There are several wondering around, not shy to be near humans, and I feel like they will be visiting in the night with the hopes of licking salt off our gear – or stealing it to do this elsewhere.

It sounds harmless enough, though in addition to stealing gear they can really demolish it in their frenzy to lick the salt off. As you can imagine, everything we sweaty hikers have is heavy with salt – particularly our packs and trekking poles.

Once and awhile I hear the deer running around outside. Hopefully they won’t steal anything because I’m so tired, I don’t think I’ll wake up to notice.