Tuesday, September 29th, 2026

(More photos when bandwidth allows)

Some light from the sunrise that greeted me this morning. Almost looks like Fall colors.

Unfortunately, if I would’ve walked a couple steps further on the trail, I would’ve seen a better campsite that would’ve had better sunset and sunrise views. That’s what I get for taking the first one I saw.

I started to see the signs of the burn scar that I would be hiking through for the next day or so. I’ve been expecting it, so it’s not a surprise.

Fortunately, while most of the afternoon was hiking through a big burned out forest there were occasional patches of live trees. That helped keep me motivated to keep going. The tree is always greener on the other side of the burn scar, after all.

The only thing keeping me from being depressed, is that I knew that this burn zone is much smaller compared to the one I went through near Belden. That one was over a hundred miles long.

I originally was going to get all the way out of the Shasta-Trinity Wilderness, but as the afternoon wore on I didn’t think I was gonna make it that far. Since I had my bear bag with me, I didn’t have to push myself to get out of the wilderness.

So I started looking for campsites that weren’t completely burned out, and may have a view.

I reached a saddle between two ridge lines where the far out app mentioned there being campsites. The trick is some of them were directly under dead trees or trees with dead limbs (known as widow makers). I’m not married, but I still try to avoid dying where and when I can.

There were a couple campsites that were completely out in the open, no trees anywhere, so they’d be safe from that. Since this was a saddle there was wind blowing across it, even if it wasn’t very strong at the moment.

So since the perfect campsite wasn’t gonna show itself, I backtracked hundred feet or so and chose a campsite that had some wind protection and was the least likely to kill me. 😛

It had a decent view too, so I think I chose wisely. If this is my last post, then I guess I chose poorly.

Mile 1566.4 to 1578.3 – 11.9 miles total hiked on PCT