PCT 2026 DAY 141 – CA Section Q – Marble Everywhere

Sunday, October 4th, 2026

Waking up is easy to do when this is outside your tent:

A mix of burnt and green forests along the ridges today.

Marble Mountain dominated the view on this particular day. I checked and the mountain and area had real marble stone. I’m a little surprised it wasn’t all mined out, but I guess this mountain doesn’t have as famous marble sources like some of the other well known marble sources. And, of course, it’s now in a designated wilderness to prevent any full scale mining.

Fall colors. Since the forests are mostly evergreen trees, I haven’t been seeing many large trees with color, but a good assortment of bushes and smaller trees gave me some Autumn colors to enjoy.

A cabin with some deer foraging around it.

A little more Fall color along the way.

There haven’t been a lot of lakes along this part of the trail, but here’s one tucked in beside the trail. Being late in the hiking season, you have to be careful about where the waters sources are.

Fortunately, some southbound PCT hikers had updated the Far Out app comments recently, so I was pretty sure I knew where to get water. There was a running stream just ahead of the lake, I didn’t stop to fill up here. I did have to get extra water at the next stream because there are a long water carry up ahead, especially since I would need water for dinner and breakfast cooking.

Then I came face to face with a herd of cattle that were hiking the PCT southbound. Then I noticed some cattle wranglers on horseback and realized they were moving the cattle herd. I moved off the trail, but the wranglers motioned to me to move further off the trail twice. I guess the cattle didn’t like to move towards people… or I smelled THAT bad. Or both. 🙂

Fortunately, there was room for me to get far enough off the trail. There are places that I wouldn’t have much room to get that far off trail.

I was so surprised, I didn’t think to get pictures of the cattle, but did get some pictures of the wranglers on their horses.

I found a nice place to camp with a grand view, but there was a strong wind blowing, so decided to continue my campsite search until I found one that was more sheltered from the wind.