Day 57 to 66: Waiting, sleeping, bailing.

Day 57

31 May 2019

My initial plan was to head back out on trail at 11 am. However after talking to a bunch of hikers hiking north who told me it took them 7 days to do the next 100 miles it kinda made me realize how tough the conditions really were up there. I decided to sleep on it and got another night at my hotel catching up on some podcasts and TV while eating delicious bread ... not bad.

Day 58

‌1 June 2019

I wanted to go back on trail early but quickly realized the champions league final was on...

I asked some locals where I could watch it and they told me a bar close by might agree to put it on for me as nothing else was going on midday. I got lucky and watched the final, the game in itself sucked but I talked to some nice people while sitting at the counter so it made up for it!

I got back on trail at 4pm. Unfortunately I quickly realized the conditions were above my skill and comfort levels. Very steep traverses and the trail was completely covered in snow. My microspikes were no match for the terrain. After my third self arrest I turned around after having made 5 miles in 3 hours.

As one can expect there isn’t much traffic in the mountains at 9pm on a Saturday. I had to road walk the 9 miles back to Etna feeling very down about today and my whole plan of flipping. What is the point of going up north of the trail is the same, sometimes even worse than in the Sierras?

I managed to get to Etna at 00:30am and put my tent up in the city park.

Day 58

‌2 June 2019

To road walk or not to road walk, that is the question.

Another hiker I met in Seiad Valley (« Happy Cowboy ») hiking south also made it to Etna and we enjoyed steaks in the city campground.

By the way this campground was awesome. Free charging, fast WiFi (27 down), toilets and BBQ! Cowboy told me he wanted to attempt the stretch I had just bailed out on and I wished him good luck as he left Etna.

I decided to wait it out a few more days to allow for the snow to melt and my sister, Cecile to arrive so we could tackle the section from Dunsmuir to Chester which was 90% snow free.

Day 59 to 64

‌3 June 2019 to 8 June 2019

Waiting for snow and travelling to San Francisco.

I decided against road walking from Etna to Dunsmuir after a few days since I wanted to come back anyway a few weeks later to do this section - on trail this time.

Fortunately it was pretty easy to get to SF from Dunsmuir (the start of the section I planned on doing with my sister) since it has an Amtrak station.

I honestly didn’t do much during this week which kinda impacted my moral and made me very antsy about this whole thing. First, every minute not on trail is expensive for any thru hiker and second I really missed hiking. This isn’t groundbreaking information but once your body and mind gets used to any daily activity and it stops suddenly you really miss it.

Day 66

‌9 June 2019

I did eventually make it to SF and seeing the stupid hotel prices I decided to stay at an hostel.

Now you may think there is nothing special about a hostel but this one was in the middle of the Bay Area and felt like a scene straight out Silicon valley (TV show on HBO). It was the startup nation version of an hostel.

Rooms were called Uber, Google and other famous companies. I actually happened to stumble upon a conversation between what appeared to be the CEO and the manager of this particular house. It got pretty heated as they kept arguing about scaling, supplies and how they « had to pump » bookings as last month wasn’t as good as the previous. All of this happened in the living room.

Anyways if this is what hostels will look like in the future I want no part of it. I mean there was 25 of us crammed in 3 rooms, the lines for showers get pretty long, unsurprisingly.

A positive note: it was so disorganized I didn’t pay. When I checked in someone told me I was good. I left it that and promptly left at 9am, excited to meet up with Cecile (my sister).

A short Uber rider later I was at SFO where I met up with Cecile. After some quick sightseeing in SF and a 4 hour car drive to Redding we called it a day.