heading out of shasta

i left mt shasta far far later than i'd planned; in fact i'd planned to do an in & out and ended up staying 30 hours... so i night hiked up castle crags, just out of the trail head - and it was spectacular: this beautiful, fat, waxing gibbous moon lighting up these epic cliffs. i tried to take photos but there wasn't enough light...





this was early in the monring, around the back of the cliffs. you can see the track cutting through the bushes...





and this is a fabulous couple i met - don & anita. i meet so many cool people, but these guys were awesome. they'd done about 500 miles of the trail in little bits, but they were telling me about their adventures in australia and india, and they were heading off to turkey later this year...

earlier this day i met 5 women maybe late 50s-early 60s, who'd hiked up to go for a swim in one of the many lakes in this section... they were very fun too.


and these are pretty ordinary pictures of some of the many lakes. i've been constantly walking past lakes for days...













sometimes i'll hike past quite dry rocky sections, and then there'll be a creek cutting through choked with greenery and fabulous flowers, better than any garden. and then there'll be tall tree sections, firs or pines, with this hairy fluoro lichen which catches the late afternoon sunshine, and at times i'll be looking through this to a meadow, where a deer is grazing...








the track often runs through fields of rocks, like this one - where some excellent people have pulverised the rocks to make a good track...








this is a pretty ordinary camera-struggling-to-focus shot (the meadowy looking picture), but you can see one of the hairy lichen trees...













and this is me after totally missing out on sleep in shasta, then hiking late and starting very early... (the photo sums up my mental state and decision making process)...








and another lake shot...













this was a young buck running down the path in front of headbanger and i...














and this is the track, with headbanger just disappearing round the corner....










despite the clouds of mozzies which appear the moment you are stationary (and actually often well before you are stationary), i have persisted in tarping it (cowboy camping/sleeping under the stars). it has been pointed out to me that this is one of the reasons we carry tents, but i much prefer being out and being able to see the stars...

[i wanted to put up a lot more photos - today was particularly spectacular - but it's quite late and i have a bit of a dud head...][don't think i ever really wrote that i'm in etna, mile 1606 roughly]