near sisters

Safe and happy near sisters ... will try and write from cascade locks. Fabulous thunder storm some amazing spectacular experiences - getting a ride from Earl & cougar the dog at the moment, should be in cascade locks in 6 days.

greetings from ashland OREGON; the shakespeare capital of somewhere...

wohoo, finally into my second state (although i've just spent the last little while walking through the state of jefferson, somewhere i've always wanted to visit - ridiculously friendly state i must say)... a couple of days ago we were in seiad valley, home of the insane pancake challenge - 5 one pound pancakes in two hours (of the people who attempted it no one made through their second). on the climb out (which started incredibly slowly due to laden blackberry brambles), i startled a bear cub, which went hurtling across the track and careening down the incredibly steep, loose, shaley, slidey slope. i found out daybreaker, who'd left an hour or so before us, had seen the mother and got photos of the cub as it climbed a tree to escape from daybreaker...

this morning, i think i saw a mountain lion cub, which i'd pretty much given up on - so so exciting...




this is the classic hobbit-giant (troll?) shot... this is how they get the hobbits to look small i suspect... daybreaker and i waited for 2 hours for these guys to turn up to the border so we could celebrate together... california is 63% of the trail - 1698.8 miles, feels kind of weird and kind of amazing to finally be in oregon...






this is me in my groovy hat at the border - obligatory shot... it really did seem a milestone - and i kept thinking - i'm in oregon... the night before and after the border were far colder than we've had, and way more dewy, i woke up with a soaked sleeping quilt..





and this is looking back at shasta, which we can still see... sadly i think another ufo has entered the picture... someone else is waiting for this computer, so i'm going to hop off for a while and write about the other pictures later...




bubs and i had this amazing icedream and a decent doppio at this place in ashland... the icecream was so so tasty, and these guys let us just keep on tasting the options before giving us 6 half scoops...




these are truffula trees... very very cool....

there are so many more pictures i should be putting up, but i'm on a mission: leaving town and getting to willamette pass where i think i'm meeting ma & pa... bubs is looking over my shoulder because i'm taking so long...

actually leaving now....

so we really are walking out the door now... once again i've managed to stay more than 24 hours in a town i didn't intend to - but what a great town... so good cruising down the street on a bike wearing cotton loaner clothes in the summer breeze...









no time to explain - very briefly, another wall of snow that we hit on the trail... crazy almost plastic looking flowers, a cool lake, and a crazy lizard that was having fun doing extreme glissading.... back on the trail heading for seiad valley, then ashland, then hopefully crater lake where maybe i'll meet up with ma & pa again... yeehah...

still in etna...

i've just spent the night in the hiker hut in etna with wiz, buttercup, ferdy, scout's honour & daybreaker. i caught up with annie yesterday arvo as they were leaving town. she unlike me seems to have mastered the in & out approach. drop dead too was through here yesterday (before i arrived), and the brew pub in etna was a bit like a family reunion...



these are carnivorous plants. i wouldn't have seen them but headbanger had gone further up the creek to see if there were any decent water collecting spots and discovered them... apparently the fly enters through the bottom somehow and then can't get out, and the plant's enzymes consume him... i say, leave the flies alone, get the mozzies...



i really enjoy walking as the sun comes up. when i start, the sky will be full of stars and the trees dark silhouettes standing out against them, and then gradually, as the sky colours up, the stars disappear, and everything starts to sort of glow...



these are not in the right order, but it kind of gives you a wee bit of a feel for the trail for this part... it wound its way through these giant granite slabs and fields of granite boulders... the line in the last one is looking back at the trail...

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]

not very good at towns...

so i'm still not very good at this whole town thing... the idea is to hitch in resupply, and get out - if you want to make good distance. but invariably i get drawn into the social aspect, and seem to slow right down the moment i enter a town, and then have to hike far longer days to maintain pace...

however towns are usually where you get to catch up with people, and generally they're a lot of fun... the first shot is of hot rod, seahorse and chilidog at mt shasta at the goat tavern... spent quite a bit of time at this place...



this is a root beer float... pretty much the same thing as a spider except smaller as far as i can tell. i've never really had a spider cos i don't like soft drink. i think root beer is kind of like sarsaparilla (although i'm not entirely sure what sarsparilla tastes like either...)






these beautiful people are at the brew pub in etna: rock locks, mr fox, mowgli, scout's honour, cricket, daybreaker, colin, gangsta rap, buttercup & wiz...







and this is cricket & garfunkel finishing their root beer floats. it was an original soda counter - very old fashioned...

and yep, even more random shots, with no explanation...

some more random photos...

my zoom isn't working properly and my camera's having problems focusing, and panasonic australia say i'd have to send it back and the process would probably take 4 weeks and probably wouldn't be covered by warranty, so i'm dealing with the tragedy of not being able to take photos of some things...



this is bubs (short for bubbles), after a really dramatic split leap over some twigs. tough landing but she nailed it - quite spectacular...






mt shasta, looking hazy and distant - as is its wont - with that ubiquitous ufo hovering to the left...




and the bridge over squaw creek. further up the trail is where i camped above the creek, on my slidey ledge...

some random shots and a couple of other blogs...

so instead of leaving i chatted to a few people and then got another hour, so i guess i'll be hiking into the evening again... there's a lot of people out there who are more diligent bloggers than me, and i thought i'd put links to some of their sites, in case you were interested...

so wired is reknown for her astonishing blogging diligence... i hiked with her for a little bit of the very first day, and again for a few hours in the sierras - hopefully i'll catch her somewhere in oregon... her experience would be very different to mine, but i believe she actually writes about her day's events, rather than string cheese etc... http://erinspctjournal.blogspot.com/

this is headbanger's - i've hiked with him a few days - he's good to hike with, and on roughly the same time frame as me, although i'm not about to start pulling 46milers... http://leisurelylost.blogspot.com/

and seahorse and chilidog - they're great - theirs is peeinginthebushes.blogspot.com ...




it's really hard picking shots from the small thumbnails: this first one is my sleeping spot one night... it was on a ledge above a river - a decent height above. during the night i kept sliding down so my feet were overhanging the cliff edge. i had to be very careful with my gear cooking and getting set up cos the whole ledge sloped towards the edge...




really cool clouds build up above shasta... it's a 14er - not sure how high but it stands alone so it looks extra impressive...








this was a lazy snake lying on the path one day after i'd spent a couple of days feeling like it was snake country and wondering why i hadn't seen any...




i know this is a pretty ordinary shot, but it looked realy cool - these bright red thistles in front of shasta in teh background, really haven't captured it, often feel like i'm going to have thousands of photos where i'm explaining to people later - 't looked way cooler than this'..




and this is the terminus geyser - apparently not a real geyser at all, but still pretty amazing, you could have cooked a meal on any of the various vents steam was shooting out of, although it would have tasted like sulphur...

ah well (very dud post)

I'm in mt shasta, about to grab some breakfast. Started writing a rambling entry last night but it was very late, so I'll just say: life is most excellent, I'm walking up to 58kms a day which is killing the journal, and hopefully I'll write more here later.

a fair dinkum ramble

So it's well past real midnight and for some tomfool reason I'm still up... I'm in Mt Shasta, a town, surpringly enough, near the mountain called Shasta. Actually from the trailhead I had the option of hitching to Dunsmuir, Castella or Shasta; and I kind of felt it was like choosing between Scotland, Spain or Narnia. Clearly I chose Narnia.


I've been trying to make up some miles recently, which has resulted in some night hiking and some big days... the lack of sleep has not been assisted by some hilarious decisions, including sleeping on a rail way car (with head banger & happy whale) next to an inclined railroad with 60 car freight trains either clanking their way up the incline, or braking their way down. for some reason they felt the need to give their horns a real workout as they passed on a regular basis all night...





another night i searched for a campspot in a logging area using my head torch (harder than it sounds). i thought i spied a reflector on a pole and thought - maybe there's a road up there. as i walked towards it, i realised it was walking towards me. i was trying to get my camera out silently while trying to figure out what it was. it came right up to me, so that its nose was almost touching my stomach; a fawn, still with its spots, and these amazing huge ears - so beautiful. it stood there while i turned my camera on, but as soon as i focused and that red light came on it bolted - story of my animal photography career...

i've been sleepy while walking, which has caused me great amusement. (don't be alarmed, i'm being very safe, as always). i've just started listening to my ipod occasionally, generally i feel like this disconnects me from the world, but it's been really handy for having an audio quiet time. and listening to random songs...

i've had some classic over-tired moments when i've suddenly realised a song is really really sad. kev carmody's song 'droving woman', has some great lyrics about the contentment and beauty of living put in the wide open spaces, and feels very aussie and nostalgic; but mate, it's got to be one of the most ridiculously sad songs ever, especially the version with missy higgins, augie march and paul kelly singing. and despite having heard it heaps of times before, i'm walking down the trail saying 'no way, no way - that's too sad'... and 'only 19' - i feel like this song is one of those background songs for every aussie - it would be a bit unaustralian not to at least vaguely know it (although i'm sure mum and dad probably don't: they maintain they don't know 'how to make gravy', and for years i've been secretly scared DIAC are going to turn up one day and deport them to some island with other people who don't know what a leg bye is, or who invented vegemite). anyway - that bit about frank kicking the land mine, and then the screaming mess bit - well yep, when you've had repeated late nights and you're walking anywhere between 40 and 58kms a day that seems pretty sad, which somehow, in turn, is pretty amusing (when you're tired).

there's been something about the last few sections where i've had way more
of that exultant feeling of being in grand open spaces. i think walking alone, or only briefly with people i get more space to ponder. i'm really really enjoying it, far more than i expected...


i was pondering the other day that of all the places i've lived i feel no connection when i return to the town or city. the people have been fabulous, but the place doesn't feel like 'home'. but the nearby bush that i ran through, like the anakie hills or the gorge in nowra, the hill behind mum and dad's in howrah, canadian forest in ballarat, the escarpment in wollongong or the shearing shed in bourke (not bush and no running involved), these are the places i feel like i belong to - and when i go to those places i feel much more like i'm home... and i realised the other night that i'm starting to recognise northern constellations - ursa major, bootes, corona borealis, cassiopeia and the star arcturus and the lemur (actually annie taught me the lemur - she invented it, and to be honest i'm never sure which deformed square with a tail it is - there a lots of possibilities up there... anyway, it's funny how once the sky is familiar-ish, this place starts to feel more like home...

i shouldn't ramble like this when i've had no sleep, it'll just be embarassing later...



the first photo is of burney falls. these are fabulous. half the water comes spurting out part way down the falls - this place is full of volcanic tunnels and caves and underground water...


the second is the hotspring pool at drakesbad - a guest ranch thing in a national park - with spectacular hospitality.... it's a bad shot, but that's happy whale, chris, scout's honour ( i think), happy meal and hot rod in the pool...


it's hard to pick from the thumbnails, but the bush has been so green and leafy (in between 30 mile waterless, shadeless sections like hat creek rim - which was pretty spectacular with snow clad volcanoes both directions - lassen and shasta)... some of that leafiness has been a sinister amount of poison oak, but beautiful nonetheless...

my feet have taken a fair hammering lately. they're often not the prettiest things in the world, but with at least 3 toenails missing, and some gnarly ogre lumps they are looking pretty darn attractive at present...

and this is the 1500 mile mark... means there's something like 1154 to go...

i'd love to add more but it's now day - i've stayed far too long in this town, and i only have 6 minutes left on this computer... although bizzarely whereas 10 minutes ago there seemed to be a queue, now only one other computer's being used...