Week 12 - The Midpoint

Halfway, Norovirus, and The Park Fire

Vibe Check 🔥

We’ve got the midpoint of the PCT and everyone’s feeling good! This section of NorCal isn’t the prettiest or the coolest but at least we can say we are halfway there. This week was characterized by a sense of accomplishment, only to be followed by fire and chaos.

Soooo what happened?

Well we left Quincy in good spirits and headed back to trail early in the day. We slack packed to Beldon, a small town in NorCal that’s well known for the climb out of the city. We hiked 12 miles uphill out of Belden but since we were slack packing it was a breeze! At the top of the hill was the final goodbye to the Sierras and a formal hello to the Cascade mountain range! It felt like we said goodbye to the Sierras multiple times at this point, but this was the last one.

We hiked on that week through the Dixie Fire burn scar, a fire that hit the trail three years ago and the section of trail only opened up this year for hiking. It was an ugly hike, burnt trees were everywhere and littered the trail in the form of blowdowns. The only good part of this burn scar was being able to see the midpoint monument of the PCT. We had finally done it, we had officially made it halfway!

From there we eventually hiked our way into the city of Chester to resupply and head back out to trail. In town we ran into trail friends from earlier in the hike, showered, resupplied and did laundry. We then had to say goodbye to our trail family member Eddy since she had rolled her ankle a week or two earlier and it hadn’t gotten better. She needed a two day zero to recover.

When we left for trail we headed our way through Lassen National Park, which contained another burn scar. As we made our way to the town of Old Station, we started coming across a number of hikers that were sick. We wondered if it was due to the heat wave that had just arrived but after discussions with other hikers we realized we were in the middle of a Norovirus outbreak. Over the course of this 50 mile section we came across 5-10 people with the sickness in the back county. They had all gotten it from the hiker hostel in Chester, thankfully we didn’t stay there and took precautions to not get sick. It was scary going, the idea that we could come down with the sickness at any time out there.

We made it to Old Station and then Burney the next day without issue. We zeroed in Burney but stayed inside and away from other hikers to avoid noro. It was a wild time, and as we stayed in Burney we started hearing about the newly created Park Fire that was growing quickly. It was already at 100k acres and closing in on the trail that we had just passed through. People that were just two days behind us were likely hiking through terrible air quality conditions and possibly at a safety risk. It all started because someone decided it was a good idea to light their car on fire and drive it off a cliff…

Fire Season

I’m under the impression that most people that read these newsletters are not from states that are regularly on fire. Therefore, I believe I should explain how wild fires work out west. Due to environmental factors and human stupidity, the west coast (and plenty of other North American areas) have seen an increase in wild fires. These can be started because of lightning strikes, bonfires, fireworks, gender reveal parties or even cars lit on fire and driven off cliffs! The thing about them in relation to trail is that they can cause the PCTA to shut down sections of trail to ensure the health and safety of the hikers. If a fire starts it doesn’t have to hit the trail for the trail to be closed. If the trail is within a distance of the fire that has been subject to an evacuation warning then it is likely shut down. If the fire is ON the trail, the trail will likely be closed for the next few years in order to ensure the trail is safe to hike. If the fire isn’t on the trail, there’s always still a chance it will be contained and out by the time hikers get there. If that happens the PCTA can open up the trail again for foot traffic. If you go through a closed PCT trail section, you put yourself at a safety risk, you’ll likely be hiking through low quality of air and you can get a fine and your pct permit revoked. It’s always better to just avoid closed sections if possible. Fires have always been a known risk for hiking the PCT but it’s crazy just how many there are. We will definitely have to skip more sections of trail in the future but we are glad to have made it past the Park Fire before the upcoming trail closures.