Miles 1294-1335 (zero miles walked, all miles were hitchiking)
Elevation 5,600'
Oh man, that fire got really bad overnight :( last I heard it was over 1,000 acres. The Belden PO was still open. Whew! We got a ride from a couple who goes by "Chillbilly" and "Stands With Fists". Oh my gosh they are absolutely hilarious. I was laughing the entire car ride there. They are possibly the funniest people I've met. Lol! And their dog Knuckles is so cool. Looks a lot like a bigger version of Gizmo.
We got to the Belden PO and there were fire trucks everywhere. I took a lot of pics. You could hear chainsaws going off all over the forest. Its nuts too, because the hillside is really steep, it was hard for them to get ground crews up there. They had a helicopter dumping water on the fire too. Dang the firefighters are awesome. There is this huge gigantic water pipe that goes up the side of the mountain, there was a crew there clearing brush on both sides of the pipe. I thought to myself, holy crap how the hell did they get up there?? Not only is the hillside almost vertical, but they had to get up there, carrying chainsaws! Anyhow, hats off to all those men and women out there. Dang that is so nuts. But the fire crews are doing an awesome job protecting the canyon and the communities in there.
I took some pics of the fire and the smoke. It got way gnarly around 1pm which is right when we left the area, because the winds came up. There's a pic of the fire I took with a lake in the foreground. That was just outside of Chester, which is 30ish miles away. O.o
So the trail is closed here, and the road walk detour that hikers took a couple days ago is now closed too. Dang. So we had to hitch to Chester. It was an interesting trip. Our hitching went something like this: Belden (hwy 70) --> hwy 89 --> Greenville --> Canyon Dam --> Chester --> PCT
Whew! You know those days where you're on an airplane flight with many layovers, and at the end of the day you're super tired, yet you've done nothing but sit on your ass all day? That's kinda how we feel like. Lol. We really didn't do any physical activity today, yet I'm tired. Lol. Weird. Anyhow, stoked to be back on trail and away from that fire. Ugh, I hope it's going well. Firefighters rock. <3
Thank you to all the epic people who picked us up! You guys all rock!! Oh man I've met some pretty interesting people in the last 24 hours of Hitchiking. Lol! I literally could write a book just on my pct Hitchiking experiences alone.
It's interesting how, people-wise, there was a dramatic change since we left Tahoe. Dang. Now I finally understand why people from northern California dislike people from southern California. Lol. All throughout the trail I've experienced amazing kindness and generosity from random strangers. I honestly didn't think people could get any cooler. And then I enter norcal. WOW. People just got exponentially cooler. <3. Seems like the further north we go, the cooler people get. I think the majority of LA tourists stop at Tahoe and dont go any further north. Lol! Bibi was telling us, she's from Spokane WA, and said people up there are super cool.
So does that mean that level of awesomeness is directly proportional to degree of latitude? And distance away from equator? Lol. Cuz I really like Australians and Canadians and they're both kinda far from the equator. Lol. But then again Hawaii and Costa Rica are right by the equator and both are filled with epic people. Hmm. :)
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