Section 15 - Old Station to Castella View Photos July 15 15 miles. My food box finally showed up this afternoon, from the back of a Ford Bronco marked "Mail," and I left Old Station at 2:45. Indian John's Cafe opened at 8 a.m. and I was parked at a table at 8:01. After a tall stack of pancakes, a bowl of cereal, an omelet, toast, hashbrowns, and coffee I felt better. Shirt and Packrat came into town this morning and we went back to Indian John's for lunch. Shirt and I split a large garlic pizza--a little cheese and sauce poured over a bed of garlic--and I washed it down with a root beer. That ought to keep the mosquitoes away for a while. I'm camped on a volcanic escarpment called Hat Creek Rim with a beautiful view of Mt. Lassen to the south and an almost equally nice view of Mt. Shasta to the north. Much of the rim is devoid of trees after a 1987 fire and is just a grassland now. It does, however, have fabulous views in all directions and is a nice change from forest hiking. I feared this section but the afternoon hike was actually quite nice. There's no water for 30 miles but I'm carrying 1.5 gallons and will be fine. I would have had a different opinion if I had hiked this during the heatwave. Tomorrow I'm going to try to hike the 31 miles to Burney Falls State Park. July 16 31 miles--a new personal record. My feet feel like they've been run over by a jackhammer but I made it to Burney Falls State Park. I was on the trail before 6 a.m.--most definitely a first for me. I dropped off Hat Creek Rim late this morning and crossed the lava flow in the valley below. Much of the flow is covered by a thin layer of dirt and supports shrubs, grasses, and trees. There were, however, several stretches where the black lava sat right at the surface, much as it has since it first poured out. In one place the lava had collapsed leaving a couple of large craters, still devoid of dirt or plant life. At the western edge of the valley, I crossed Hat Creek where PG&E has dammed it to form Crystal and Baum Lakes. PG&E maintains a fish hatchery there and I walked by rows of long hatching tanks. The inviting lakes and surrounding oak grasslands would have made a perfect campsite but I had to move on. Burney Falls is one of the more impressive falls I've seen. The falls are 130 feet high and have water flowing over the top as well as from a line of springs partway down the cliff. The water, from an underground natural reservoir, maintains a nearly constant flow all year round. It's Friday night and the campgrounds are full but, as state parks go, this one seems pretty tame. Families come here for camping vacations, taking advantage of the nature trails and the walking distance to boating and fishing on Lake Britton. It would be a nice place to spend a day but it's 304 miles to Ashland and I have 2 weeks to get there. July 17 24 miles. The last 10 miles of today's hike were very tough. This section of trail has seen little, if any, trail maintenance in decades and much of this afternoon was little more than a bushwhack. In addition, the ongoing logging operations have littered the trail with debris. In some cases the logging has obliterated the trail altogether. I lost the trail several times this afternoon while crossing clearcuts and crude logging roads. I know the country needs wood but the destruction of trail is a shame, if not criminal. The PCT needs a logging-free buffer zone or at least a requirement that logging operations protect the trail's integrity. I surprised a fox, feeding on the trail, as I came around a bend this morning. It was the first one I've seen up close. Speaking of up close, I forgot to mention the two skunks I saw yesterday on Hat Creek Rim. The first one was feeding on the trail at sunrise, just a few feet away , and raised its tail in a defensive posture when it saw me. I froze, hoping fervently that it wouldn't spray me, and after a few seconds it waddled off into the grass--its tail still high. My prayers were answered. I'm camped on a forested saddle just below "Peak 5432" in the Shasta National Forest I had a great view today of 14,000 foot Mt. Shasta, towering above everything around it. I'm about as close to the mountain as I'll get because tomorrow the trail makes a big turn to the west on its way to Interstate 5 and the Trinity Alps. July 18 - Happy Birthday Cynthia! 25 miles. More bushwhacking today through head high brush and fallen logs. I walked through a couple of clearcuts-- courtesy of Sierra Pacific Industries--that made me both mad and sad. Mad because, as usual, they had obliterated the trail; sad because the land had been raped so viciously. This was not selective cutting. This was burn, pillage, and take no prisoners. The area looked like it had hit by a B-1 bombing run. I had some fabulous views of Mt. Shasta this afternoon as I walked high, open ridges. The mountain dominates the landscape, rising 10,000 feet above its surroundings. The trail passes Shasta's southern flanks and heads west, swinging around the mountain as it heads into the Trinity Alps, and emerges far to the north on the Oregon border. I'll probably catch glimpses of the mountain for a couple of weeks to come. Late this afternoon, I climbed to the summit of 6,500-foot Grizzly Peak. I followed fresh bear tracks all the way up. There haven't been any Grizzlies here in at least 75 years but it sure sounds better than "California State Symbol--but hunted to extinction--Peak." From Grizzly Peak I dropped 3,000 feet into a virgin canyon filled with old-growth forest. What a refreshing change from the last couple of days. How do I know it's old-growth forest? Trust me--you know when you're there. The trail is also now much improved with only the occasional fallen log to slow my progress. I'm camped on the trail tonight. The canyon is steep and there are no other flat spots. Judging by the tracks and scat, large animals also use this trail as a thruway. To discourage midnight wanderings I put up log barricades at either end of my camping space. July 19 25+ miles. I'm not sure exactly how far I hiked or, for that matter, where I am because my maps are floating down the McCloud River on their way to the lake. They fell though a crack in the floorboards of a bridge, never to be seen again. Not unless a future archeologist finds them in the sediments of former Lake McCloud. I'm flying blind but, in contrast to the past two days, the trail is now clear and well-marked. Unless I grossly miscalculated I should roll into Castella/Castle Crags State Park tomorrow morning. Today's walk was all forest. Late this afternoon I caught a couple of glimpses of Mt. Shasta through the trees but that was it. I contoured in and out of drainages most of the day, doing my best to avoid the copious poison oak. It thrives below 4,000 feet and I played checkers trying to hop over and around it. I'll know in a few days if I succeeded. The military trains pilots in this area and I got buzzed by two extremely low flying jets going very, very fast. They flew just over the trees, shaking everything under their engines including my nerves. I hope that was the first and last time. I'm camped on the trail again for the same reason as last night. The barricades are up and I'm settled in 'til morning. I'm really looking forward to a semi-rest day tomorrow. It's a 7-day haul to the next stop at Seiad Valley and I need a large calorie injection before I go. I'm also looking forward to some new shoes from Cynthia. After 550 miles, these shoes are barely on life support. July 20 8 miles. I made it to Castle Crags State Park by 10:30 and took the rest of the day off to eat and relax. There's a small market next to the post office (officially the Castella Post Office) and I parked on the lawn not far from the store's front door so I wouldn't have to walk too far to get thirds, fourths, and fifths. New Hampshire Brian joined me on the lawn and we were soon joined by Idaho Brian, Jamie, Beth, and Charlotte. For hours bodies went into the market and shopping bags came out. It would have made a great scene for time-lapse photography. Late this afternoon, when the food river had shrunk to a mere creek, a woman drove up and offered to take us to Dunsmuir for...MORE FOOD! Adele Kenney, a local Native American whose father had befriended PCTers for decades until his recent death, piled us into her cars and off we went. First a stop at the Laundromat and then off to the pizza parlor. Dunsmuir is a quaint, small town situated on the banks of the Sacramento River. It was, until the early 90's, at the center of a prime trout fishing industry. Unfortunately, a train derailment just upstream dumped a tankerfull of pesticide into the river and killed nearly every living thing for 30 miles downstream to Lake Shasta. Adele says that the fish were jumping out of the river in a futile effort to escape. The river is recovering now but Dunsmuir is still suffering. You can see it in the tattered shutters and the peeling paint. Full and clean-clothed, we returned to Castle Crags State Park for the night. Adele left towels, soap, and shampoo and for 4 quarters I took a 10-minute hot shower. Life is good.