This 90-mile section of trail took me through the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. When I left Burney it was socked in with smoke from the Park fire. Consequently, some well-intentioned folks on Facebook were recommending that PCT hikers skip up to Dunsmuir, and it appears that the majority of the PCT hikers around me did exactly that. I tend to be much more stubborn about maintaining my continuous footpath though (and admittedly this sometimes gets me into trouble), and because the PCT runs about seven miles north of Burney, I hitched a ride up to the trail to see conditions for myself. What I found when I got there was the smoke was mostly lifted.

So I decided to go for it. The trail through this section was a little overgrown in spots, which did some damage to my shins (should have zipped the legs back on my convertible pants), but otherwise conditions were beautiful. I saw only two other hikers (one NOBO and one SOBO) over this four days.

After hiking the last 100 miles through burn scars, it was really nice to be hiking in green again. I also saw a lot more wildlife than I have any previous sections of this trail (not including fish).

I did have one near disaster. On the second night I was hiking the last couple miles in the dark, and was just about finished when I reached for my phone and it wasn't in the pack pocket where it was supposed to be. I use my phone for navigation, info on water sources, camping spots, etc, so that was an alarming development. The brush was very overgrown through much of that area, and I could see how it could have knocked my phone out of my pocket that is attached to one of my pack straps. I knew the last time I looked at it, it said 1.7 miles to the next water source. So I backtracked what I thought was two miles with my headlamp, hoping I would see it on the trail. No luck.

My next idea was to wait until 4:45 in the morning when the alarm would be going off, and hopefully I would hear it as I walked the two-mile section of trail. No luck with that idea either.

For my third try, I very slowly walked back over that two miles, and carefully checked under every bush that looked like it was tall enough to knock the phone out of my pocket. No luck with that either.

After that failed, I essentially gave up, and started thinking of ways I could navigate the last 40 miles back to civilization. At this point I had not seen any other hikers for the previous two days, so it felt like I was there by myself. I had pretty much gone back through that entire two-mile section for the fourth time, and I had no intention of going through it again.

Then something black in the middle of a bush caught my eye. There it was! Talk about going from the lowest of lows to highest of highs instantly! I was back in the game.