Day 102 : Drakesbad

Date 30th July
Mile 1339 to mile 1368 : Stover Spring to Badger Flat
Mileage : 29
Average mileage since day 101 : 16.5
I'm not usually a morning person, and am consequently the last person out of camp, which suits my hiking style fine, today i was up and on the trail early for one very important reason : New shoes! After my debacle with replacement shoes at Sierra City, i was anxious to get it right this time and didn't want any reason for worry, so had sent my shoes well in advance. This has meant that in the last few days my feet have been suffering, and today it was really bad. Clearly my feet knew respite was imminent, so they rejoiced in torturing me with every step i took. I was being so careful to avoid sharp objects, but somehow i stepped painfully on every single sharp rock or branch along the trail to Drakesbad. Drakesbad is a minuscule hot springs located in the Lassen National Forest. The small and sparse information board told me it used to be a refuge for Native Americans escaping the hot summer sun, but after its 'discovery' by the settlers by a man called Drake, a claimed descendant of Sir Francis Drake, it his progressively become a weekend hot springs resort for he general, yet exclusive given the prices, public. While descending toward Drakesbad the smell of sulphur began to fill the air. At first i didn't notice it as i was probably masking it with my own odours, but soon it was almost choking in its potency. The reason for all this sulphur was Terminal Geyser. A short side trail took me to the venting geyser and i stood watching the steam billowing out of it for a minute before continuing on. The geyser was proof of finally being in the Cascades! Geologically speaking i have been the Sierra Nevadas between Tehachapi and Chester, a distance of over 800 trail miles, but today i start the Cascades. The Cascades are a line of volcanic mountains running from Chester all the way to the Canadian border, and they aren't just mountains, they are full on volcanoes. The first of which is Mt Lassen, a now dormant volcano which has nevertheless erupted man time in recent history and will do again in the future, i just hope they all stay quiet long enough for me to hike past them. Out of Drakesbad the forest turned from the beautiful green canopy to which i am accustomed, to the desolate charred black landscape of one of the largest burn zones i have seen yet. It was so big i didn't manage to make it all the way through that night, and instead slept in a formally majestic grove of colossal pine trees. I don't usually get spooked by the forest, but there was definitely something eerie about a dead forest like this one. As i lay in my sleeping bag drifting off to sleep i could hear the sounds of hundreds of little insects chomping their way through the dead wood and slowly doing their part to fell and decompose the trees and help restore the forest to its former glory in a few decades. The decay of standing dead trees means they could fall at any moment so one should camp a good distance from any suspect tree.  Unfortunately for me the entire forest was suspect, and i had know way of knowing how far the burn zone might continue, and as i was unpreparedto hike any farther that evening, had no choice but to make my home for the night amongst standing and felled giant trees of black charcoal. With the forest alive with the sound of hundreds of minuscule unseen lumberjacks i finished my evening routine, fell asleep quickly and didn't think anymore about the dead forest until the morning.

Mt Lassen, the first of the Cascade mountains that I will follow al the way up to Canada



The trail winds through the woods of northern California