DAY 103: HAT CREEK RIM

5:00 am on Hat Creek Rim

 miles: 26

Waking up at 4:00 am is never enjoyable. Ben hates it even more than I do and this is why it is so hard to wake him up in the morning. I felt the urgency deep inside my chest and I could not wait to get moving. Ben - sound asleep. It took a good half an hour for us to get moving in our sleeping bags and it was already 5:30 by the time we actually were moving. Luckily, we were in for a stunning sunrise.

The hiking was easy on this particular morning. Hat Creek Rim is not difficult in terms of elevation, it is basically flat as a trail can possibly be. So for the first 10-15 miles or so we are cruising! This stretch of trail tends to be dubbed the "33 mile waterless stretch" so I left Old Station with almost 5 liters of water. I wanted to make sure I had enough to dry camp AND make it to the end of Hat Creek Rim in the heat of the day. A lot of hikers chose to bring only a couple liters in hope of a supposed cache, "Cache 22". They completely relied on this (to me - fictitious) cache! Where did they hear about this? Why wasn't I aware of it? Can you ever really trust a cache?

You never know how many hikers are in front of you and how much water they will take, so I tend to err on the side of caution and bring too much water, rather than rely on water caches. You just... never know.

Even in the morning my candy bars are pliable.

Ben opening one of many (cow?) gates.

Can you spot the creature print amongst the foot prints? Hint: it is a TINY hand. 

 These tiny tracks were all over the trail this morning. I have yet to identify them, but they must be a small creature because they are no more than an inch in length. They also have little nails. The creature seems to have been using the trail as a highway for quite some time, going this way and that. At one point the tracks reach another set of tracks (coming from the opposite direction) head on, as if they were having some sort of meeting on the trail. Maybe a friendly nose sniff?

Another soft candy bar. Yeah, we eat a lot of these.

So it turns out the water cache does indeed exist (and has enough water for a hundred thru-hikers)... and I didn't need to be carrying 8 and a half pounds of water after all.

We hung around at the cache much longer than expected... we typically do not hang around in the mornings because we like to get a lot of miles done first thing when we have the most energy, but there was a trail register to read and sign, Nurse Betty was there having a snack, and we were enjoying sitting in plastic chairs.

Ben at the water cache/trail magic "Cache 22"

Came up on this.... water cache (?) ... Laundry detergent water?

A bad photo of Ben at Cache 22 enjoying a Pro Bar. Check out his leg muscles. 

It felt like we were in South Africa. Not that I know what that is like...

Starting to see some lava rock. Starting to trip on lava rocks.

Starting to get hot hot hot.

Warner Springs anyone? This section reminded me a lot of the beginning of the trail. Are we in the desert again?

Cows and lava. 

View from the top of Hat Creek Rim. We are HIGH up.

How do cow hooves like lava rocks?

LAVA.

At this point in the day (after lunch... maybe around 1:00 pm?) it gets hot. We descend down into the oven of lava hell. I'm being serious. It was like we were being roasted in an oven. An oven littered with hot, sharp, loose, lava rocks for you to step on/trip on.

This was less than ideal and highly unenjoyable and I began to spiral down into a very unpleasant place - a mood only reserved for lava rocks.

It is safe to say that this was one of the most difficult days on trail for me. The lava oven + tripping on lava rocks + thirst.

I will elaborate on this day further at a later date because (I'll be honest) I just lost all of the text I had typed. I just deleted everything, the rest of today's story. I don't have the energy to rewrite it. COMING SOON!