Bucket here – Sage and I made it to the road at Etna Summit yesterday morning with no problems. Eventually 3 other hikers also showed up. An older couple with a pickup truck came by and offered all of us a ride into town. So we all climbed into the back of the truck with our backpacks and got a ride to town!
Soon after we got to town, you could see the smoke near the summit expanding very quickly and filled the entire sky within a few hours. There are a lot of hikers in town trying to figure out what to do next. We were told that the forest service had a person stationed at the trailhead where we get back on. They were telling hikers the trail was not officially closed, but they did not recommend hiking due to the excessive smoke. So we’ll try to learn more today.
As Joy mentioned, the 20 mile section we just came through was rumored to be impassable due to 3 fires along the trail. But we made it through with no problems. 2 of the fires were far enough away to have no impact, and the 3rd fire we could not even see any evidence it existed. It was actually a very pretty section of trail ( I posted photos last night).
I’m sure everyone is trying to be helpful, and are working from the best information they have – but this is the 3rd time that hikers have said trail sections needed to be bypassed and it was not true. So we rely strongly on the information Joy is able to provide. She has truly become the “fire chaser” for us!
What has been happening the past week or so is that hikers are bypassing hundreds of miles of trail and skipping up north. Some of these bypasses are legitimate – the trail is closed due to fire in many areas. But people are also skipping sections that they hear is not pretty, too hot, too dry, too hard, etc. And the problem this causes is that it jams a lot of hikers into the same area on the trail. So there are lots of hikers all trying to use the same water sources, camping at limited available tentsites, etc.
We passed a southbound hiker one morning at 9:30 am several days ago. He said I was the 30th hiker he had passed going northbound so far that day! So this is creating a bit of a challenge.
The wildfires are obviously another challenge that changes from day-to-day (and sometimes hour- to-hour). And when we’re out in the middle of the wilderness with no cell service or internet, we rely on Joy via the Garmin system to provide us the best information she can gather.
We’re hoping to learn more today in town to see if we can continue to hike north from Etna Summit, or need to hitch a ride north and bypass a section of trail. We hope we can hike – we came out here to hike! But time will tell.
Otherwise, things have been going well for Sage and I. We continue to take this trek one day at a time. Each day brings a new set of challenges to overcome. We sincerely appreciate everyone that is following this journey on the website! Thank you for your prayers and encouragement.