May 12th
The early morning hours were cold, probably in the 30’s, which made for a difficult time getting motivated to move out of the warm sleeping bag. We got our latest start yet and were finally underway at 8:45am.
The day’s walk was a gentle one with mostly contours and a very steady downhill trend, losing altitude very gradually. Starting out as a ridge walk and ending by following Holcomb Creek through its gorge and into Deep Creek Canyon. We leap frogged several time today with Matt and Adam.
We spent Much of the afternoon walking through burned areas. Some burned in 1999 and is showing signs of vigourou regeneration. Some burned in one of the big fires last fall. The burn was of varying severity. Some areas were only lightly touched with low intensity ground fire, while other area were burned so severely that what remains are charred black skeletons and ashen grey earth, with only a few weeds and wildflowers poking through. The trail tread was lost in one or two places and made difficult to find by social trails wandering around doned trees and thick grass regenerating. One spot in particular we spent 15 minutes tryig to sort out the PCT from the myriad of paths made by others looking for the actual trail.
The fire destroyed the east end of a 90 foot wood and steel bridge across Deep Creek. It appears that large tree, several feet in diameter fell across it taking out much of the deck. However, eroion from fire scarred soil has filled in the creek with so much sand and silt that it was an easy ford.
After a 21 mile day, tonight we are camped by a cascading Deep Creek. We bushwacked down to a low sandy bench just above the creek. The frogs are serenading us to sleep as we are spread out under the stars.
