Day 77; Thur July 12 2007

(Dr Bug) 4:12 am: There is a crack and thud in the direction where our food bag was hung last night. "Was that our food?". "No", Susan replys, "branches have been falling all night, go back to sleep". I couldn't sleep, a bear could be gobbling up my trail mix! Besides, I have been winning, a bear can't get the best of me, and take MY food! I jumped out the sleeping bag, put on a head lamp, and grabbed a weapon, my trusty hiking pole. Bravely I stumbled, tripped and gropped my way to the food hang.

This forest looks alot different at night; low intensity lighting, shadows. I had a hard time finding the hang. Then I realized - forgot my glasses. No wonder I was having vision issues. Besides, I wanted to see the fear in that bears eyes when I appeared wealding this telescoping, ultralight, hiking pole\weapon. After all it has a titanium tip!

Back to the sleeping bag I went. It was harder to return than I expected! But eye wear was retreived. Now that I could actually see, I'd be at the scene of the crime in no time. Well, not really. Things still look different in the dark, even with corrective lens. ...one big tree, turn left, another big tree...(gee, all these trees look big - should I be going north or east?). Oh! There's the bag, right where I hung it. Susan was right, must have been a tree branch. Oh well, back to sleep. Let's see, go south, big tree, more big trees, unfamiliar dead tree, a bunch of little trees, never before seen, hummm, "WHERE AM I?"...."Susan, where are you?". "I'm over here honey", she replys in a normal tone of voice that implies 30 feet distance. (Good, now I can protect her now that I know where she is...)
With my berrings corrected, I return to a warm sleeping bag after placing my trusty titanium tipped hiking pole at my side. Food safe.

We started hiking about 7 today. Wandering around in the dark stole some of my beauty sleep. After about 4 miles we reached Feather River, a good size rocky river in a deep gorge. Susan and I climbed down, took off most of our clothes and Susan went swimming. I washed myself and some clothes. The 10am sun was warm and it felt great to be clean. We ate a second beakfast, then started the uphill hike out of the gorge.

The ground was covered in oak leaves for the first time I could recall. Susan said they were live oak. There was also copious amounts of poision oak and after yet another lesson in identification, I decided the best thing for me to do was avoid all contact with plant life for the entire day. Poision oak is the "shape shifter" of plants. A little while later Susan spotted a dead bear. It looked young, maybe a year or two, it was sad.

After up over and down, we crossed Bear Creek. This started a seven mile up hill stretch. It sounds worse than it was; the forest was shaded, oaks, pole pines and later white pines.

There was an upcoming section of 12 miles with no water. I was constantly referring to the maps, making sure we were to fill up before that stretch.

At the end of the day we climbed Buck Summit. The view of the surrounding forest was comprehensive. Mansenita, white pine, spruce. The vegetation was very thick. We camped on the top of the ridge and hiked about 25 miles today.