nature – Bifocals and Barbells

Quasi Granola Girl Meets Mt. Eddy

I didn’t plan to make this a granola girl summer, but I’ve done a lot more hiking than ever before. So much so that “I’m going to go walk around and eat peanuts” was an entire description of a plan.

Yesterday’s trail mix justifier was Mt. Eddy. It’s another one of those beautiful sites right here in our backyard that I’m ashamed I haven’t appreciated before now. It’s about an hour and a half north of Redding. Thankfully for my little non-subaru grocery getter, the road to is it nice and paved. It’s probably not a great road for people who don’t like to look straight down off a roadway to tree tops hundreds of feet below them, but if you’re good with that, the drive alone is stunning enough without any hike involved.

The trail from Deadfall Lake trailhead, was NOT hard to locate. Which foreshadowed my adventure when I initially couldn’t find it. There is a lot of babbling brook, falling water, cooling meadows, and serene lake front. Even before the alpine section of the trail, it became my favorite adventure of the summer.

The trail took me 2 and 10 minutes to get to the top. Roughly 2 hours and 9 minutes of that is completely west facing side of the mountain. The view captivates with layer after layer of rugged blue peaks. The backside of Castle Craggs was visible in the distance and all I could think of was the Disney Jungle Cruise joke “the back side of water.”

As noted. I was already impressed.

Then, that very last minute.

Alone and weird, I literally gasped out loud when in the course of about 6 steps, the summit is crested and Mt. Shasta becomes visible smacking you in the face with its prominence and majesty. I knew it was over there the whole hike, but it seemingly appears out of nowhere with a suddenness that made my eyes leak. Granola girls.

I didn’t stay up top long. I had a grocery order to pick up. I stayed long enough to take some pictures. One of a ladybug I decided to call Olive. Allegedly the mountain is named after Olive Eddy. The first woman to summit. It’s not typical for me to get too angry about things like this, and no disrespect to Olive, but c’mon man. I walked up this in 2 hours. You can’t tell me there was no reason for any indigenous woman in the epochs of time to walk up there. Probably laden with children and perhaps a bear carcass. But okay Olive. Credit to you. Luckily the mountain was so beautiful it could be called poop pile and I still would have chosen this as my favorite hike of the year.

I headed down, still very excited about the view.

Things were going great. Until they weren’t.

At a saddle before the summit push, there was a group of 7 ish young men taking pictures with the lake behind them. I can’t tell age, but I’m thinking teens. Clean cut, well-mannered kids that made my boy mom heart smile. They asked me to take their picture. As I did, I noticed things like sheathed large knives, bear spray hanging from their backpacks in the ready position. All things that I didn’t have. I took trail mix and water. We parted and I thought about how I should probably better prepare for things like solo walkabouts.

And that’s when the wheels fell off.

I blame being in my head for the directional fail that happened at that point. I turned left. I should have gone right. When I hike, I listen to music and try not to focus too much on surroundings on the uphill. I don’t like to keep looking up and get discouraged at how much more there is to cover. This is a poor plan. I pressed on in the wrong direction not being sure if the trail was the same. The cell signal was non-existent so I had to rely on other means to know if I was actually lost. I knew that the whole loop was 7.9 miles. Accounting for goofing off walking around, I figured that if I hit nine miles and no Honda, I was certain I was lost.

I was.

The good news is, I’ve put some miles on the Pacific Crest Trail and am now wondering if that can be a goal for me. The bad news is, that 4 miles in the wrong direction was downhill. Which means to correct I had to go 4 miles uphill just to get back to the error point. In total yesterday

If I could have found a way to quit, I would have. I was out of peanuts. I was mad everytime the Garmin watch chirped that I’d gone over my elevation gain goal again. I was listening to nature because somewhere on the trail I lost my earbuds. Granola girls shouldn’t leave electronic waste on the PCT, but there was NO way I was going to walk the 4 miles again to reclaim them. Sorry planet and my grandkids grandkids!

In total I hiked 16 miles of a 7.9 mile hike. 2 hours and 10 minutes to the summit, 5 hours and 10 minutes from the top back to the car. I was tired and hungry and thankful to be back in the car. Maybe not surprisingly, there was an absence of matched sense of urgency from the staff at the McDonalds in WEED. Not making assumptions, but,…Weed.

This will probably be the last hike of the year. Even though I’m trashed today, I’m incredibly thankful I did it. 6 out of 5 stars, even with getting so lost.

Thanks for reading and please let me know if there are other wonders of the local world I’ve missed.

Worth It

Yesterday I learned a valuable lesson, there are specific classifications for hiking trails that expand beyond the scope of “easy, moderate, challenging” ect. I’ve put some miles on my hikers this year. I’d hoped to have my feet be places they’d never been. Living where we do, there is a bounty of beautiful trails to find yourself in moving meditation. Sometimes I’m lucky to chill with some epic and like minded humans on these adventures, but also being out there alone has been an unexpected treat. Turns out I mind my own company a lot less when I’m doing things. Busy body, quiet mind (or whatever the guy said).

As my year progressed, the list of trails I visited has grown. Living in the golden internet age, it’s been great to plan ahead with trail maps and descriptions. I’ve found the information to be both very helpful and to be taken as a personal challenge. The National Park Service says Mt. Lassen summit is “strenuous” and takes 4-5 hours. They say Brokeoff Moutain is 6 hours and is “considered one of the toughest in the park.”

Since I handily made both of those hikes my proverbial bitch, I didn’t give a second thought to walking up Black Butte. Black Butte is 60 ish miles north of Redding and sits right along I-5 like a solitary geological sentinel. It’s an isolated hiccup in the landscape that has probably made more folks than me wonder what the view from the top is like.

My buddy Google said that I would expect to take 3 hours to complete this “moderately difficult” walk. The distance is 5 miles. This was shorter than the last week’s hike of 7 at Brokeoff. The height of Black Butte is 6,300 ish feet. This is less than Brokeoff at 9,200 and Lassen at 10,400.

With confidence, I put in my Walmart grocery order for 11 am pick up, put some water in my backpack, and headed north.

When I’m getting ready to go somewhere new, I enjoy spending time listening to podcasts about my destination. I didn’t find any Black Butte specific pos casts and I chose not to listen to all that Spotify had to offer about Black Butte’s neighbor, Mt. Shasta. Titles such as “Mount Shasta” A History of High Strangeness” “Don’t Be Fooled…Mt. Shasta is EXTREMELY Dangerous” and “These Missing People Cases on Mt. Shasta Don’t Make Sense” didn’t really seem like a good plan before a solo hike.

So with my trashy music instead, I plowed ahead. My Civic just begging me to trade it in for a stereotypical outdoorsy person car as it kicks up dust in to a road whose difficultly to locate does not at all match the ease with which you can see the odd mountain from the freeway.

For not the first time on one of these adventures, I had an “oh thank gawd!” when I found the signs and the other 2 vehicles at the “trailhead.” I blame Spotify for my fully held belief that these 2 vehicles were driven there by blood-thirsty ne’er-do-wells. Soon after I started the hike though, I learned that there’s far too much energy expelled to do much of anything, ne’er or otherwise.

I grossly underestimated the trail. I probably shouldn’t have been there. And probably shouldn’t have been alone.

As I contemplated turning around, insult was added to injury. A doggo met me from the uphill side. A voice called him doggo and said “he’s showing you how it’s done.” The kindly woman accompanying the dog appeared close to my vintage. I know she wasn’t wearing pajamas, but they could have been. She wasn’t cussing or panting. “But she was coming down hill.” Yah, well this trail sucked in both directions sooooo,….

I told her I was happy to see her dog and told her it picked up my spirits so that I may keep going on. “It’s worth it.” She chimed as she bounded past. Clearly she was a cyborg.

As it turned out. The trip took 2 hours 59 minutes and 18 seconds. I technically got it done in the time prescribed. But it pointed out that I am someone who clearly has only done hikes with inflated marketing about their difficulty.

When my beat down ass and my groceries got home (not at 11 at all), I promptly started to look up more about this hike. Turns out there are classifications for hikes similar to rapids; class one etc. They take into consideration things such as if a “climber” (which I am not) has to “scramble.” This hike was like my morning eggs, full of scramble. The hike overall is described as class 2 and 3. Mt. Shasta Summit is also 2-3.

Thanks to people who believe in me more than I believe in myself, Shasta is on my list of already done hikes. And gloriously, I was able to stare at Shasta’s majesty on yesterday’s hike. When I was able to look around instead of looking for the least treacherous steps, I was stunned with what I saw. Also luckily the trail was lightly traveled. That means there weren’t a lot of people to hear me loudly declare repeatedly “fuck you, rock!” Communing with nature isn’t always filled with spiritual fulfillment.

But like doggo owning pajama ladies often are, she was right; incredible experiences after putting in work are “worth it.”

Thanks for reading!