Pacific Crest Trail - Day 49
Start: Mile 485.6 - Backcountry campsite
End: Mile 505.8 - Bear Campground
Damn, these 20 mile days are becoming a regular occurrence.
We woke up early to beat the heat of the day. Made it out of camp at a respectable 6:45 am with 12 miles of uninterrupted climbing ahead of us.
I’m not sure what’s down there to burn. I’m guessing the sun lit the dirt on fire.
The Poodle Dog Bush in the back is an opportunistic poisonous plant that spreads following wildfire. There was a reforestation crew planting pine trees and using mattocks to clear circles of brush around them. Whatever they were being paid wasn’t enough.
Along those same lines, what do firefighters do in the off-season? It seems like they largely cash (well-deserved) overtime checks during fire season then spend the rest of the year lifting weights and posing for calendars instead of doing preventative and restorative work like we saw the crew out there doing today.
Another thing of note is that the crew were hired from Oregon, and didn’t speak English. Surely immigrants - doing amazing unappreciated work in the hot desert sun to restore a wildfire scorched forest. Labor and immigration in America are unbelievably fucked. We’ll pay firefighters and cops $150,000 plus overtime to sit in their trucks, and then periodically pay a small crew of immigrants $20 an hour to clean up the mess directly attributable to dogshit enforcement of wildfire policy.
Here’s the latest example from a fire last summer near Reno, Nevada. Why the fuck do we pay billions for cops, firefighters, and park rangers if they can’t take a quick loop around a campground on a red-flag day? Obviously someone started a fire and didn’t put it out, but we literally have satellites that can detect campfires, and spend billions on people who seem to be more interested in deporting those immigrants reforesting devastation than waking up from their naps to enforce policy and natural public resources.
I’m happy to listen to counter-arguments justifying budgets for law enforcement and firefighters who don’t participate in anything but actively fighting fires. I’d suggest walking through hundreds of miles of fire devastated Southern California wilderness first.
Views from the ridge. Time for a siesta!
We were expecting a similarly sun-exposed stretch walking out of the campground where we killed 4 hours in the shade, but found a beautiful shaded green forest instead. Expectations are constantly upended in the best way on Pacific Crest Trail, mile-by-mile, minute-by-minute. I’m learning to drop them altogether and my legs are strong enough now that it doesn’t really matter what climb/water carry/obstacles lay ahead.
Self portrait.
500 marker with a newly planted pine tree surrounded by Poodle Dog Brush. Appropriate for this section!
500!
