Pacific Crest Trail - Days 137 - 140 - Ashland, Oregon
Start: Mile 1695.2 - Backcountry campsite
End: 1733.5 - Backcountry campsite
We woke up motivated with twenty-five something miles ahead into Ashland, Oregon. At this point we‘ve seen Mount Shasta from nearly every angle except due East. It’s beautiful from every direction and still looms large well into Oregon.
In my head, these yellow sun-dried foothills are Southern Oregon. Happy to see them again, but something tells me the PCT through Southern Oregon isn’t going to be a stroll through rolling foothills.
1700 miles! These markers are declining precipitously in ambition and craftsmanship.
Maybe it’s our turn to craft one?
We identified a forest road that cut off a mile or so of distance to Ashland and seized the opportunity. The PCT consisted of lots of forest road treks in its early days, but now offers a trail for a grand majority of miles.
Below a log on the road we found a bunch of shot up beer cans (and a single full one) where someone must’ve been practicing their shooting accuracy out of a moving vehicle - otherwise known as Saturday night in rural Southern Oregon.
I packed the shot up cans out in a plastic tortilla bag for good trail karma.
There are a bunch of these wide open areas along forested hillsides where trees stop growing. I assume it has something to do with the makeup of the volcanic soil in particular areas that prevents trees from thriving but can’t say for sure.
An observatory atop Mt. Ashland.
Met a chipmunk who might as well be an old Italian guy out for an afternoon stroll.
Trail Magic! Cold Shasta soda was a perfect refreshment!
A super bloom of wildflowers covered the hillsides of Mt. Ashland. A ton of locals and day hikers were out enjoying it.
Insert sign here.
If I could put up a sign it would probably be a bad paraphrasing of David Graeber, David Foster Wallace, Hunter Thompson, Anthony Bourdain, or a Craig Finn lyric.
Or maybe this one needs a sticker of the victory screen from The Oregon Trail, which as far as I know, nobody has ever seen.
PCT signs are just targets for high powered rifles fired from trailheads at this point.
These are, of course, shot by the same dipshits who are only aware of the second of twenty seven amendments to the Constitution - and who are currently cheering on a new modern version of fascism sponsored by Depends adult diapers.
Nice shot, Tanner! Maybe retake 8th grade civics, huh?
This ^
We’ve hiked 1700 miles through the western Wilderness without a stove or a single campfire.
Interesting to see ceramic insulators on the power lines. It seems like most wild fires start from power lines at this point.
A few posts ago I made a facetious joke about killing all the bears as a solution to minimizing human-bear interaction in the wilderness. It wasn’t a joke - it is/was effectively policy until they were all dead, and here we are.
I bought a book for a friends’ kids’ first birthday. Never too early to teach independence and defiance.
Scenes from Ashland.
Ashland is easily one of the best towns in America.
Too close to home, man.
Be careful! Vintage Subaru Brats are potent lesbian aphrodisiacs!
you used to be able to order this exact home from a Sears catalog for a few thousand dollars (a fraction of a median yearly salary) approximately 90 years ago.
It would be shipped to you via train as a kit and built by professional builders.
We don’t have a housing crisis, we have a baby boomers are rent seeking opportunistic NIMBY assholes crisis.
Tax land according to value and tax every incremental home owned beyond a primary residence at an exponential rate and young people will be able to afford existence in America again.!
According to the geometry of foreshortening, this werewolf’s arm is as long as his thousand yard stare.
Packed and shipped resupply packages for all of Oregon!
Kristin’s trail name is Llama, short for eat your food Tina, you stupid Llama.
Pilot Rock. Some fellow hikers saw a preregrine falcon nearby.
We filtered from this spring, but weren’t sure why the warning existed.
We didn’t bother filtering from the next one piped straight out of the ground.
It was 103 degrees F hiking out of Ashland. Easily our hottest day on trail. Things got marginally cooler on the ridges a couple thousand feet higher but still 🥵!
These power lines evoked thoughts of War of the Worlds.
I’m not scared of anything except panicking herds of humanity (and maybe prions). One scene in War of the Worlds captures that feeling viscerally and immaculately in a book presumably about a violent existential alien threat.
We had a very … ambitious? hiker catch up to us moving at an incredible pace which we figured was to catch up with friends or make it 10 miles to the next water supply who turned out to immediately begin pitching his tent ahead of us on the one campsite listed on the FarOut app for the next five miles.
Asshole. But one every 1700+ miles is a rate I can abide.
This turquoise was immediately downhill from the site we found, and something we never would have seen if we hadn’t been displaced by an eager beaver we’ll likely never see again.