Day 81-84

I left Burney Falls Monday morning and headed toward a stream about 6-7 miles from there that was said to be a good place to swim.  I found the spot, a stream about 8 feet wide in a steep canyon.  The trail crosses it using a bridge.  I left my pack at the bridge and walked back down the trail 100 feet or so.  After scrambling down a very steep, rocky slope between some cliffs I reached the bottom of a waterfall.  The water drops down 25 feet or so into a deep pool, surrounded almost completely by rock cliffs except where it flows out down another shorter falls.  It was pretty awesome looking and if my phone hadn't been dead I would have gotten a picture.  I took a couple from above later with my camera though.  The water was pretty cold though.  It took me a while to finally jump in but no time at all to scramble back out.

I hiked about 20-22 miles a day for the next few days, hardly seeing anyone.  The only other thru-hiker I would see was G-Man.  On Tuesday I saw a couple bear cubs scrambling up a tree down a steep slope off the trail a bit.  I could hear the mom down in the brush but couldn't see her.  She probably couldn't see me either.  I didn't hang around long enough for her to come check what was making noise on the hill above her though.

Thursday afternoon G-Man and I reached Castella.  There's a market there with a gas station.  It was a large enough store to have the food I needed for the next leg of the hike.  Yeah, talking about food again; I got a sandwich, bag of chips and a peach, followed later by a pint of Ben and Jerry's, then a burrito.  G-Man simply got a whole box of ice cream and ate the whole thing, something else I should have gotten a picture of.