Hiking The Pacific Crest Trail: Day 98

Camping at Baum Lake

Evening Full of Mysteries:

• It was already dark and I was situating inside the tent while Serge was still outside. We both heard some rustling in the nearby bushes and thought that perhaps it was a rabbit or a curious deer. Serge was shining his headlamp towards the bush and saw an animal appear and charge at our tent. Serge first thought that it was a raccoon. As the animal was getting closer to our tent, probably blinded by the head lamp and not seeing Serge’s silhouette, Serge moved to grab his hiking poles to prepare for a battle (because whooping raccoon’s ass is what my fearless man does :)). Poor guy noticed Serge last minute and in astonishment stopped and puffed up his tail like a peacock. It turned out to be a skunk! I immediately yelled out to Serge not to scare him because he will spray if felt threatened. Thankfully, skunk has retrieved back into the bushes and I continued to get ready for bed in hopes that we will not have any surprises in the middle of the night.
• So at this point I am laying in the tent with my glasses off, Serge was still outside. I notice through our open tent curtain a huge fire ball flying in the sky. I’m like “whoaaah that’s a huge falling star”, then in millisecond I am realizing that it could not be, bc I am not wearing glasses and there is no way I would be able to see a falling star without glasses. I immediately put them on and yell to Serge to look. He was in astonishment. It was a huge fire ball, half the size of a moon, leaving a trace and we could see it fall apart as it disappeared behind the tree line. I immediately thought it was a meteor or a UFO, you never know with all that freaky shyt that goes down in Cali. Serge thought it was a crashing plane and was waiting for a big BOOM.
• At this point I am super spooky and just want for the night to be over. Finally, Serge gets into tent and all of the sudden we hear very loud and distinct stomping of something HEAVY. We both froze in our tent, not breathing, trying to listen to the beast’s next move. We heard a few hackling noises that are very hard to describe and which we have never heard before. I was certain that it wasn’t a deer or a bear as we would have heard each animal approach through the noise of breaking sticks on the ground. But we didn’t hear such noise as heavy stomping appeared very sudden. We then heard hackling noise disappear into the distance, letting us know that danger has passed. Thankfully, rest of the night went uneventful.
• Next day Serge browsed the news and found out that it was actually a Chinese rocket debrees falling from space, like space junk. It was seen in 4 different states. That made us feel slightly more sane about last night. However, no sightings of big foot were reported.

Entrance to Subway Cave

A young black bear walking along one of the logging roads

Our Animal Encounter:

• On the last evening before getting to town, we were hiking to this awesome camp spot that I’ve read about in my guidebook. We would have a perfect view of the majestic Mt. Shasta. As we were getting close to our camp, right below our trail there was a dirt road that would eventually connect to our camping spot. Right on that dirt road Serge saw a black bear walking in the direction of our camp. We immediately made noise, to let him know that there are humans out there in hopes of deviating him from his path. At this point all I can think of that we will totally have a bear in our camp that night. To our luck, the bear never appeared anywhere near our tent. We have been on the trail for 3 months and never had a bear encounter. Deep inside I was glad that it happened from a distance and we actually got to observe him and not have to fight him off.
• The next morning we woke up very early and were on the trail by 6am in hopes of making it into town for breakfast. As we were hiking, I heard some rustling noise up a hill on our left. It was a gentle noise that you could barely hear in between our walking. I automatically thought that it was a deer and paid no attention. I continued to hear the noise a few more times until I turned my head to look up and saw a silhouette of a big furry head. It did not take me long to realize that it was a bear looking straight at me. I immediately notified Serge that we are in presence of a bear and we should not stop and continue going. Serge started making banging our hiking poles to make noise and the bear seemed to be startled and began moving away from us up the hill. That is when we saw two little cubs run up the hill with their momma. It was crazy to think that here we were, 3 months on the trail, never a bear encounter, and here we had two in less than 12 hours.

Our camping spot with a clear view of Mt.Shasta