Robert Francisco

Destination: Etna Summit
Starting Location: Etna Summit
Today’s Miles: 0.00
Trip Miles: 1607.40

Etna – Zero
Great day in Etna and a real rest.
Sugar Daddy, Pang & Swiss Miss got in late morning & decided to hike on today. This strategy was not ideal for me because it put me in the smoke zone for an extra day & night. So I decided to go tomorrow morning and push the 56 miles to Seiad Valley in two days. Rolling Thunder, Tadpole the hippo, & Sunny are doing the same.
We watched Life Aquatic & ate microwave popcorn. It was a significant diversion from hiking each day and the mental break was healthy. Distance hiking, while physical, is mostly a mental game and to be able to turn the focus off even for a few brief hours seems to have recharged me.
The atmospheric conditions have deteriorated some what with regard to fire behavior. These conditions provide a greater potential for the fires to expand. However, they have not done so and we are going through the recommended closure.
Section hikers Richard & Doodle Bug got in & we had a nice time comparing notes on trail conditions but more importantly getting caught up on our friends

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Destination: Etna Summit
Starting Location: Just past Bingham Lake outlet
Today’s Miles: 13.10
Trip Miles: 1607.40
Bingham Lake Outlet (1593.2, 6867) to Etna Summit (1606.3, 5960) ascent (2047) descent (3300)

Etna is a great town & it feels like I am in a time warp. A real soda shop in the drug store & when you get a milkshake you actually get a glass with the extra shake. I am sitting in the local diner and the local radio station has not played a country music song recorded after 1970. The really neat thing is that it looks like the town is thriving with all the old downtown buildings fully occupied and open for business. The truck to car ratio is 9.9 to 1, and as Merle Haggard said “cowboy boots are still in style”. I love this town.
Met Turbo & her dog heading south after she flipped around the Sierra. She was bummed that she had “fell for the hype” and flipped. Which reminds me, I owe Scott Williamson a big debt of gratitude. Two days before Kennedy Meadows, when I was so apprehensive about the Sierra, I saw Scott & asked him his opinion. I appreciated what he said because the message was: form your own opinion & do not listen to the hype regardless of the source. He went on to recommend that we try it as “you can always turn around”. How right he was. As Turbo & I discussed she commented that she wished she had heard & followed such wise counsel. Instead she flipped to Old Station as suggested by some of the experts & this provided absolutely no advantages.
Mom said she was up for eating Mexican food and thus she clearly made it through her first chemo-nausea cycle. She is planning on coming to Seiad Valley in a few days to see us off into Oregon.
Staying at the Alderbrook Manor Bed & Breakfast. They have a separate hiker hut that sleeps 6 & for $20 you get a bed, shower, laundry facilities,& internet. The proprietors, Vicki & Dave are wonderful hosts and I have decided to take a real 100% zero day.
The trail is officially closed between Etna & Seiad Valley due to 4 fires burning on the Klamath Forest. That said, we have been told the trail is not burning and “while not advisable” we will not be stopped if we proceed. We proceed – unless the situation deteriorates to a more unsafe level.
I have been contemplating my strategy going forward & I am torn. The group is the best but going my own way is feeling very liberating & offers some logistical advantages. I think I will do a combination going forward where as I will stay close to the team but set a schedule more to my liking. Sunny, Tadpole the hippo, & Rolling Thunder are looking at an Oregon strategy that works for me, so maybe I will hand with them for a bit & see what happens. They hike much faster than me but at the end of the day I do the same miles.

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Destination: Etna
Starting Location: Etna
Today’s Miles: 0.00
Trip Miles: 1607.40

Hello everyone, go-BIG here. In Etna, CA with a fire closure. Deciding what to do. Skipping is a very unatractive option so if conditions are safe, I will likley proceed. In the meantime I am eating milkshakes…two so far.
I want to thank everyone for the tremendous support. Your warm wishes are wonderful inspiration. If you have not signed my guest book please do so as I would love to hear from you. Liz prints them out for me and I read them along the trail…it is great.
Hike on. Oh yea, the photo Sheri labeled as a rattle snake looks a lot like a gopher snake to be…yes I do know the diference, but my sister… well that is a diferent story.

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Destination: Just past Bingham Lake outlet
Starting Location: Saddle after peak
Today’s Miles: 35.50
Trip Miles: 1594.30
Saddle (1557.7, 6160) to Just past Bingham Lake outlet (1593.2, 6867) ascent (5650) descent (4948) 35.5 miles

The perfect end to a perfect day. Just as I was about to resign myself to sleeping on the trail I spotted a perfect cowboy camp bench behind a huge tree on a slope that must be 35%. The moon is barely visible through the tree canopy, the air is perfectly still, and with the thick smoke it feels like a blanket is over the forest.
Met some very nice trail rides at highway 3 who were just heading out. I think his name was Ed, I did not get hers, but the dog’s name was definitely Zeke. Also chatted briefly with a south bounder who introduced himself as a thru-hiker from ’05. But he was section hiking about 500 miles that he did not do last year because he flipped to Canada & did not come back or something like that. The story was getting pretty complicated so I asked for a fire report & moved on. And then no one for the rest of the morning and throughout the day. I loved it.
Decided to try & live up to my trail names even while it is a parody. So I put my 37” inseam to hiking & go-BIG pulled off 35+ miles with + 10k vertical change. It took 14 hours to the minute for a pace a split hair over 2.5 mph. When I finally pulled the clutch in at 8:30 sharp, it felt as though I likely had at least another 5 miles in me. That felt awesome. It took the go mobile 200 mg of vitamin I every 3 hours for the first 9 hours, then it took two doses of 400 mg to bring it home. It was fun to test myself & hey now I get to Etna on Thursday. I hope with all the fire activity I can secure lodging. I also wanted to experiment a bit with bigger miles in case I need to do some later. It is always good to explore what something feels like so if you need to go there you can. I am thinking I may need this tool later on. I may have to do some timing adjustments to my schedule as I get close to finishing. Only way to adjust the schedule is speed up or slow down and either may be an option. I know Liz has some schedule constraints before September 15 but I won’t beat that so no problem. However, Mom is committed to coming to Manning Park also if I make it & her chemo schedule might prove challenging. She is on a 3 week cycle. From what I understand week one is hell & travel is out of the question. Week two is better, & week three is pretty good – then do it again.
So I may need to adjust my finish date to correspond with week 2-3. Knowing go-BIG can go-BIG could help if things get tight. Now if you are wondering if this is consistent with HYOY (Hike your own hike) let me assure you it is. Having my wife & family, especially my mom, in Manning Park is my hike.
Bambi & in this case babies are really cute regardless of your age. Standing at full attention & gull of spots they watched me as I watched them. Then as if on 4 pogo sticks they bounded off after mom.
Lying to one’s self is a subtle thing. Looking back to when I was sick in old station I realized I had begun to write a lie in my head that went something like “yea, I was forced off the trail with a nasty staph infection . . . tough break”. Had I gotten off it would have been because I quit. But quitting does not play as well & so we, or at least me, write stories to make us look good & be right. Too bad we are lying to ourselves as well.
Castle Crags, the Trinity Alps & now the Russian Wilderness have all been great surprises. We are back in real mountains with rugged character again. As I kept seeing Mt Shasta over my left shoulder I knew my latitudinal progress had come to a screeching halt as the trail heads a whole lot south & a whole lot west. If I extrapolated my azimuth I would have ended up in San Francisco Bay & that is not the direction to Canada. Heading the wrong direction is a bit tough mentally even though you know the mileage is the mileage. I just kept saying to myself “they are great mountains even if they are the wrong direction”.

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Destination: Saddle after peak
Starting Location: Ridge
Today’s Miles: 33.70
Trip Miles: 1558.80
Ridge (1524, 6150) to Saddle after peak (1557.7, 6160) ascent (3783) descent (3652)

First 30+ mile day – cool.
It was ironic that on my first day of solo hiking I met more people than on any other day on the trail. I passed section hikers Rita, Southern Harp & Travling Man along with thru-hiker Heiki early in the morning. Then I met 3 groups of Ameri Trek youth (13/14 yrs old) who were enjoying what sounded like a really cool summer adventure – 3 days backpacking, climbing Mt Lassen, white water rafting. The company is based in North Carolina but their programs are all in the west. One of the group leaders was an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker & he immediately hooked me up with a Snickers bar & even took my trash. Then I met the coolest people yet – 5 & 6 year olds on a field trip to Deadfall Meadow. Their daypacks were bigger than they were. The bold ones were running ahead chasing butterflies, & lizards while the reserved ones even pulled it off pretty well a few times, but it is hard & unrewarded work being not you.
I am camped right on top of a saddle, a partial moon has appeared and the mountain sticking through the smoke looks like islands in a sea of fog.
Weird seeing so many people in the morning & now I have not seen anyone all afternoon or evening. The constant chatter in my head is dramatically reduced & when it starts I am able to switch it off and simply enjoy my surroundings. I am in a great place right now.

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