[pct-l] Hitching around Quincy-Hwy 36 fire

[Brian Lewis]

Lucky and I hit Pooh Corner in Soda Springs 3 days ago or so, and the
impression we got from there is that it's a very hard hitch from Sierra City
or from the actual fire closure point to get around to highway 36 near
Chester, so we hitched from there (Bill of Pooh Corner kindly drove us to
highway 89 to do so).

This took us about 8 hours, comprising 5 separate rides.  Milky did the same
thing the day before taking something more like 6 hours, I believe.

When we got to Old Station we met up with some thru's that had been ahead of
us and who hitched from either Sierra City or at the actual closure point,
and the impression we got from them is that it's an easier hitch than we had
heard.

If I were doing it over I'd stay on trail to Sierra City and then hitch from
there, but it's very much a YMMV thing both in terms of smoke you might or
might not encounter, and how easy the hitch might be --- so hard to advise.
I'm certainly not going to hitch back now to pick up a couple more days of
hiking (!), but reckon that I'll get this 180 miles (Donner Pass to highway
36) later.  Ideally this year if it opens up, if not ... rats.

The various choices of where to hitch from to get around this is shifting
people around; I'm meeting thru-hikers I'd not seen before here, FWIW.

For anyone hitching to highway 36, note that just 3.2 miles north of highway
36 is a good place to camp with both water and flat places to camp, so I'd
suggest not going into Chester but getting directly to the trail.    Lucky
and I didn't stop at Drakesbad, but I heard today that it was great.   Note
also that Badger Flat shows up on the data book (all we had) as having water
and it does not, so we camped waterless after doing 28 or so miles
yesterday.  Then we found maybe 1 mile later at the boundary between
national park and national forest a sign that pointed to a horse corral and
water three-tenths of a mile off trail.  Indeed, there's water there in the
form of a very nicely flowing stream.

We're at the Heitman's now (and it's great!).



        Gadget
        www.postholer.com/brianle