This weekend, Tim and I decided that we were going to go backpacking. Instead of going north-east to the Sierras like usual, Tim suggested that we find a trail somewhere north of us. After investigating google maps and consulting our hiking with doggies book, we decided to try hiking to Magee Peak in Lassen National Forest. It looked like a really great trail! It was 15 miles round trip, and it had 3000 feet of climbing to the top of Magee peak! We would pass sub-alpine lakes on the way, and I was really excited to see the sights! We decided that we would go backpacking this weekend late on Thursday night. Friday night after we went for a swim at Cal, we packed our bags and I packed Navi's as well. We both noticed that we had sore throats and our noses were a little runny but we dismissed this because we've backpacked while sick plenty of times before! We had quite a drive in the morning of around 6 hours, so I headed off to bed and before I knew it morning swung around.
We woke up and we weren't feeling too well. Our noses were running a marathon, and our throats were very sore. My head was throbbing, but it was dull enough that I dismissed it. We hopped in our car, stopped for some coffee, and then we set off! I drove and chattered happily for some hours while Tim studied the gps and the directions in the book. He announced that he found a way that would save us 20 miles and while I had a feeling that even though it saved us in distance, it wouldn't save time, we decided that we were in no rush and decided to take the scenic route! We stopped along the way to grab some quick food and let Navi stretch her legs for a while. After a while we got back on the road and drove...and drove...and drove some more. The scenic route was really windy and hilly so it gave me a fun drive but it was a little time consuming. We still weren't in any rush, though, so we just had fun. Finally, we arrived at the road we were supposed to turn onto to get to the trailhead and we were surprised to discover that it was an unpaved logging road. It was really rocky, so we had to drive rather slowly to keep our car a happy camper, and we still had ten miles to go. It was a little disheartening to realize that the next ten miles would take an hour to drive rather than ten or twenty minutes. As we drove, all the signs seemed to match up well with our directions. After a while, the road conditions became worse, and the directions started to become rather hard to follow. The road forked every 50 feet, and we never had an idea of where to go. We would just pick one and go, discover it quickly became impassible, and turn around and try another way. This started to suck up a lot of time and our confidence that we would find our trailhead withered. We found a place that looked like it could have been a parking lot, but we weren't very confident. Tim found some places that looked like they could be trails, but we weren't sure. We weren't really interested in the idea of putting our packs on and just going because then nobody would know where we were. We also were starting to realize that we were in a region that had recently had wildfires, and apparently there were still hotspots around. We definitely learned our lesson to check the wildfire situation before heading backpacking. We asked some loggers for directions, and they said we were a long ways off from our destignation. We kept going and doggedly tried to follow their directions, but once again there were too many forks and we weren't sure which way to go. 3 pm came and went and after a while we decided that it was a lost cause. I found another trail in our book that followed a river that I had seen while we were still on the paved roads, so we decided that we head back, get back on the paved roads, find this new trail and decide what to do. It took another hour or maybe even longer to get back to the main road, and at this point we were kind of exhausted. We were feeling even worse than we had in the morning, and we weren't looking forward to camping while feeling crappy. We really did need to stretch our legs, though, so we decided we'd hike a mile or two around the river trail, and then just drive straight home. We parked at the campground that was close to this new trail, and let Navi out. She was very excited to be out of the car! The book said that there was a wooden bridge on the North side of the campground that we could walk across to get to the other side. We headed to the north side of the campground and we saw no bridge. We did see some big trees that had fallen across the river so we thought, why not climb across these? The first tree we found gave Navi some problems, so we decided we'd find another option. We found another tree that was quite big without many branches. The only problem was that there was a 3 foot gap between our side of the river and the tree. Easy for us...but what about Navi? Tim tried to pick her up and see if she would walk onto the log from his hands. He held her over the river, and she started to walk off his arms and suddenly plummeted into the river. It was quite fast moving at that point, but Tim had her leash, so he pulled her towards him until he could grab her collar. He then grabbed her collar and was in the process of pulling her back onto shore, but I got really nervous. Navi looked a little scared so I jumped into the river to push her out. It was a little deeper, and about as frigid as I had expected, but I helped to push Navi out, and she was soon safe and sound. I climbed out of the river soaking wet from the chest down, and I decided that since I was already soaked through, I would walk her across the river at a shallower spot while Tim walked across the log with the cameras. We got to the other side and walked south along the river, throwing pinecones for navi to catch. Along the hike, we discovered the mysterious wooden bridge on the south side of the campground. We hung out on it for a while watching the water rush underneath, and then got back to hiking. It was quite fun, but after a while I got tired of being wet and cold. We headed back to the car and I changed into dry clothes. Then we drove all the way home, stopping once along the way for food. It wasn't a terrible day, but it sure didn't go the way I expected it to.
After a lot of studying topo maps that we downloaded from the internet when we got home, we discovered that the directions in the book were completely wrong. For both trails. I don't think I'm a very big fan of this book any longer.
