Episode 65 - PCT Update #13

Burney Falls —> Castella

There are many great colors, but these days it seems that my favorite one is green. The beautiful trees! The lush forests! The gorgeous mountainsides! After weeks of walking through burnt desolation and dry plains after Lake Tahoe, the greenery of NorCal is a delightful sight to behold. I absolutely love it 🌲

As always, please feel free to mail letters, postcards, mail, or care packages to me on trail! I always get so excited heading to the post office, and the next one will be in Ashland, Oregon. Wait a second… Oregon?! YESSIR WE’RE ALMOST TO THE SECOND STATE! Thank you so much to everyone who’s sent me packages, post cards, and letters so far. Going to the post office is like Christmas, each and every time!

Address:

Dennis Gavrilenko (PCT Hiker)

General Delivery, USPS

120 N 1st St

Ashland, OR 97520

Let’s go!

If this is your first episode and you’re thinking “what in the world is happening right now”, start here!

Brooke, Shotgun, and yours truly :)

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Day 91, 8/9/2025:

24 miles today with 4700 feet of climbing.

Following our relaxing day off yesterday, brooke and I woke up nice and early today to start off the day before the heat set in. We surprisingly were able to get out of camp quickly, and were hiking on trail by 8 am! Goodbye to my beloved General Store and Visitor Center 🫡

The morning’s hiking was very chill; we crossed over the Pit River Dam (so cool actually, with some blackberry bushes nearby), and climbed up a medium-sized hill before stopping at Rock Creek to filter water and make some coffee. There, I found an ammo can geocache (boy do I LOVE these ammo can hides), which I signed together with brooke and Extra, another PCT hiker who’d hiked the Continental Divide Trail last year. He did a ton of side quests on the CDT and on the PCT this year (including hiking the Grand Canyon portion of the AZT just for a laugh), hence his trail name. We had a long and friendly chat with him before he set off, followed shortly by Brooke and a while later by me.

We carried on, taking a short lunch and a long nap at Screwdriver Creek to avoid the midday heat. We were awoken by another passing hiker, Shotgun, who’d apparently started the day after us in the desert but somehow we’d never yet met. We ended up hiking the rest of the day with him, and had simply the best time ever; he’s from Atlanta, just graduated from Georgia Tech for industrial engineering, and was generally cool af. We chatted with him for hours all afternoon (about everything; sample topics included gay bars in Atlanta, the Civil War, and Georgia Tech frats), before setting up camp atop a chill climb with the most beautiful sunset view of Mt. Shasta ever. Shotgun headed on ahead on his quest to reach Dunsmuir by Monday night, while I called my family and relaxed in the tent with Brooke. Another successful day on trail :)

Happy birthday Papa!

The spoon is BACK

Day 92, 8/10:

23 miles today with 2700 feet of climbing.

I don’t know what it is with these NorCal mosquitoes, but their bites are way itchier and leave much bigger bumps than the Sierra ones. My legs these days look like they got stung by those evil wasps in the Hunger Games.

Anyway, today was another long day on trail; parts of it were super overgrown in the morning, so we hiked a few miles along a fire road parallel to the PCT to avoid the anger-inducing bushwhacking, and had a pretty decent pace going for the first few hours. We took a nice, long break for breakfast and coffee (I love making coffee on trail ☕️) and headed uphill for the first and only major climb of the day through a beautiful pine forest. The greenery here is amazing!

After a lengthy climb, I spent the next 6 hours in a deep mental rut, where I had a complete lack of hiking motivation and would take unnecessary 30-minute reading breaks because I just couldn’t be bothered to keep going. Then, I learned an important new skill: reading while walking.

I decided that I was wasting too much time reading my very interesting books on the side of the trail, so today I experimented with doing this reading while walking. The result was a genius outcome, where I found myself still walking at a decent speed and not being bored, and enjoying my book tremendously. I’ll continue this strategy on days I’m feeling down.

Finished the evening by hiking downhill with Brooke, chatting about our high school teachers and reverse racism (unrelated). Made it to camp by 8:45 and asleep by 10; we had to put our bags in our tents today, because the deer here famously love to chew your bag straps… thanks Nate for the warning 🫡

Also, a bee stung my penis this morning while I was taking a shit, and that was just all-around a terrible experience.  ☹️

Wildlife sighting!

Day 93, 8/11:

27 miles today with 4400 feet of climbing.

Boy oh boy, this was a great day! We woke up nice and early to beat the heat on the early ascents, and surprisingly did quite well: we made it out by 7 am, caught up to Flo and Pablo by 8 (they’d camped 3 miles ahead), and were at the McCloud River by 11.

McCloud was absolutely delightful; there was a nice sand beach right on the river, where we took a quick dip and a long break. After filtering water and drinking the second coffee of the day, I headed off onto the big climb, crushed it (despite the crazy heat), and took a lovely break with Pablo near a small waterfall on trail (we practiced some French together). We carried on ahead, making it to Squaw Valley Creek by 5 pm and earning another break there (we love breaks). This break was particularly amazing, as the river was quite deep and had several perfect jumping rocks, which brooke and I tested out extensively.

After eating some canned peaches we found in an ammo can under a random bridge (I realize this sounds crazy, but it was, in fact, official trail magic) and filling up on water, we carried on up the final climb of the day. We made it to the tippy top by sundown, set up camp in the dark (classic), and went to catch some Z’s.

These Mt. Shasta views are EPIC 🏔️

Day 94, 8/12:

11 miles today with 500 feet of climbing.

Today was the best kind of day on trail: town day! Excited by the prospect of a cold drink and real food, I flew down the mountain and arrived in the tiny village of Castella at 11 am, right when the post office opened (a train went by the road walk for the last 2 miles, and I was seriously considering jumping into a train car to save myself a 30-minute walk, then decided against it for safety reasons; boring me, I know). I say village, because all that was there was the post office and a gas station store, but after a week of hiking in the woods, that feels like the center of civilization.

I picked up my three packages from the post office (a self-mailed resupply from Tahoe, some English mints from Caroline (thank you!!!! 🇬🇧), and a postcard from Tallis 💜), and spent the next three hours relaxing with Brooke, Flo, and Pablo as we ate fresh food and prepared our resupply (there was only one tiny mixup with Brooke’s package that caused some extreme panic, but we resolved that quickly iykyk). As was expected, I had way too much food, so I decided to mail that ahead to Ashland to save myself some money there.

And like the absolute legend that the postmaster was, he simply repackaged up the same resupply box I had mailed in, changed the address to Ashland, and shipped it ahead without charging me anything. Thank you Brooke for the idea, and the postmaster for being my hero 🫡

And exciting update: we’ve reached 1500 miles!!! Look at us go :)