Bret and I took a week off to go backpacking in the Trinity Alps in Northern California!
Our adventure started with a night in Coffee Creek, CA. We camped overnight a local campground and grabbed a pizza at Trailhead Pizza. Good food and we got to meet some local characters. We tried to stay up late so we could see the Northern Lights, which we were told by our campground host, Willie, might be visible- He also told us that earthquakes often accompany the Northern lights- so we were a little suspect. No Northern lights or earthquakes for us though or at least we were not awake for them.
The next morning, we took off from the Swift Creek Trailhead. After a few miles, we stopped to have a snack and admire these Maiden Hair Fern.
While snacking, we spotted a black bear on the trail about 30m behind us. Luckily, it didn’t seem too bothered by us and ran away as soon as I waved and said, “Hey, Bear.” Although, Bret proceeded to be mad at me for the rest of the trip for chasing the bear away before he could snap a picture of it.
We had a pretty easy first day and camped at the confluence of Swift Creek and Bear Creek. We had a lovely camping spot right near the river. There was a very curious Deer that checked in on us regularly while we played some cards, ate dinner, and enjoyed the lovely afternoon and evening.
The next day, we traveled up Bear Basin. It was a gradual climb and opened up to a lovely alpine meadow before the last stretch up to the pass into Black Basin and the Deer Creek Valley. The pass was the best views we got of the larger Trinity Mountain range and we could see Sawtooth mountain in the distance. The weather started to turn on us right about then though, so we did not linger too long before continuing back down to our camp site on Deer Creek for that night.
We got to camp and we were able to set up camp, restock our water, and make dinner before the rain started. We hit the tent a little early that evening to avoid getting too wet. The weather forecast had warned us that we were going to have showers that night and the next day, but they unfortunately underestimated just how much it was going to rain! There was a pretty steady rain all night that did not show any signs of letting up when we woke up the next morning.
We lingered in the tent for a while in the morning, still holding out hope that the rain would let up a little. We had planned to stay at Deer Creek for another night and to do a day hike around some nearby alpine lakes. Eventually, we found a nice spot to make breakfast under the protection of a big cedar tree and decided to move on to our next camp site rather than do the day hike since the views we were hoping for would probably be socked in by clouds anyway.
We packed up and headed further up the Deer Creek Valley and climbed up to a pass into the Granite Creek Valley. It was a bit of a slog in the pouring rain and wind, but we got some nice views of the valley. The hike back down to Granite Lake was like entering a different world- a big granite wall on one side. We didn’t stop to take any pictures.
The rain still had not let up when we got to Granite Lake, so we decided to keep going to the trailhead- figuring that we would trade a long day in the rain for the guarantee of a hot shower and a dry place to sleep.
We got back to the car a few hours later and drove back to Coffee Creek for another pizza at Trailhead, then continued on to Yreka. We were pretty spent by the time we got to the motel, so we crashed quickly. The next morning confirmed that we made the right decision because it was still raining steadily. We decided to go to Mt Shasta for the night.
We mostly ate in Mt. Shasta- with a stop at the Laundromat to clean and dry all our wet gear. The next morning, the sun finally came out again and we went for a nice walk at McCloud falls before we headed north to Ashland.
Our next stop was Ashland, OR. We got to town early in the afternoon and wandered around enjoying another break in the rain. We had a really lovely dinner at a latin restaurant on Friday night, Tlalli. They had super fun cocktails and really yummy tacos!
Saturday was Bret’s Birthday! We had a different sort of adventure and went to see a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival! We had planned to try to catch an actual Shakespeare play, but the timing wasn’t right so we saw Yellowface instead. We really loved it. The acting was excellent and the story was thoughtful and funny. That night we had a bday celebration dinner at Alchemy. It was a special place for celebrating Bret’s milestone.
Sunday, it was raining again and we were ready to head home to our puppies.
Here are Bret’s pics!
McCloud Falls
