It was a good night and I get up early to get the ascent done before it heats up.  The picture below is taken at 7:33 and the sun is just showing its face.  I am about half way up the ascent.

An hour later and I am probably still at least 1 mile from the top.  Really going quite slow.  By this time I have been passed by a number of hikers and also by Fire Ants who states she just had a hard time getting up early this morning.

Reached the top of the steep ascent and now there is suppose to be about a 6 mile gentler ascent followed by what looks like about 11 miles of relatively flat hiking.  Nothing feels like that to me today.  It all feels like it is very steep and I am stopping rather frequently.  At the end of the 4 miles is a spring called Gully Spring where everyone stops for a long pause.  I know because by the time I got there, everyone that had passed me is still there resting.  It is now really hot and a number of hikers are complaining about how they thought they were out of the desert.   This section is also rather dry which makes it a bit more frustrating.  It shouldn’t be however.  It is just the PCT.  This is what it is.

This picture does make it look like I am on rather level land while taking a picture of the ever present Mt. Shasta.  I would like to eventually move north of that mountain.  I am just getting further west of that mountain and it even looks like I am further SOUTH of that mountain.

So it is bit smokey,  it is brutally hot, and my congestion has not improved but seems to be worse.  I am coughing and resting about every half mile and feel like I am going constantly up hill.  If my phone is at all accurate, it turns out I am not going uphill all the time at all.  I do about half as many flights as I did yesterday.  This is just not going to work and I need to get rid of this congestion.  I am by a paved road and text Lenora and come and gather me up again the next morning.  Looks like it is going to cool off at the end of the week and I’m hoping my congestion will get better.

I camp alone for the night.  Big campground but nobody saw it as a stopping place apparently.  Another beautiful night

Phone says 43000 steps and 22 flights.

So I am going to be off trail for the next days but don’t want to be out of touch so Lenora and I become trail angels.  I buy 5 styrofoam coolers and we load them up with fruit and drinks and beer and chocolate and with ice cream for making root beer floats.  Spend most of the day at various sites and getting so much thanks from the hikers is rather addictive.   Constantly giving rides to hikers down to town (Etna) and hikers in Etna back up to the trail.   They will stop for an hour or more and relax and eat fruit and cold drinks.  Most of them are doing more than 25 miles a day.  One guy did 34 miles because it was his 34th birthday.  They seem to having a great time and are doing the miles for various reasons.  Some want to beat the snow in Washington and fear an early winter.  Some actually have to get back to work.  A large number this year have to finish before their Visa’s expire.  Turns out there was a documentary on the PCT in Germany on the most popular German station and that is why there are some many Germans on the trail this year (so I was told by a German couple while giving them a ride to Medford Oregon to get new shoes).   During one day an older couple drove up and stopped to see what was going on.  I talked with him for a long time about the trail.  He said he was a lifelong hiker and thought about doing the PCT but he said all he ever saw was PCT Hikers with their heads down walking as fast as they could to get in miles.  He was not interested in doing that.  I laughed and told him I did not do that and he did not have to do that either.  He could hike the trail how he wanted to hike the trail.  It was like he had never thought of that.  One guy gave Lenora and I necklaces he had made out of rocks.  One was a rock picked up at the start of the trail in Campo and had been carried for 1500 miles.  One was a rock he picked up in the High Sierra and had carried for about 800 miles.  He was so appreciative of the magic he have them to us.  Quite an honor.  Told him we would carry them the rest of the way to Canada.