Forest fires at the California/Oregon border.

Forest fires at the California/Oregon border.

Mile: 1,709 of 2,668

One of the highlights of hiking The Pacific Crest Trail, was walking into Oregon to finish off the overwhelmingly large state of California. It felt like California would never be behind us, but once we started getting closer to the border the thoughts of “when will this end”, soon became “will we get out of here alive”?

At the height of the summer heat, large fires popped up along the way, that made for an interesting departure from California. I posted a photo a couple of posts back that showed this particular fire in its infant stage. In just a matter of hours it grew tremendously, and just in time to reflect some of the light from the sun as it vanished behind the mountains. As night came upon us, on one side of the trail it was vibrant and orange set with pinks from the setting sun, and on the other side it consisted of wild fires and ash that glowed into the darkest hours of the night.

As we set up camp that night everything was slightly glowing from the fires off in the distance. The next morning we woke to about a blanket of ash covering us and all of our gear. Needless to say the danger of the situation became clear, and we made big miles to get out of harms way and into Ashland Oregon, which became one of the worst days I had on trail but that’s a whole other story for another time.