The next morning I took another photo off the balcony before we left. As you can see, we've cleared the heavy smoke choking the Sacramento Valley. For those that don't live in California, the smoke was like fog some days. Your lungs and eyes burned during the worst of it and it was miserable to live in. A drought year followed by a massive summer lightning storm had thousands of acres burning all over the State. The central valley was particularly bad as the smoke and smog naturally flows through between the mountain ranges. All told this lightning series burned more than 1.1 million acres.

You really had to see the smoke to grasp how bad it got. It's easy to understand why we were so happy to get away from it when we could.

Dave drove up from Los Angeles and camped in his truck near the turnoff for the trailhead. We met him in the morning and drove higher and higher along a winding dirt road to reach the trail. Our plan was to backpack for five days and then drive back to Crescent City. We then had one night in a campground south of Crescent City before we'd have to return home.

Here we've suited up with our gear and are ready to start in. One of the first things we noticed was that they had moved the trailhead. You used to be able to drive quite a bit further on this road descending to a meadow. This threw our route mileages off and made for a longer hike and some strange looks on the trail. As we started in, we passed a few people hiking out along the upper part of the trail. Most people asked where we were headed. Each time I said "Wilderness Falls," they'd reply "wow". That's generally a bad sign.