We woke up to a beautiful sunrise eager to hit the trail and beat the heat on a long tough section that would see us dropping 5,000ft, crossing the feather river near Belden, and then climbing back up another 5,000ft.

Our descent was fairly gradual and full of switchbacks as we wound our way down.

We reached the bottom after a few hours and passed through the “town” of Belden which seemed to be just a general store and a campground.

We passed by this sign on the way out. At the time we didn’t realize how foreboding it would turn out to be.

We crossed the Feather River on a neat old single lane bridge.

After crossing the river we began our climb back up to the top of the ridge.

There were some wild flowers starting to pop up along the way.

It was a long exposed climb as we worked our way up trail. When we crossed into Lassen National Forest, we were finally in the shade of trees.

As we approached the top of the climb we noticed a strange cloud blocking the sun…

We hiked a bit further up trail and quickly realized it was a wildfire burning on the other side of the ridgeline to our southwest.

We called 911 and were told the wildfire was spreading quickly and to turn around and head east back to Belden 8 miles away.

We knew there was a hiker further up trail and weren’t sure if he could see the fire or if he had signal, so I left my pack with Amy and ran up trail to find him. It took about 3 miles to run him down. At 38 minutes it wasn’t my fastest 5k but it was a long day!

By the time I caught him, the sky was full of activity. There was a command plane circling while helicopters flew on buckets of water and several tankers dove in to drop their tanks on the fire.

He had signal and called 911 for an update and was told the fire was spreading in all directions and the best bet was to get north.

I called Amy and updated her. I ran back down the trail towards her while she carried her pack on her back and my pack on her front. After about two miles of backtracking, we met up.

We redistributed our gear and prepared to hike north away from the fire. We put a few essentials in our fanny packs so we could drop our main packs and run in the event the fire pushed past the ridgeline and continued towards us.

We hiked until about dusk when we noticed the sky had grown quiet. Hoping the lack of aircraft meant the fire was put out, we called 911 again for an update.

Unfortunately, we were told it was only quiet because they aren’t allowed to fly at night… the fire was still 0 percent contained. They told us they were trying to keep the fire from crossing over the ridgeline and were so far successful, but we were still in the danger zone. We were told to hike as far as we could into the night and put more mileage between us in the morning.

After looking at the map, we found a place to camp about 5 miles up trail that had a water source and was past several forest service roads that might act as a fire break so we headed for there.

We had to don our head nets as the mosquitos were everywhere. It made travel a little tricky with the headlamp in the dark but luckily the trail was pretty flat.

We made good time for an hour or so until I heard a faint rustle to our side. I pointed my headlamp over just in time to see a mountain lion crouching behind a small dirt rise about 30 feet away. When it saw me looking, it slowly crouched down until it was out of my line of sight.

Unsure of where it went, I threw a rock at it to try an get it to give away its position, but I didn’t hear or see anything.

Sufficiently rattled, we put our headlamps on full power and continued up trail sweeping the lights all around and behind us looking for the mountain lion.

We heard it creeping along a few times but never saw it again.

We made it to camp around midnight and quickly set up the tent, ate dinner and went to sleep after a long day.