Surprisingly despite all the people passing us at night with flashlights I slept quite good. Also woke up without the sore throat yay! This time only my nose was completely stuffed and running and the cough was still there. Could be worse I guess. We packed our stuff and walked shortly through Belden before we got back on trail. Interesting place especially with all the festival stuff there. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. It was already getting warm and today we had a 13 mile climb to start with. That is 20.8 km and yes I was dreading it. The first two hours we were still pretty much in the shade but the we hit the burn zone and sun was also already there. Today we got into the burn zone that was caused by the Dixie fire in 2021. It is the largest wildfire in California and second largest in the US. Although there was a lot of water going up the heat was killing us. We would wet our caps and buffs but it would dry within minutes. I also had to take couple of breaks because of my cough. 

When we hit the top – the Frog mountain – I could finally look around. Miles and miles of a burn zone. I was speechless and couldn’t help it. I just started crying. I was so overwhelmed after that 7 hour climb and seeing this at the top caught me off guard. The impact of the Dixie fire was devastating. Everywhere you looked were just dead trees. From time to time we would start seeing some flowers and new small trees which gave me hope. Nature always finds a way how to bounce back. Nevertheless walking through it without some good shade was brutal. I was yet again thankful for carrying my sun umbrella otherwise I would have probably died. At 5:30pm we got to a water source where we decided to camp. It was either that spot or another in 6 miles (11.4km) with a 6 liter carry. No thank you. Instead we decided to go to sleep early and have a really early start tomorrow morning/night. At least we are getting into Chester and that means shower and food!