we hitch hiked in from the dunkin donuts by the bus station in redding, and then walked all the way down the hill past the dam to the camping areas. we didn’t run into any rangers so we stayed for free, but as we were limited to foot travel and had 45 pound packs on our backs, we never got to check out the old town. we set up camp and then the sun came up. it was insanely hot. 120 degrees outside of the shade. we barely moved and stayed in our underwears. luckily there was a run off stream from the mountains or possibly the dam which was FREEZING cold, so we spent our days there building cairns, reading, and playing in the water. if we had not had our water filtering pump, we would have probably died from dehydration. i’ll upload some fun pictures when i find them. we eventually hiked out by sleeping the day through and blind hiking at night up the road to the ranger station.