Thousands of hikers attempting the Pacific Crest Trail each summer rely on remote towns for resources or respite — and no other community in California has earned a better reputation amongst these travelers than Etna in Siskiyou County.

“Hikers have told us that Etna is the friendliest town on the trail,” Craig Thompson, owner of the Bluebird Inn, told SFGATE by phone last week. Backpackers often take a “zero day” in Etna, pausing the leg of their tour through the Klamath National Forest to wash laundry, reload supplies and eat a kitchen-cooked meal. 

Typically, at this point in the summer, Etna receives droves of hikers — every year 4,000 to 6,000 people do the thru-hike — but the number of backpackers is eerily down this summer, as plumes of black smoke rise from the conifer ridge outside of town. The Shelly Fire ignited July 3 and has burned more than 14,000 acres, and counting. It’s the third summer in a row that a wildfire has burned in the Klamath, thrusting this Northern California community into turmoil once again.

Etna is perfectly situated to embrace PCT hikers. It’s near Mount Shasta, a couple hundred miles after hikers pass the midpoint of their 2,650-mile journey from Mexico to Canada, border to border, all by foot. PCT travelers encounter the valley town beneath a range known for its uncut, old-growth conifer forest, the Marble Mountain Wilderness. Outside Magazine once ranked it among the best towns in America, calling it a “time warp ranch town” that’s Yellowstone “minus the gridlock.” 

Fewer than a thousand residents were counted in Etna in the last census, but during the summer, the population fluctuates from the additional dusty visitors. Over the years, the local economy has come to rely on the annual migration of PCT hikers. In return, Etna provides them with all their trail-tailored needs, from outfitter shops to places to crash. Thompson hosts some of them from a historic blue Victorian near downtown, and said his guest book is filled with folks from all continents.

But orders to either evacuate or prepare to leave were issued last week for much of the surrounding area, leading PCT hikers to reconsider their routes and circumvent Etna entirely. Jeff Mitchem, the city administrator, said he’s seen hikers divert to Mount Shasta City, where there are more resources, while they wait. Others are jumping ahead to Oregon, said Brandy Hudson, co-owner of the burger and fries joint Dotty’s.

Because a town like Etna depends on hikers, it would seem that their absence would pose another existential threat, but the nearby wildfires have offered up an unexpected twist: Certain businesses have reported a boost from an entirely different clientele, one that’s even more crucial to the town’s livelihood.

“We’re seeing a little uptick in business from all these firefighters working so hard to save our little town,” Hudson said. There are nearly 4,000 Cal Fire personnel combating the Shelly Fire, and fire trucks with license plates from as far as Maine are appearing downtown.

“They set up a fire incident camp two miles up the road, and while they have a mobile kitchen and caterers, they get tired of the food sometimes,” Hudson said. “And everybody knows that Dotty’s has the best ice cream in the valley.”

While firefighters are substituting for PCT tourists in Etna this month, Meg Pick, owner of Etna Creek Outfitters, reminds Californians that the Shelly Fire continues to burn largely uncontained. “There’s no silver lining to any of this,” she said. 

Furthermore, in a town that’s remained a familiar and receptive detour for thousands of PCT hikers every summer, their absence hits closer to the heart for the local innkeeper. 

“We’re missing the hikers and the infusion of culture that comes into Etna,” Thompson said. “Yeah, they support the economy but there’s that human element. We’re missing the friends we haven’t met yet.”

There has been a tectonic shift in the PCT experience recently, as its popularity shot up following the publication of the memoir “Wild” in 2012, then forest fires became a brutal custom that bars hikers from completing the thru-hike altogether. 

“One can no longer expect to thru-hike the PCT in one year,” a hiker told SFGATE in 2021. “Climate change means fires along the trail and fire closures are the new normal.”

For the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA), a nonprofit that advocates for the trail and provides resources for hikers, the need for a smarter system than trail signs to communicate with hikers about fire closures has never been bigger. 

Leading up to this summer season, the PCTA’s trail information manager Jack Haskel helped develop a free app that displays trail closures and “trip altering” updates. It could not have launched at a better time to help protect PCT hikers. 

“On June 25, we built this app in house and launched it to the world,” Haskel said. “The next day, I had to update it with fire news after fire news.”

The California wildfire season is off to a ferocious start, with several large incidents burning across the state. For PCT hikers, several sections on the trail are currently closed due to wildfire. The Vista Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest and the White Fire in the Tehachapi Mountains have closed off segments in Southern California, while the Royal Fire near Truckee is keeping hikers on high alert.

In Northern California, there’s no bigger threat to the PCT than the Shelly Fire. It’s not only one of the state’s largest burning fires, it’s nowhere near containment as it approaches the end of the second week since igniting. 

Etna has spent most of the month hunkering down and in a state of alert. Hudson said the town has become “accustomed to these big fires,” and learned to remain calm and informed amid the uncertainty. 

While firefighters work to keep the flames from growing eastward towards downtown, Thompson said that suspense hovers over Etna from just outside the edge of town. 

“That’s the strange thing about a wildfire. There’s a lot of waiting,” he said. “There are certain catastrophic fires that move fast, but the fire we’re experiencing now is slowly growing. There’s just an eeriness of waiting.”