CDT Day 56 – Brooks Lake

Date: 8/16/20

Daily Miles: 17

Total Miles: 999

It is funny sometimes how we think we are awake for large chunks of time during the night, but usually that’s not true. Both of us felt like we were awake for several hours before the alarm went off, but Beardoh heard SweetPea snoring whenever he woke up, so chances are we both slept plenty last night.

Today was probably the longest we’ve stayed in our wind shirts/wind pants/mittens. Part of the reason for this was that it took awhile for the sun to hit us. But the main reason was probably our river crossing in the morning. We decided to go barefoot again, but the river today was quite wide and the water was very cold. By the time we reached the other side of the river, our feet were in excruciating pain from the cold. We had to sit in the sun for 15 minutes warming our feet before we could keep walking.

We met another two northbound CDT hikers, Jangles and Mouse, this morning. We had a good time chatting with them and picking their brain on the trail coming up for us. Turns out they hiked the PCT in 2012…the same year Beardoh first hiked it…they were all even at the kickoff together but never met. We ended up talking with them for about an hour without any of us taking off our packs or sitting down.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get into Brooks Lake Lodge as early as possible to pick up our resupply box. We had noticed in our navigation app last night that there was a lodge within hitching distance where we could get a room and some town food. Brooks Lake Lodge is much too expensive for us, but the Lava Mountain Lodge seemed to be more up our alley.

We got to Brooks Lake Lodge around 3:30pm, picked up our box and just dumped the contents into our packs, thinking we would sort it out at the Lava Mountain Lodge. We headed out to the road on our way to the highway to hitch. But, we barely got out of the driveway for Brooks Lake Lodge before getting a ride. The guy wasn’t heading in our direction, but he said he would be happy to take us since he wasn’t in a rush…so nice! Turns out, we had actually seen each other on the trail earlier. He was with a group riding horses on the trail and we had passed them while they were stopped for a break and then they passed us when we were stopped for lunch.

We were happy to have had such an easy time getting to Lava Mountain Lodge. We ended up having to change rooms after checking in…we had first chosen a cabin which has two bunk beds, but when we entered the room, we realized Beardoh wasn’t going to be able to fit in the tiny beds. So we switched to a regular room. We took showers, did laundry, got pizza and watched an episode of VEEP.

Over dinner, we planned out the next section as we enter the Wind River Wilderness. We are going to add on an extra half day to our plan so that we can lower our miles from our previous stretch, be able to hammock each night, and be able to do a noted alternate which people highly recommend. We are excited to finally get to experience the Winds!