Daily Miles: 16
Total Miles: 156
We had a very relaxing day off in Pine yesterday. MountainMan and Ace made us a great breakfast which we enjoyed on the front porch of our AirBnB…it felt so civilized! Then we mostly just relaxed, minus a trip into town for a late lunch. We got a chance to hang out with former and current AZT hikers, which was a lot of fun. One of the hikers was Leslie, whom Beardoh has met twice on different trails, and who let us stay at her place in Banff when hiking the Great Divide Trail last summer. SweetPea was excited to finally meet her!
This morning, we said goodbye to MountainMan and Ace as they headed back to Seattle and we continued on the trail. We were sad to see them go and to lose two people from our group. It was fun for Mace to get to meet them and to be able to get to know them over the past week. We look forward to hiking with them again next year!
We got back on the trail just before 9am and spent the whole day hiking on the Arizona Trail, which is also concurrent with the Highline Trail for about 18 miles. We will continue on the Highline Trail for its entirety (around 55 miles) over the next few days. The trail is marked with white metal diamonds on the trees, making it very clear where to go. The trail is in really good shape, even if quite rocky in parts, so we were able to make steady progress.
We had expected to see some AZT hikers today, but we only saw two day hikers early in the morning. Other than that, the trail has been very quiet.
We started seeing some very dark clouds in the afternoon, but once we got to camp at 5:30pm, they seemed to move on and we are back to blue skies. It is fairly breezy tonight and it has started to really cool off, so we are bundling up for a cold night.
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