Daily Miles: 22
Total Miles: 2484
It was a rather weird night on the patio of the Stevens Pass ski lodge. With the bright lights on all night, it felt a bit disorienting when we woke up in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t dark. This combined with the noise from the traffic over the pass made it hard to get a sound night of sleep.
One benefit to sleeping on the patio was having the lights on for packing up in the morning and having a table to pack up on.
We headed to the trail at 6:30 and walked by ourselves until our 9:00 break. We stopped in a meadow where two ladies were camped with a dog and three llamas. They were using the llamas to carry their gear for several nights of backpacking. MountainMan showed up during our break and we were able to relax a bit with him.
Shortly after starting back on the trail, we met a trio of search and rescue folks who were out searching for a woman who had not returned home from a day hike the previous day. They showed us a photo of the woman and gave us instructions if we happened to come across her. We never saw her, but hope that they were able to find her and that she was not hurt.
About halfway through lunch, Gazelle, Roadrunner, and Hammer showed up. We seem to be off schedule from them today, but we don’t want to extend our break times, since they walk faster than us. It just means that we don’t get to chat with them as much today. But we headed out before they were finished eating and then they showed up later when we were taking an afternoon break. We seem to be getting to camp with less than an hour before darkness comes. We wish it was still light out later in the evening, but that’s the way it goes in fall.
Tonight the campsite was pretty lame, with bad tent spots and no great hammock hangs. We did find spots, but we are not hanging close to each other. We both put up our tarps tonight as a precaution. Although the sky seemed to be clearing this evening, we were told yesterday that there was an 80% chance of rain tomorrow, so we figured the tarps would be good in case the rain started We didn’t see any other thru-hikers today! A very quiet day on the trail, which we really enjoy.
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