Daily Miles: 19
Total Miles: 953
Got up a bit later than usual today, since we weren’t planning for too many miles. We headed out on the trail just before 7:00 with MountainMan and Gazelle. Lid was the only one still left at camp, as everyone else had opted for a normal start time.
The trail was really nice today, and we were able to make it through the day with dry feet! That was the first time we have had dry feet for quite awhile. Although we had some mud to maneuver through and some snow patches to go over and slide down, it was much easier to deal with than the trail even just yesterday.
We seemed to have a lot of variety today in terms of the landscape and the weather. The landscape started out with a lot of meadows and greenery and switched in the afternoon to drier and more rocky landscape. The view from our hammock site tonight is a very craggy rock formation. The weather also shifted from blue skies in the morning to threatening dark clouds and sprinkles in the afternoon and back to blue skies in the evening. We had expected to put up our hammock tarp this afternoon to wait out the rain, but it never materialized beyond a few sprinkles of rain.
After lunch, as we got closer to a trailhead, we started seeing a lot of day hikers. Since today is a Saturday on a holiday weekend, it was no surprise. Sometimes it is fun to talk with the day hikers, but sometimes when there are so many, it starts to feel like it is slowing down our progress.
We took a wrong turn at a trail junction in the afternoon, but luckily realized it after just a quarter mile of going down the wrong trail. We had to back track to the PCT. Once we got back to the junction, we all took a closer look at the sign and agreed it was a bit confusing.
When we arrived at the trailhead where many day hikers were coming from, we were very excited to encounter trail magic from Brian, Ryan and Sandra. We got cake, milk, sodas, oranges and bananas. They had really comfortable chairs for us to sit in while we enjoyed our treats. It was a great surprise and really kind of them.
We headed back on the trail around 4:00 to do our last five miles for the day. The trail was pretty rolling and we put in our earbuds and listened to music/podcasts to motivate ourselves through the end of the day. We have all been feeling pretty worn out, especially in the later afternoons.
We got to camp around 6:00 and everyone was already there and they had a fire going. After setting up our hammocks, we joined the rest of the group around the fire to have dinner. There are quite a few people camped here tonight…11 at our last count.
We are pretty tired and everyone is in their tents before 9:00.
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