TRT 2: Watson Lake

Daily Miles: 17

Total Miles: 34

As we were getting in our hammocks last night, all of a sudden we heard a big thump. We looked over and MountainMan was on the ground…the suspension on his hammock had slipped and he hit the ground. He has been using a different kind of attachment with his webbing which doesn’t use a toggle, but the knot slipped and down he went. He hit the ground pretty hard, landing on his upper back. It was sore last night, but luckily it wasn’t bothering him too much today. Needless to say, he re-hung his hammock using his toggles…no more fear of falling.

We have been surprised by the warm weather we have encountered so far on the trail. During the day it feels really hot, and at night, it is too warm to have the sleeping bag on us the whole night…definitely not what we had expected at the beginning of September.

We headed out on the trail at 7:30am. One of the reasons we were looking forward to this hike was the idea of going at a relaxed pace. We figured we only needed to hike 17 miles each day, which, on a trail as this, means that we can start a bit later than normal, take lots of breaks, and finish in the early evening…certainly a pace that sounded pretty nice after the other trails we have hiked this year.

The trail seemed rather quiet today. We saw a few more thru-hikers today, a few day hikers and a few mountain bikers. But most of the time we didn’t see anyone else on the trail.

For lunch, we stopped at a small lake for an extended break. We had talked about putting up our hammocks during the break, but we all seemed a bit lazy and just ended up sitting on the ground instead. In any case, it was a nice spot for a relaxing lunch.

We had intermittent views of the lake today, mostly in the afternoon. We also spent a lot of the afternoon in really cool forests that had very tall pines, covered on one side with moss and the only ground cover was short manzanita bushes. We really enjoyed walking through and just admiring the view.

We found a good place to camp around 5:45pm. We hung out and cooked dinner at a spot with nice views of the sunset. The sky seemed to get quite a bit hazier in the evening and we could smell the smoke. The haze created a really great sunset, but the smoke and ash in the air are no fun.