PCT day 42 – Almost back on track
We had the alarm set for 5:30am but we ended getting up at 6:30am – it was one of those days! I looked over to Growlers tent, she wasn't up yet...
Bangarang hiked out before us (he's probably wondering what he's got himself into!) and we left around 7.
Today was all up, well 90% up. The first 6 miles went by fairly uneventfully, there are still some patches of burn we walked through.
I walked with Cool Breeze for most of the morning and we talked adventure travel. Walking with someone makes the distance pass more quickly, although I was only talking between puffing!
We met 2 weekend hikers, one was from England but had lived in California for 20 years – she still had her English accent and apparently I became even more English when I spoke to her! They told us we were about to get a great view of the Sierra...
10 miles in we saw Bangarang face down in the sand by the river and went to join him. We ate some lunch, filtered some water and laid in the sun.
Jesse and Dana joined us and we debated back and forth about setting up camp in that spot. People waded in the river and we generally had a good time making it hard to leave.
2.5 hours later we decided to hike out. 12 more miles to do today's plan. I was sceptical. Plus some horrible looking clouds were developing! Jesse and Dana stayed to camp by the river.
There is definitely a change in the air. It's fresher out here, although this afternoon was really humid because of the rain. I have decided that humid is the worst for me. It zaps all the energy from me and I sweat so much, normally I hardly sweat at all!
We hiked just under 5 more miles and we still had 1000ft of climbing left to do which would take us to 10500ft – that would have been a really cold camp, so we would have to walk another 7 miles to get down to a suitable camp spot. So, we walked about a quarter of a mile more and decided to set up camp there! A 15 mile day. Not quite our goal but never mind!
An early dinner and we were all in our tents by 6:30pm and it was still so light outside!
Tomorrow we try harder...