Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Mileage: 11 miles Another day on the trail...the countdown is near. We decide to have a tea party this morning (as we were only supposedly going about 8 miles...we had time)! Everyone needed to wear their best tea party hat a.k.a. Beanie. With some persuasion, Dr. No delayed his departure to join the party. We were so convincing that he even joined our morning dance party after tea time! By the time we were all packed up and ready to go, it was 11 AM! Yay for vacation time!
Here's Dr. No and Sparkle exchanging personal info for future hiking
And at last, we hauled our twice as heavy 50 pd packs on to walk the final 2.5 miles down the Mountain to our campspot for the night at the end of this segment.
The start of the trail followed a ridge
The trail turned inward towards the mountains and we traversed through another shaly side full of Marmots. They weren't too happy with us invading their prized rock terrain
We left Marmotland and walked across a beautiful meadow complete with a mountainous backdrop
Which way do we go??? Follow Pippy!
About 3 miles into our leisure day, we stop for a little snack break and spied a perfectly flat rock to take a picture of us
We continued on and came across some vibrantly glowing purple daisies
Of course, we found another perfect picture spot and transformed ourselves into acrobats
The trail descended down over another pass with more great views
Check this out. It looks like a giant cat sitting on the mountain. Wouldn't surprise us if it was as cats think they rule the world
Up and over into another valley and we come face to face with low moving fog
We were excited that this would be the last climb of the day...doesn't look too bad right?
WRONG! Fog came pouring in with sideways rain and a whipping wind that turned our umbrellas into tumble weeds.
We could barely see our own hands in front of us!
Zippy's fake "I'm having a great time" smile and Pippy's "this is pretty much what I feel like right now" face
Awhhhhhh....finally the top is near! Sparkle and our new friend Jolly Junior waited for us at the top
We made it! Woohoo now for the downhill
About 1.5 miles downhill was the last water source for 22 miles. No, it's not a typo...we did not add another 2. It really is 22 miles away. So what do we need to do to survive? Carry 14 pounds of water on our backs! Yup! We were at this river spot for about an hour pumping and filtering enough water to last the rest of the day and all of tomorrow.
"Mom, can you please take this umbrella that I've been holding in this position for the last 10 mins so the stove doesn't burn out!! My arm's about to fall off!" We cooked our dinner in advance as not to use up any more water on food. No choice but to cook it in the rain
Pippy speedily walked ahead and reached the campsite first. She was surprised to see another tent already propped up at camp. However, it looked a little familiar. She peeked around the corner and sure enough....her prediction was correct...it was Dr. No!!!! We happily bombarded his camp for the night and chit chatted away. Dr. No definitely was overdue for company as he said he had been sitting in his tent for the past four and a half hours reading the back of his chip bag.
We ate our dinner, set up our tent, and all tucked ourselves into our rabbit holes for the night as we had a longgggg 20 mile day planned for tomorrow. Tata for now!
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