July 8, 2013

Meadow near divide to Halfway Park

~32 miles 

Whew, that was a long day. The day began as most do with some nice forested hiking. Four miles into the day was the first planned stop to descend 1/4 mile down a side trail to get water for the next 10 miles. Everything was going well, I had refilled my bottles and climbed back to the trail, but just as I was putting my pack on to start hiking again I realized my sunglasses weren't on my head or in my backpack. Crap. I dropped my backpack and ran the couple hundred vertical feet downhill to the place next to the creek where I had filled up with water and then slowly trudged back up the hill. Not a great way to start the day, but it could have been worse. At least I found them. 

In the middle of the day, a few ginormous dark clouds and rumbling thunder passed by and fortunately only dropped a spattering of rain on me. It was pretty cool to see and added a little excitement to an otherwise mundane road walk section of the day. 

Later on, as Sparrow and I were enjoying some delicious instant dark chocolate pudding as an after dinner treat, much to my surprise a hiker came up to us and started chatting. His name was Simon from England, probably in his 50's, and also thru-hiking the CDT southbound. We talked a little about the hike thus far and apparently he started a week after we did and had already caught up! Keep in mind that the past three days I hiked 25-30-32 miles and he STILL caught up. Sparrow and I were both impressed and pondered how it was that he was putting in such big miles. Up the trail a short distance we found out one way he was able to squeeze more hiking in to each day was to carry his cooked dinner with him while he hiked until it cooled off enough to eat! Pretty neat chap I must say. I hope to cross paths again with him tomorrow. 

Tomorrow it's a mere 25 miles (including a 16 mile road walk to start the day) to Hwy 2 and a hitch into Butte to cleanup and resupply.