Friday, July 5, 2013

June 28, 2013

June 28, 2013
Day 11 - CDT Hikers!
My Lake to Camp Allan
~21 miles

A few miles into the day, just at the start of the Chinese Wall, I ran into a group of five other CDTers! Their names are Train, Huck, Bluefoot, Smiles, and State Machine. I chatted with them for a little while before heading on my way. It turns out that three of them are from the Portland area as well. Small world. Train is the guy who hiked the PCT last year wearing a different wedding dress every 100 miles. This time he's wearing a kilt as his 'thing'. Sounds like the dress thing was a lot of work. Smiles is about 60 years old from Switzerland and a ski racer, how cool is that! 

After that encounter, the Chinese Wall lived up to all the hype. It was pretty dang cool and, although similar to the north wall, amazingly different. After rolling up and down the trail by the wall, the rest of the days hiking was a cruisy downhill following Burnt Creek and then the Sun River. After stopping for a long leisurely lunch at Indian Point Cabin, I reconnected with the five other hikers and hiked another four miles with them before calling it a day at a nice large campsite next to the river. We all took a dip in the river which felt amazing! First time for me on the trip and it was a perfect day for it with temperatures somewhere in the upper 80's. Life is good. We hung out together while cooking up food and talked what thru-hikers talk about... The upcoming trail and past trails hiked, with just a sprinkling of gear talk thrown in. 

My body feels great today since it was easy hiking and I only did 21 miles after three long days in a row. And getting to camp at 5pm made it feel like I had a half rest day. 

Tomorrow it's about 9 miles to Benchmark Ranch for the resupply and then on to the next leg into Helena. I finally feel like I'm getting into the swing of thru-hiking again. Wahoo!


Sent from my iPhone

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