CDT mile 1916.4, miles hiked 29.8
charge getting ready for the day
I awoke to Tatu-Jo’s alarm at 4:30, rolled over and passed back out. My alarm finally rose me at about 5:25, I did my morning routine and at 6 am we walked out of camp. Zorro and Easy Strider were still asleep so Tatu-Jo said, “come on boys time to get up, we are out of here.” We never saw them since as I imagined they kept on sleeping and woke up an hour or two later.
We strolled along the first five miles and eventually found Charge packing up to go. He got in front of us yesterday and we finally caught him. The three of us took off and hiked together for the day. The trail went up and down like the day before but not as dramatically. During one of our climbs the sky was begging to get dark, we looked up the hill and saw a hiker coming our way. As he got closer we recognized him it was Half Mile who is hiker famous for mapping the PCT and then making a free GPS app for all hikers to download. He is hiking the CDT this year for fun and had flipped from NM. It was fun seeing him we chatted for a while and then got moving.
Rain on the horizon
The sky got very dark and a storm moved in over us. We stashed electronics and put on rain gear. As we got close to a gate we saw another south bounder coming our way, it was girl and we recognized her, it was Dora the Explorer who I know from the Sierras last summer. We ran up to her and greeted each other, she talked about the hike and then told me she was hiking with D=RT and hiker I have known for some years.
We hiked on and tried to find the buffalo caves, unfortunately, they have been filled in by the quarry, but we spotted a hiker so I yelled DIRT! and lo and behold he came up to say hi. I nearly didn’t recognize him, his hair is long, his beard like a wizard and he had lost over 40lbs. We caught up and then each went out own way.
Sunset before camp
The storm picked up and dropped rain and hail for a bit before tapering off. We pushed our way up over the hills trying to make Deadman Lake. We did some bushwhacking to save miles, made the lake by 7:45 and kept going. For our final miles, we climbed a large hill and tucked into the trees to sleep. A late dinner, some blogging and now sleep, tomorrow we plan to do a mid 30 so I need all the rest I can get.
